We are very excited to share that Contiv is now officially integrated with OpenShift Origin, and OpenShift Container Platform 3.5. Contiv is also joining the OpenShift Primed Program, a technical readiness designation by Red Hat that recognizes Contiv’s integration with OpenShift technology.
This integration brings the production-grade container networking and policy features to OpenShift via a simple, 1-step set-up which is tightly integrated with OpenShift installer. You can now seamlessly start using OpenShift with Contiv as the container networking fabric.
OpenShift is a comprehensive container management platform built on Docker and Kubernetes. OpenShift is built on open technologies, and so is Contiv, a 100% open source container networking fabric initiated by Cisco.
Enterprises are rapidly adopting containers to accelerate development and delivery of applications while gaining datacenter efficiencies. Containers provide greater portability benefits to develop highly resilient and scalable modern cloud applications.
According to a study done by Bain & Co., enterprises adopting containers frequently report 15-30% reduction in development time as well as 5-15% cost savings due to higher density deployments and better resource utilization. Bain makes a strong case that traditional enterprises (not digital-native) which are furthest on their journey to digitally transform themselves are using containers as an integral part of their technology strategy.
Challenges remain in widely adopting containers in the production environment. According to the latest survey done by Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF), most respondents cited networking as the biggest roadblock to deploying containers in production.
Contiv team is collaborating with others in the container community to provide the most comprehensive and unified networking fabric. 
Last month, Docker announced that it had certified Contiv as the Docker Certified Networking Plugin for Docker Enterprise Edition. We also announced the expansion of Cisco Services to include Container Networking advise, implement and optimize services to help our customers accelerate container adoption with confidence.
Today, we are happy to report that Contiv is now OpenShift Primed Certified signifying the first steps that Contiv team is taking to integrate with OpenShift.
Why OpenShift + Contiv:
Multiple Networking Modes
By default, OpenShift installs with OpenShift SDN, an overlay networking approach for connecting Docker containers in an OpenShift cluster. For certain use cases, overlay networking is easier to set up or even necessary if containers are deployed in a hybrid cloud or cross data-center scenarios or for the simplicity it provides in dev/test scenarios.
Often, for on-premises, production deployments it will be beneficial to avoid the extra layer of encapsulation overhead for performance reasons as well as additional processing overhead at compute nodes.
Contiv offers flexibility and choice by supporting multiple networking backends including Layer 2. This mode gives you superior performance by avoiding encapsulation and gives you complete container traffic visibility at ToR or aggregation switches enabling you to leverage the existing traffic monitoring and network troubleshooting tools and processes.
Policy-Based Automation
Scale and speed requirements for containerized workloads are unique and policy-based automation is the key. With Contiv, cloud architects, and IT admin teams can create, manage and consistently enforce operational policies such as multi-tenant traffic isolation, micro-segmentation, bandwidth prioritization, and policies for L4-L7 network services. Contiv’s policy model enables portability, so it doesn’t matter whether developers are experimenting with containers on their laptops or deploying applications in production across hundreds of nodes, there can be one shared and consistent view of operational policies, accelerating DevOps practices.
Hot to get started:
Follow the simple steps to get Contiv goodness in your OpenShift clusters using upstream OpenShift repository and Ansible playbooks.
> git clone https://github.com/openshift/openshift-ansible.git
Since Contiv is now integrated with OpenShift, you also get Contiv along with OpenShift. Edit the inventory file to match your cluster information
openshift_use_openshift_sdn=false
openshift_use_contiv=true
os_sdn_network_plugin='cni'
netplugin_interface=net3
netmaster_interface=net1
contiv_default_subnet="29.70.0.0/24"
contiv_default_gw="29.70.0.1"
contiv_default_network_tag="2070"
Now run the Ansible playbook and your OpenShift cluster will be set up with Contiv as the networking fabric. To use a Contiv network in your application, add a label to your application yaml file before creating OpenShift Deployment object.
labels:
app: my-web-app
io.contiv.network: contiv_web_net
> oc create -f k8s_apps/my-web-app/my-web-app-deployment.yaml
That’s it! Now, all the networking and security policies that you or your DevOps team has created for your web-tier are available for your application. For a complete reference on how to create and manage Contiv policies, please refer our step-by-step tutorial.
Meet Contiv at Red Hat Summit in Boston
This week, Contiv team will be at full strength in Boston at Red Hat Summit to showcase to our customers how Contiv meets even the most demanding networking requirements for their containerized workloads and to collaborate with OpenShift community.
We have planned an action-packed agenda for you at the summit. Join Contiv team at Cisco booth 404: Rohit Agarwalla, Sanjeev Rampal and I will be presenting Contiv sessions, and we will be there to answer any question or to help you get started with Contiv.
Contiv: A Policy-Based Container Networking Fabric for OpenShift
Tuesday, May 2 10:30 AM and 5:00 PM
Wednesday, May 4:00 PM and 6:00 PM
Don’t forget to join a power-packed panel, moderated by Niki Accosta with Kiran Kamity, Sr. Director, Engineering, Cisco on May 3, 2017, 11:30 a.m. room 105 to learn how Contiv is enabling organizations just like yours to adopt containers with confidence.
Follow @projectcontiv and @ciscocloud to get the live updates from the conference. We look forward to seeing you at the Red Hat Summit!
Learn More:
- Get started with Contiv using guided hands-on tutorials
- Read more on OpenShift Origin and OpenShift Container Platform 3.5 integration
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