Edge computing with Red Hat OpenShift

Red Hat® OpenShift® is an industry-leading enterprise containers and Kubernetesapplication platform  with full-stack automated operations to manage hybrid cloud, multicloud, and and edge deployments—all optimized for developer productivity.

For organizations using cloud-native applications, virtual machines (VMs), IoT (Internet of Things), and cloud computing to deliver extraordinary customer experiences, or using applications powered by artificial intelligence and machine learning (AI/ML) to unlock new opportunities from data, they are evolving and distributing their IT infrastructure using edge computing to get resources as close to the data and users as possible.

Edge computing is the processing of applications and information at or near the physical location of either the end user (like at the API) or the source of the data, providing faster response times, more reliable services, data sovereignty and a better application experience for the user. 

Successful edge computing means applications need to be deployed and managed—quickly and consistently—across a wide range of systems (automation, security, etc), environments (bare-metal, cloud-native), and vendors or service providers. Development teams must be able to create flexible applications once and deploy them anywhere. Similarly, IT operations teams must also be able to automate their management and security effectively at scale. 

DevOps teams need to be equipped to operate and compute in real time, in environments ranging from hundreds to thousands of locations, managing Kubernetes clusters of varying sizes and configurations. Increasingly, diverse edge deployment architectures are becoming more and more common.

Red Hat OpenShift extends Kubernetes capabilities to edge computing environments, creating the ability to use existing tools and processes while easing the burden of configuring, deploying, provisioning, managing, tracking metrics, and monitoring even the largest-scale containerized environments.

That means all the flexibility of cloud services, virtualization, microservices, and containerization combined with the speed and efficiency of edge computing can increase functionality, decrease latency, reduce required bandwidth, and get the most from your localized infrastructure.

Red Hat Openshift extends transformation from the hybrid cloud to the edge providing operational consistency while transforming edge locations and devices. Edge computing with OpenShift allows for a natural extension of environments, using the same teams, tools and processes that you have in place now,  with technology that scales out, closer to your customers or end users.

Discover how NASA uses edge computing to make critical decisions in space

Red Hat OpenShift provides a consistent experience wherever your applications need to be— on-premise, in a cloud environment, at a remote office, or even in orbit. With Red Hat OpenShift, you have the flexibility to evolve an entire deployment, inclusive of edge sites, as business strategy changes.

Red Hat OpenShift + edge gives you:

• Info at a glance: Data-driven insights help teams gather, analyze, and turn data into actionable tasks, faster.
• Partner experience: A broad ecosystem of technology partners helps build edge deployments to meet a wide variety of use cases.
• Flexible topology: The flexibility to scale out your business and evolve an entire deployment through flexible topology options to fit the needs of different edge environments.
• Scale without worry: Developers can write code and deliver deployments at scale without worrying if they will work in a particular environment.
• Multiple configurations: The flexibility needed to meet the varying space, power, and connectivity requirements of edge sites and edge devices, supporting configurations that include:
  • 3-node clusters of combined control plane and worker nodes
  • A single node with both the control plane and worker functions in a smaller footprint
  • Remote worker configurations where only the worker nodes are deployed at the edge
• Wide-view lens for operations: Operations teams can use Red Hat Advanced Cluster Management for Kubernetes to manage sites and clusters at scale with a single, consistent view.

Innovate edge computing with OpenShift

Whether you're building cloud-native apps, modernizing existing ones, or integrating AI capabilities, Red Hat OpenShift provides a unified platform for your entire portfolio, extending consistency across diverse infrastructures and architectures. Red Hat OpenShift is a hybrid cloud application platform with a choice of deployment and consumption options to meet the needs of your organization. It delivers a consistent experience across public cloud, on-premise, hybrid cloud, or edge architecture. 

For smaller edge device deployments, Red Hat Device Edge has MicroShift, a lightweight Kubernetes distribution that is based on OpenShift. Together with Red Hat Enterprise Linux® and Red Hat Ansible® Automation Platform, Red Hat Device Edge provides the flexibility to deploy and manage workloads on small, resource constrained devices at scale. 

Edge AI helps devices make smarter decisions faster by allowing computations to be done where data is actually collected. Red Hat OpenShift simplifies managing the AI/ML lifecycle with Red Hat OpenShift AI, an integrated MLOps platform for building, training, deploying, and monitoring predictive and gen AI models  at scale across hybrid cloud environments and the edge. 

Together, you get a unified yet flexible platform across clouds, data centers and topologies.