Top 15 Must-Have Apps From OpenShift Marketplace

Note: This post was first published on Apr 13, 2015.

Ever heard of OpenShift? OpenShift is a simplified cloud platform for developers to build and deploy applications effortlessly to the Cloud. It provides free usage of three small gears and 1 GB of database storage, and supports a wide variety of programming languages, databases, and platforms. Additionally, you get custom domain support, SSH access to the application’s console, and more – all for free.

The platform features its own app store, the OpenShift Marketplace, where developers can find solutions for their OpenShift-hosted applications. This marketplace includes third-party apps designed for productivity, database management, email delivery services, messaging queues, performance improvements, and more. It aims to enhance the OpenShift Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) by connecting service providers with application developers.

Let’s explore some of the standout third-party solutions available on OpenShift Marketplace that help you build better products for your customers on Red Hat’s cloud platform.

SendGrid

SendGrid is a simplified email delivery service. Its cloud-based email delivery infrastructure relieves you of the cost and complexity of managing an email system. SendGrid offers a reliable and scalable solution with real-time analytics and flexible APIs, making it easy to assess email campaigns and build custom features.

MongoLab

MongoLab is the cloud service for MongoDB, the most popular NoSQL database. It offers a fully-managed Database-as-a-Service (DBaaS) for mission-critical applications. MongoLab includes highly-available MongoDB databases, along with features such as automated backups, web-based tools, 24/7 monitoring, and expert support.

New Relic

New Relic is a performance-monitoring solution for web and mobile applications. It offers cloud-based analytics and monitoring software with the highest levels of compliance and integrity. New Relic empowers developers and business leaders to gain insights into their users’ experiences, helping them deliver value by creating top-tier applications.

Memcached Cloud

Memcached Cloud is a fully-managed cloud instance of Memcached featuring high availability and a fast storage engine. This memory-caching system in the Cloud accelerates dynamic, database-driven websites and web applications. It significantly boosts performance by caching frequently accessed data in memory, which is especially beneficial for applications with heavy database request loads.

ElephantSQL

ElephantSQL is a cloud version of PostgreSQL, the most advanced open-source database. It offers a configuration-free instance of PostgreSQL hosted on Amazon EC2, providing high performance, availability, and reliability. ElephantSQL includes additional features like automated backups, robust security, and support for powerful extensions such as HStore and Crypto.

CloudAMQP

CloudAMQP is a RabbitMQ-as-a-service offering. It provides a unified platform for your applications to send and receive messages, enabling your applications and services to communicate seamlessly with each other and with users. This platform effectively handles message and notification streaming, making it an excellent backend solution for real-time applications.

Searchly Elasticsearch

Searchly Elasticsearch offers a cloud-hosted, scalable, and flexible search engine for your applications. Its REST JSON APIs facilitate easy integration with various languages and frameworks. The Kibana dashboard provides configuration controls and search analytics, enabling you to understand user needs better, optimize content, and manage search engine performance effectively.

ClearDB MySQL Database

ClearDB offers globally distributed and secure cloud instances of MySQL databases. It provides a highly available, stable, and robust MySQL platform, ideal for applications that cannot afford downtime. Its multi-node architecture ensures data accessibility even if one or more nodes fail. Additionally, ClearDB includes battle-tested security features such as SSL encryption and client certificates.

Redis Cloud

Redis Cloud offers a cloud-based solution to host and manage your Redis dataset. This service is known for its high availability, scalability, and stability, with virtually infinite scalability to accommodate datasets of any size. It features automatic backups every second, with an option to store backups on Amazon S3. Redis Cloud is fully automated, supporting multiple database connections to ensure high performance.

IronWorker

IronWorker is a scalable task queue or worker cloud service capable of handling a wide range of background processing tasks for real-time, production-scale applications. You can queue tasks from your application, schedule jobs, or use webhooks to send tasks. IronWorker supports various programming languages and binary executables, ensuring secure processing by using SSL connections and sandboxed environments.

IronMQ

IronMQ is a message queue service offering message persistence, redundancy, and security. It runs on highly available cloud infrastructures, supporting multiple queuing patterns and string messages for maximum flexibility. IronMQ provides a detailed dashboard displaying all active queues and message statistics. It also includes support for multiple interfaces and client libraries for various programming languages.

PubNub

PubNub is a cloud infrastructure platform designed to build real-time scalable applications. It offers simple APIs with SDKs for nearly all popular mobile, browser, desktop, and server platforms. PubNub provides key features for real-time applications, including user presence, push notifications, and persistent data streams. Additionally, it offers real-time analytics, audience analysis, and audience simulation for testing.

Load Impact

Load Impact is a load-testing service that provides automated, on-demand performance testing for real-time applications using realistic simulated testers. Its features include scheduled load tests, session recording, server monitoring, mobile client and network emulation, and more. Load Impact can simulate over a million concurrent users from multiple geo-locations to assess your application’s load tolerance.

DreamFactory

DreamFactory is an open-source REST API platform that automatically generates APIs for backend data sources, allowing your application to connect seamlessly to any SQL or NoSQL database, file storage system, or external services. It enables the creation of modern applications using the provided SDK for HTML5 or native code libraries for mobile platforms.

BlazeMeter

BlazeMeter is a load and performance testing solution that features auto-scripting to simplify the test creation process. It is compatible with Apache JMeter and its scripting capabilities, simulating realistic visitor behavior from multiple geographic locations. BlazeMeter provides real-time reports and the ability to compare multiple reports using intuitive graphs within the test management system.

Wrap Up

These applications and services empower you to build better, more scalable, and reliable applications on the OpenShift platform. They enhance data management, handle heavy background processing, support message passing and decoupled app modules, and ensure rigorous testing before production deployment. Plus, you can get started for free.