5 benefits of Microsoft Azure Red Hat OpenShift for Microsoft Azure Government

Containers and cloud technologies can play a key role in helping government agencies capitalize on the opportunities of the digital world. However, to realize these opportunities, federal organizations require strict security accreditations to ensure they are operating within high-security environments. 

Microsoft Azure Red Hat® OpenShift® on Microsoft Azure for U.S. Government brings the innovation of Red Hat OpenShift and the scale of Microsoft Azure to government agencies on a dedicated cloud to address crucial compliance and security regulations for highly sensitive workloads at general availability. Together with Microsoft, Red Hat helps government agencies build, test, and deploy containerized applications and Kubernetes with Red Hat OpenShift on Azure. Development teams gain the rapid agility, hybrid cloud readiness, and high availability without sacrificing security and compliance or freedom of choice. 

Here are five ways a jointly managed and supported enterprise Kubernetes service helps government agencies increase capabilities while meeting stringent public sector computing requirements.

Azure Red Hat OpenShift on Microsoft Azure for U.S. Government is jointly managed and supported, combining Red Hat’s expertise in essential Kubernetes with Microsoft Azure’s experience in cloud-scale operations. This joint cloud services offering helps government agencies to focus on hybrid cloud transformation rather than maintaining the complexities of growing cloud-native infrastructure.

Red Hat and Azure save government agencies time and resources by simplifying the complexity of:

• Network configuration, monitoring, and logging.
• Cluster creation and management.
• Security, patching, and updates. 
• VM monitoring and operation.
• Container registry.

A jointly managed solution specifically for government agencies extends the benefits of Red Hat OpenShift on Azure to public sector organizations that require stringent levels of IT security and data management.

Agencies gain greater confidence in the controls that govern data access, storage, and security vulnerabilities with continuous support. This adds key security and regulatory certifications to meet compliance tests, such as: 

• FedRAMP High (GA)
• International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR)
• Defense Federal Acquisition Regulation (DFARS)
• Internal Revenue Service Publication 1075 (IRS 1075)
• Federal Information Processing Standards (FIPs)
• Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), Azure Commercial Only

See the full Azure compliance documentation here.

Solve challenges with modern practices and technologies using a community-powered innovation model to help achieve mission and citizen outcomes. 

With Red Hat, government agencies gain a solid foundation for security-focused, cost-effective operations, and continuous innovation to make the most of existing investments while providing more options as operations grow. Red Hat solutions focus on: 

• IT modernization to embrace new technologies and modernization approaches while doing more with existing investments.
• Integration to help simplify the connections between apps, processes, and people with software, services, application programming interfaces (APIs), data, and devices.
• Hybrid cloud infrastructures to provide the always-on, security-focused, scalable, and dynamic infrastructures government agencies need.
• Cloud-native development to help agencies accelerate and optimize new technologies and practices like containers, microservices, and DevSecOps.
• IT automation and management to give agencies better control over environments, find and fix flaws in less time, and automate manual or repetitive tasks. 
• Cultural transformation for adopting an open culture that focuses on collaborative and iterative approach to people, processes, and technologies.

Azure Red Hat OpenShift on Microsoft Azure for U.S. Government provides public sector organizations new features and capabilities tailored to meet the information security standards required for highly sensitive workloads, including:

• Egress lockdown is to provide access to mandatory Azure services through a private link, removing the need for traffic to exit Azure.
• Compute isolation is used for isolating virtual machines (VMs) and handles sensitive workloads to meet compliance and regulatory requirements. 
• Spot nodes help to buy unused Azure capacity at a discounted rate and take advantage of the reduced costs by having spot instance worker nodes.
• L series VMs optimize VMs for storage-intensive workloads and are also available to be used as worker nodes.

The speed of technological change can be a challenge, but it can also be an advantage. Red Hat helps government agencies deploy applications in minutes, rather than hours or longer, to keep up with demand while helping to address security vulnerabilities. 

Red Hat and Microsoft Azure make it possible to develop and deploy software efficiently and scale as needed across clouds and geographies with fully managed cluster availability. 

• Read how the Naval Information Warfare Center Pacific (NIWC Pacific) is transforming how it develops and deploys software to its fleet with help from Red Hat and Microsoft.