Chapter 1. Overview
OpenShift Enterprise 3 is a platform as a service (PaaS) offering from Red Hat that brings together Docker, Kubernetes, and an API to manage these services. OpenShift Enterprise 3 (OSE) allows you to create and manage containers. Containers are standalone processes that run within their own environment.
1.1. About This Guide
This guide introduces you to the basic concepts of OSE3, and helps you install and configure a basic application from an xPaaS image. This guide is not suitable for deploying or installing a production environment of OpenShift. For that, please refer to the official OpenShift documentation.
1.2. Why Should I Use OpenShift?
Containers are standalone processes that run within their own environment, independent of operating system and the underlying infrastructure. OpenShift helps you to develop, deploy, and manage container-based applications. It provides you with a self-service platform to create, modify, and deploy applications on demand. Thus enabling faster development and release life cycles.
The most relatable example is that of a web server. The developer creates, for example, a JBoss Web Server image with a specific configuration and you download this image from the registry. You then run this image as a container within your own OpenShift install, then use this web server for running your own website. This whole process of downloading and running your web server takes no more than a few minutes.
Think of images as cookie cutters and containers as the actual cookies.
Think of OpenShift as an operating system, images as applications that you run on them, and the containers as the actual running instances of those applications.
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