Skip to main content
Redhat Developers  Logo
  • Products

    Featured

    • Red Hat Enterprise Linux
      Red Hat Enterprise Linux Icon
    • Red Hat OpenShift AI
      Red Hat OpenShift AI
    • Red Hat Enterprise Linux AI
      Linux icon inside of a brain
    • Image mode for Red Hat Enterprise Linux
      RHEL image mode
    • Red Hat OpenShift
      Openshift icon
    • Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform
      Ansible icon
    • Red Hat Developer Hub
      Developer Hub
    • View All Red Hat Products
    • Linux

      • Red Hat Enterprise Linux
      • Image mode for Red Hat Enterprise Linux
      • Red Hat Universal Base Images (UBI)
    • Java runtimes & frameworks

      • JBoss Enterprise Application Platform
      • Red Hat build of OpenJDK
    • Kubernetes

      • Red Hat OpenShift
      • Microsoft Azure Red Hat OpenShift
      • Red Hat OpenShift Virtualization
      • Red Hat OpenShift Lightspeed
    • Integration & App Connectivity

      • Red Hat Build of Apache Camel
      • Red Hat Service Interconnect
      • Red Hat Connectivity Link
    • AI/ML

      • Red Hat OpenShift AI
      • Red Hat Enterprise Linux AI
    • Automation

      • Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform
      • Red Hat Ansible Lightspeed
    • Developer tools

      • Red Hat Trusted Software Supply Chain
      • Podman Desktop
      • Red Hat OpenShift Dev Spaces
    • Developer Sandbox

      Developer Sandbox
      Try Red Hat products and technologies without setup or configuration fees for 30 days with this shared Openshift and Kubernetes cluster.
    • Try at no cost
  • Technologies

    Featured

    • AI/ML
      AI/ML Icon
    • Linux
      Linux Icon
    • Kubernetes
      Cloud icon
    • Automation
      Automation Icon showing arrows moving in a circle around a gear
    • View All Technologies
    • Programming Languages & Frameworks

      • Java
      • Python
      • JavaScript
    • System Design & Architecture

      • Red Hat architecture and design patterns
      • Microservices
      • Event-Driven Architecture
      • Databases
    • Developer Productivity

      • Developer productivity
      • Developer Tools
      • GitOps
    • Secure Development & Architectures

      • Security
      • Secure coding
    • Platform Engineering

      • DevOps
      • DevSecOps
      • Ansible automation for applications and services
    • Automated Data Processing

      • AI/ML
      • Data Science
      • Apache Kafka on Kubernetes
      • View All Technologies
    • Start exploring in the Developer Sandbox for free

      sandbox graphic
      Try Red Hat's products and technologies without setup or configuration.
    • Try at no cost
  • Learn

    Featured

    • Kubernetes & Cloud Native
      Openshift icon
    • Linux
      Rhel icon
    • Automation
      Ansible cloud icon
    • Java
      Java icon
    • AI/ML
      AI/ML Icon
    • View All Learning Resources

    E-Books

    • GitOps Cookbook
    • Podman in Action
    • Kubernetes Operators
    • The Path to GitOps
    • View All E-books

    Cheat Sheets

    • Linux Commands
    • Bash Commands
    • Git
    • systemd Commands
    • View All Cheat Sheets

    Documentation

    • API Catalog
    • Product Documentation
    • Legacy Documentation
    • Red Hat Learning

      Learning image
      Boost your technical skills to expert-level with the help of interactive lessons offered by various Red Hat Learning programs.
    • Explore Red Hat Learning
  • Developer Sandbox

    Developer Sandbox

    • Access Red Hat’s products and technologies without setup or configuration, and start developing quicker than ever before with our new, no-cost sandbox environments.
    • Explore Developer Sandbox

    Featured Developer Sandbox activities

    • Get started with your Developer Sandbox
    • OpenShift virtualization and application modernization using the Developer Sandbox
    • Explore all Developer Sandbox activities

    Ready to start developing apps?

    • Try at no cost
  • Blog
  • Events
  • Videos

Putting OpenShift under pressure - a case study

October 8, 2014
Eric Christensen
Related topics:
SecurityKubernetes
Related products:
Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform

Share:

    About a year ago, Red Hat Product Security decided to move its blog, the Red Hat Security Blog, off of WordPress.com's infrastructure and onto Red Hat's OpenShift.  There were some initial growing pains since this was a relatively new thing to do, but it wasn't long before the blog was in a stable environment.  There were plans to put the application on a larger gear (it was hosted on a small gear) and to make it scalable (it wasn't), but as most things go, when stability increases you end up forgetting about making the changes as other issues need to be addressed that aren't related to your application's backend.  And for that year WordPress, on a small gear, on OpenShift just worked.

    openshift logo 121 × 121

    It worked so well that when Heartbleed happened, and we used the blog to disseminate information, we didn't think much about the availability of the blog.  Again, everything just worked.  Looking back, it wasn't a lot of traffic.  We had around 9,000 hits to the blog over the few days people were trying to get information.  For comparison, we usually see around 500 hits per day.

    Fast forward to September 23rd, the day otherwise known as the day before Shellshocked happened, where the final touches were being placed on an article that would explain Red Hat's position on the Bash vulnerability, why it happened, and what we had done to fix the problem.  That article would end up testing the blog's backend to the max.

    The day we went public with the vulnerability and the fixes, we published the blog and watched eagerly to see if people were actually using it to help answer their questions.  People did come and we started to see pingbacks where others were linking to that article from their own blogs.  As that first day's page views exceeded 27,000, more than three times that of the Heartbleed article, no problems were seen from our installation.  The views just kept coming in, and the blog kept serving them up.  That first day saw over 55,000 views of our blog.

    Unfortunately, the first Bash fix wasn't complete.  That led to confusion and a desire for information.  While Red Hat Product Security worked diligently to fix the issue, knowledge base articles and updates to our original article were posted.  The article and the knowledge base information became one of the de facto standard places to get information about the vulnerability.  US-CERT, NIST, and many news organization pointed their readers at our resources, and the readers did come.

    Around mid-morning on Thursday the blog started to fail.  Most of the failures were in the capacity of serving the demand.  Working with OpenShift developers, connection rates upwards of 50 to 60 hits per second were tolerated.  Higher rates were being seen, and it was determined that something else would need to be done.

    Quickly, the Security Blog was moved from a small gear to a medium gear, again, without scaling.  Because WordPress is slightly tricky to setup to be truly scaleable, the priority became to just get the system stable and revisit the best means of deploying the site later.  The medium gear immediately remedied the outage.  With no other changes, the medium gear was handling the upwards of 100 hits per second that came in for hours on end.  Even with the outage we served up 174,244 views of our information that second day.

    Next steps are already being planned for moving the WordPress instance to even more stable grounds.  Setting up the application on a large, scalable gear and using Varnish on another gear ready to deploy to other geographic areas to help reduce the network demand are in the works.  OpenShift is flexible enough to allow us to change gears (quite literally) to meet demand in a short amount of time, and, with better planning, can meet demand automatically.

    Because we self host our blogging solution, as well as other in-house applications, we're able to take full control of the system.  When availability is a high priority (along with other security requirements) it's important to maintain that control yourselves.  OpenShift allows us to do just that.

    Red Hat Product Security is a proud user of OpenShift and open source software.

    Recent Posts

    • Create and enrich ServiceNow ITSM tickets with Ansible Automation Platform

    • Expand Model-as-a-Service for secure enterprise AI

    • OpenShift LACP bonding performance expectations

    • Build container images in CI/CD with Tekton and Buildpacks

    • How to deploy OpenShift AI & Service Mesh 3 on one cluster

    Red Hat Developers logo LinkedIn YouTube Twitter Facebook

    Products

    • Red Hat Enterprise Linux
    • Red Hat OpenShift
    • Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform

    Build

    • Developer Sandbox
    • Developer Tools
    • Interactive Tutorials
    • API Catalog

    Quicklinks

    • Learning Resources
    • E-books
    • Cheat Sheets
    • Blog
    • Events
    • Newsletter

    Communicate

    • About us
    • Contact sales
    • Find a partner
    • Report a website issue
    • Site Status Dashboard
    • Report a security problem

    RED HAT DEVELOPER

    Build here. Go anywhere.

    We serve the builders. The problem solvers who create careers with code.

    Join us if you’re a developer, software engineer, web designer, front-end designer, UX designer, computer scientist, architect, tester, product manager, project manager or team lead.

    Sign me up

    Red Hat legal and privacy links

    • About Red Hat
    • Jobs
    • Events
    • Locations
    • Contact Red Hat
    • Red Hat Blog
    • Inclusion at Red Hat
    • Cool Stuff Store
    • Red Hat Summit
    © 2025 Red Hat

    Red Hat legal and privacy links

    • Privacy statement
    • Terms of use
    • All policies and guidelines
    • Digital accessibility

    Report a website issue