Red Hat OpenShift is a container platform built on top of Kubernetes, the leading container orchestration and management system. OpenShift is available both as an open source project, OpenShift Origin, and a commercially supported product, OpenShift Container Platform.
With the release of OpenShift Container Platform 3.10 you can use NGINX Plus, our software load balancer with advanced features and full commercial support, to optimize traffic handling for your production OpenShift clusters.
OpenShift adds developer and operations‑centric tools on top of Kubernetes and extends it with security and other integrated features. One of those features, called the Router, provides edge request routing and load balancing for applications deployed on OpenShift. We are happy to confirm that NGINX Open Source and NGINX Plus now fully integrate with the OpenShift platform, and each can be used as a Router.
The Router acts as the entry point for all external requests coming to applications running on OpenShift, which makes the Router one of the most critical parts of the platform. The Router’s job is to identify the appropriate application for a particular request and then route the request to an instance of that application. Thus, the Router provides edge load balancing for applications on OpenShift.
The Router load balances HTTP and WebSocket traffic, with support for TLS termination and TLS connections between the Router and application instances. Additionally, the Router can load balance TLS connections in a pass‑through mode (without decrypting them). OpenShift includes a special resource named Route for configuring the Router.
If the Router goes down, or isn’t able to operate properly, applications become unavailable to clients. This makes it crucial that the Router be built on top of a proven and reliable technology. The Router is a pluggable part of OpenShift, meaning that OpenShift users can choose a Router implementation that satisfies their requirements and preferences.
A note about Kubernetes Ingress: The built‑in Kubernetes Ingress resource, also available in OpenShift, offers similar features for edge load balancing as the Router. Both NGINX Open Source and NGINX Plus support Ingress resources with our NGINX Ingress Controller.
NGINX has a proven record of adoption on container platforms, with more than 10 million pulls from Docker Hub of its container image and more than a million pulls of NGINX Ingress Controller for Kubernetes. We are excited to extend our existing offerings to OpenShift users with Router implementations built on top of our technology.
Key features of our Router implementations include:
To get started, see installation instructions for the NGINX Router and the NGINX Plus Router.
The NGINX Open Source and NGINX Plus Routers bring reliability, performance, and needed features into a core component of the OpenShift platform – the Router.
We’d like to thank our colleagues at Red Hat who helped us create this full‑featured solution for both OpenShift Container Platform and OpenShift Origin.
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