I am a Computer Science Graduate Student from North Carolina State University. I am blogging to share my experience at Red Hat, working as a Technical Partner Marketing Intern with the OpenShift team for the past 12 weeks. Before I share my work with you and describe the project I carried out under the guidance and mentorship of Chris Morgan and Julio Tapia let me talk about OpenShift, especially my hands on OpenShift Online 3 Developer preview version as a student/intern. OpenShift by Red Hat, is one of the coolest products I have come across when we talk about the existing innovative software industry. It helps an user to interact with the platform via containers using Docker and orchestrate everything with Kubernetes. Anyone could just go to https://www.openshift.com/devpreview/ and sign up using their GitHub account. After the registration process is complete one should be able to login to https://console.preview.openshift.com/ using their GitHub credentials. OpenShift speaks your language : be it Java, Python, JavaScript, PHP, Ruby. One can create a project and use existing docker images that are a part of OpenShift docker registry. These base images would run on top of RHEL and once you select a base image you would be asked to provide a git repository(source code) and Openshift Online 3 would clone that repository and make a new docker image on the fly that matches the requirements you need for your application to run. It will build your source code and resolve all the dependencies. Boom! You are ready to deploy your application utilizing the beauty of source to image. You can scale up/down your running application within seconds and don’t have to worry about load balancing. Also, adding persistent storage to your containers and streamline application deployment using github webhooks to trigger a new build whenever there are changes to your repository is just so exciting. I would simply put it “Code more ideas, worry less on configs”. I recommend everyone to try OpenShift Online Dev preview and experience the fantastic innovative work going on in the society the open source way.
Coming back to Summer 2016, as I briefly describe above, OpenShift uses open source technologies like Docker, Kubernetes, RHEL. One can integrate their tools and infrastructure very easily with our container application platform. OpenShift Primed Project is aimed to put our money where our mouths are. It is commitment to the claim that we could run any container based solution on OpenShift. It is a technical readiness partner program to badge the ISVs from our partner ecosystem who could show us that their applications/tools/systems run on OpenShift. I alongside with Jeremy Jordan, built a system for partners to submit their evidence showing us that their technology integrates with OpenShift. Once it is reviewed, they would be redirected to a profile submission page where they could submit their marketing profile which would featured on OpenShift Hub upon admin approval. Also, they could securely download OpenShift Primed Logo for their web properties from our system. My primary responsibilities included assisting in bringing on new partners, publish information about partners and partner integrations to openshift.com via web development using Ruby on Rails, evaluate technical submissions of new partners, assist in the creation of presentations and other collateral and help produce and deliver marketing programs. We had 18 published partners before the Red Hat Summit in June, 2016. It was a feat since we had only one month since I joined for my intern program during the last week of May. Currently, we have 24 Primed Partners on OpenShift Hub.
It is a fantastic work culture at Red Hat, passionate people and great learning environment to pursue one’s dreams. A 8000-9000 employee company is big as far as I think but it always felt like a start-up, very nimble. Come in whenever you want, wear whatever you feel like, leave whenever you want to but do not compromise on deliverables. I honestly fell in love with the company. Past 12 weeks did prove to be a huge learning curve in my life. I learned an important lesson “We all break the build” - however, never give up because it yields us the gift of experience. Working with ISV partners, understanding the OpenShift Partner ecosystem, and making friends like Mark, Ben and Jeremy was just very exciting.