OpenShift Origin vs OpenShift Enterprise

Question

I'm searching for a main difference between OpenShift Origin and OpenShift Enterprise. I know that the first is open source and the latter is the commercial version. Have OpenShift Enterprise got other features compared to the open source version? Thanks in advance.

Answer 1

Update 3/21/2018: If you find this old answer of mine in the future, Enterprise is called "OpenShift Container Platform" now.

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The community version goes faster, but with change comes some risk. If you would like to be an early adopter Origin could be your choice. Note: support is best effort by the community, but I have found very helpful people on IRC and on the project's github page.

Link: https://github.com/openshift/origin

The enterprise version has the advantage of professional support for your money. While you won't get features as early, in exchange there is focus on stability and streamlining. This may be important for enterprises. Some solutions / examples may not work exactly the same way. For example application templates, utilities come as part of packages for RHEL users. It also comes with some entitlements for things like RHEL and CloudForms integration.

I tried installing a one master, one node small cluster with both, and found them just as good.

In short, stability or early adoption. Oh, and bugfixes.

Personally I prefer to go with Origin, as you can monitor the state of the project yourself and you are not forced to jump on every coming train. Update when suitable.

Answer 2

OpenShift Origin is the open source community version of OpenShift Enterprise. In order to understand what this means, you need to understand what open source software is - computer software developed via a competitive collaborative model from many individual sources. Origin updates as often as open source developers contribute via git, a version control system, sometimes as often as several times per week.

OpenShift Enterprise 3integrates with Red Hat Enterprise Linux and is tested via Red Hat's QA process in order to offer a stable, supportable product for customers who want to have their own private or onsite cloud. Enterprise might update around every six months, maintaining stabilization across minor updates. Providing timely professional support for each query they have from installation/POC to the production.