At the 2016 Red Hat Summit on Tuesday, Red Hat announced new Linux container products and container scanning capabilities that could make containers easier to deploy and secure.

The company began with a broad expansion of its container offerings, adding updates for different points along the container lifecycle. Developers got a few new goodies, such as a Red Hat OpenShift Container Local added to the Red Hat Container Developer Kit to drive local development. It’s available at no-cost, but only on non-production machines. So, if you want to get started working with OpenShift, it could be a good option.

SEE: Red Hat’s JBoss moves to the cloud (ZDNet)

As a mid-tier option, Red Hat launched the Red Hat OpenShift Container Lab for “non-production server environments for development and testing.” The OpenShift Container Lab could work well for an organization building a private cloud that may want to support Red Hat at some point.

Users who want to make a full transition to the private cloud can use the Red Hat Cloud Suite, which uses pieces of Red Hat OpenShift, Red Hat OpenStack Platform, and Red Hat CloudForms as well. The company also doted on its OpenShift Online and OpenShift Dedicated platforms for public cloud.

Red Hat also now supports JBoss Middleware services in a container architecture, and they officially launched containerized Red Hat Gluster Storage, which allows for storage in a standard container. Red Hat Gluster Storage will be available this summer.

“The latest Red Hat Gluster Storage release is designed to meet the needs of organizations that are becoming increasingly dependent on microservices and containers. Traditional, monolithic storage appliances are not well-suited to deliver flexible and cost-effective storage to stateful applications deployed in Linux containers,” said Ranga Rangachari, vice president and general manager of Storage at Red Hat.

Container security was also a big theme on Tuesday at the Red Hat Summit. In announcing the newest edition of Red Hat Enterprise Linux Atomic Host, Red Hat also launched a new container scanning interface, which allows security partner companies to plug into the OpenShift Container Platform, allowing users to choose the container scanning technology that works best for them.

According to a press release, the new version of Atomic Host also brings updated container runtimes, improved system integration, improved update functionality for hotfixes, and graphical management to “help make it easier to perform administration tasks.”

SEE: Containers: Your secure, no-upgrade future in the cloud (ZDNet)

At the event, Red Hat also announced OpenShift Primed, a partner program for independent software vendors (ISVs) looking to integrate with OpenShift. Red Hat describes Primed as a “technical readiness program” that lays out the steps needed to integrate properly with the OpenShift platform.

To be included, ISVs must present documentation of integration. So far 3scale, 6fusion, CloudBees, CloudMunch, Couchbase, Crunchy Data, Diamanti, Dynatrace, GitLab, Iron.io, NGINX, Nuage Networks, Pachyderm, Roambee, and Sysdig are all a part of OpenShift Primed.

“OpenShift Primed gives us a platform to recognize this ecosystem of partners, and through it, we look forward to connecting even more ISVs who are building container application solutions with open source technologies,” said Ashesh Badani, vice president and general manager of OpenShift for Red Hat.

The 3 big takeaways for TechRepublic readers

  1. Red Hat announced a plethora of updates to its Linux container portfolio, proving how critical containers are to the company’s future business strategy.
  2. Red Hat added OpenShift Container Local and OpenShift Container Lab for non-production environments, giving would-be users more room to experiment before they commit to the Red Hat ecosystem.
  3. Red Hat containers got a boost in security and storage as well, both of which could help ease the deployment of containers in the enterprise.