RedHat OpenShift “S2I” Technology

Recently I had the opportunity to work with OpenShift, which is RedHat’s management platform for containers. One of the selling points for OpenShift is its “s2i” feature, short for “Source 2 Image”.

Whilst it is certainly a good feature, there can be some confusion as to why and when to use it.

Traditional Container Approach

Although Docker is not very old (having been released in 2013), many people will be familiar with the process of deploying container applications:

  1. Source code
    Your code should reside somewhere that your tooling can access, whether it’s Java, NodeJS, .Net, PHP or anything else.
  2. Deployment artifacts
    Before deployment, the application should be packaged up (preferably together with any dependencies). NPM and Maven are popular tools for achieving this.
  3. Image
    Use a Dockerfile to create an image with the application server and deployment artifacts included. Many vendors have made their products available for containerisation, making it easy to utilise their software for this purpose.
  4. Container
    Once the image is created, the application can be instantiated with environment-specific configuration and then deployed to the container management platform of choice.

S2I Approach

OpenShift’s s2i approach attempts to eliminate steps 2 and 3. For some of the more popular technologies, these steps are so predictable that OpenShift can take care of them for you:

  1. Source code
    Developers still need to maintain their source code and make it available for OpenShift.
  2. OpenShift
    Point OpenShift at your source code and tell it which technology to use (PHP, Java, NodeJS, etc.). OpenShift will build your application and deploy a container on your behalf.

The biggest benefit here is that it automates a significant amount of the workflow for you. Additionally, developers need less knowledge about Docker (and Linux); they no longer need to maintain a Dockerfile.

Whilst this could potentially replace any automation pipelines you already have, there are a few caveats to be aware of:

  • OpenShift can handle many common technologies (and aims to support new versions of these), but you will have to create your own “s2i images” if you’re using something else.
  • The S2I feature is specific to OpenShift, so it could be more difficult to switch to a different platform later.
  • An automation pipeline can execute much more complex procedures, when that is required.
  • The deployed container will include the build tooling, which is not usually desired.

Author: Edwin Hurst

blogger

blogger

Curious to know more about this topic?

Working at i8c

i8c is a system integrator that strives for an informal atmosphere between its employees, who have an average age of approx 30 years old. We invest a lot of effort in the professional development of each individual, through a direct connection between the consultants and the management (no multiple layers of middle management). We are based in Kontich, near Antwerp, but our customers are mainly located in the triangle Ghent-Antwerp-Brussels and belong to the top 500 companies in Belgium (Securex, Electrabel, UCB, etc…).

Quality Assurance

i8c is committed to delivering quality services and providing customer satisfaction. That’s why we invested in the introduction of a Quality Management System, which resulted in our ISO9001:2000 certification. This guarantees that we will meet your expectations, as a reliable, efficient and mature partner for your SOA & integration projects.

i8c - ISO9001-2015

Also worth reading

AWS AppFlow: Streamlining SaaS Integrations with AWS Services

In today’s digital world, organizations are constantly looking for ways to streamline their workflows and improve their data management processes. One of the key challenges that organizations face is integrating their various software as a service (SaaS) applications with their data management systems. This is

Read More »

Apigee Scope Validation using OpenAPI Specification

In API security and management, we often use a lot of different security mechanisms to protect the requested resource behind the API Gateway. One of these mechanisms is the validation of scopes to authorize a client on a specific sub-resource of the API. Most of

Read More »