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Today, Red Hat announced a partnership with Zend, the company behind the world’s top commercial PHP platform. As part of this partnership we’ve made Zend Server available on the OpenShift platform as a service (PaaS). We’ve also integrated OpenShift’s client APIs into Zend Studio so you can now deploy and manage applications on OpenShift in the same IDE you use to develop PHP applications.
OpenShift makes getting PHP apps in the cloud easy
So, why should PHP developers be excited about this announcement? Well, it’s simple – it really is! With OpenShift, it’s now simple to run Zend Server in the cloud and in the process, realize the benefits of cloud computing – specifically, increased developer productivity. What’s the difference between running Zend Server on your own servers vs OpenShift? With OpenShift you get to focus on code and less on the management of servers and software stacks. (That is so 90s!) How’s this possible? Well, OpenShift is a completely self-managed platform in the cloud for running your PHP apps.
First, we provide the network, storage and compute resources you need to run your application via what we call “gears”. Currently, we are offering three FREE gears to everyone that signs up. Each gear comes with 512 MB of RAM and 1 GB of storage. That adds up to a total of 1.5 GB of RAM and 3 GB of storage for your applications, and for the typical PHP app, that’s pretty darn good.
Secondly, we provide a secure and up to date operating system on which to run your apps, specifically Red Hat Enterprise Linux. Next, we provide and manage a complete application stack that includes Zend Server, datastores like MySQL, MongoDB and PostgreSQL and other services like cron and Jenkins for continuous integration if you need them.
Seriously, all you have to do on your end is upload code. You can either spin up a gear via the OpenShift command line tools like this:
$ rhc app create –a MyApp –t zend-5.6
Or you can use Zend Studio to create an OpenShift project which takes “one-click”.
That’s it. You are now ready to push your code and see your application live.
For complete instructions on how deploy and manage apps on OpenShift, check out Grant’s blog.
Zend Server makes PHP rock!
If you are a PHP developer and still haven’t looked at the benefits of using Zend Server, you are really missing out, and probably wasting a bunch of time too! Zend Server is rock-solid, enterprise-grade, certified PHP. Don’t take my word for it, check out the many organizations that bet their business on it. It offers code optimization via data caching and bytecode acceleration. A Job Queue for performing PHP tasks in parallel to improve application performance and reduce bottlenecks. Zend Server also offers advanced debugging with unique code tracing capabilities to quickly pinpoint issues’ root causes without having to recreate them. To read more about all the killer features in Zend Server and how to make use of them, check out the Zend Server resources page for developers.
PHP support done right
When Zend set out to create a PaaS for their 1 million-strong community, they came to Red Hat to collaborate on a destination for those developers. The combination of expertise gives PHP developers a premier technology platform for PHP with Zend Server combined with an advanced coding, debugging and profiling experience with Zend Studio all backed by a team of operational and security experts at Red Hat. BUT, what Zend didn’t do is fork OpenShift, in order to make Zend Server available on a PaaS.
This kind of ecosystem around a PaaS - one where technology backers work on a common platform instead of creating forks - is better for developers and better for corporate IT. It is a model that Red Hat has led with KVM (through oVirt), JBoss, Gluster and many others. When there is a true open source company guiding a project, third party developers don't have to fork in order to retain their independent value-add. When there is one project as the repository of innovation developers and corporate IT don't have to learn, maintain, and optionally install, separate PaaS systems.
Contrast this some of the other “PHP on a PaaS” offerings out there that are running on forks of an upstream project. If an organization ends up needing their PaaS to support anything beyond PHP (and let’s face it, most organizations make use of multiple languages and frameworks to run their businesses), they might find themselves having to adopt more then one PaaS, sourced from more than one vendor. With OpenShift you get deep PHP, Java, Ruby, Node.js, Python and Perl support right out-of-the-box, all in a single PaaS.
So, what are you waiting for?
If you are new to PHP development or have been using Zend Server, Zend Framework or Zend Studio for years, it’s now simpler then ever to get started with the cloud. Just head on over to openshift.com and sign up. All it takes is an email address and you are literally minutes away from having your PHP app running in the cloud and ready make use of all the awesomeness of Zend Server. Already signed up? Just visit the Getting Started or the Developer Resource page to dive right in.
