To put the cloud capability of the software from adesso insurance solutions to the test, the images of the products were certified by Red Hat over the past weeks. Thanks to the integration of certification into the CI/CD pipelines of the images, each additional image with future product versions can also be certified.
With the support of the respective product teams, the DevOps team has already built product images. These images are used in various environments and for various stages. A product image is a Docker image that contains the product and all the programs needed for the product, such as an application server. A product image allows a complex application to be started quickly and, above all, without time-consuming configuration.
Generally, Red Hat certification is offered for different platforms. Among them is the platform "Linux Containers" with the possibility of certifying "container images". Since the product images have already been created, they were used to certify the products.
After a profile for adesso insurance solutions had been created at Red Hat Connect, the company's partner portal, a product list could be created there. Such a product list has two aspects: On the one hand, marketing information as well as general descriptions of a product have to be stored, on the other hand, at least one project certification has to be created and assigned to a product list. In case of a project certification, there is the possibility to upload the product images and have them evaluated.
Evaluation process of a product image
The evaluation is an automatic process. This is triggered by uploading an image. If the assessment is considered passed, an image is certified. A product or product list is considered certified when all project certifications assigned to it have been passed.
The automated evaluation process works through a checklist that is visible to the Red Hat partner. Thus, the certification requirements for the image are kept very transparent. One of the evaluation criteria is the use of a base image certified by Red Hat itself. Another point is the deposit of licenses and company information. Part of the evaluation is the determination of a health score from A to F. This score provides information about the used base image and installed programs. This results in the following scenario: The more components are obsolete, the worse this ranking turns out to be. This Health Score will also be adjusted after the assessment. In order to permanently maintain a health score of A,, software components must be continuously kept up to date.
A good overview of the certification workflow is provided by Red Hat's
gitbook.io page. If you are interested in the exact certification procedure and all the points that have to be complied with in order to certify a "Container Image", you can find information on this here.
Quality assurance and cloud capability
The integration of the certification into the respective CI/CD pipelines ensures a continuous certification of yet to come product versions and serves as a quality control aspect for the product images.
adesso insurance solutions is the first software house in the insurance industry with a certified cloud-capable software solution. This means that all images are made up of trusted components that have either been created in-house or verified by Red Hat. In addition, the health score from the images ensures that all components are up to date.
The certification is also interesting for customers who want to go into the cloud themselves. Because it proves that the images are compatible with all RedHat platforms, such as OpenShift. A cloud platform offered by operators such as Azure, Google Cloud, IBM and AWS.
The certified product lists can be viewed via the Red Hat Catalog.
There are also plans to distribute the products as an OpenShift plugin using certified operator bundles through the Red Hat Market Place.
Would you like to learn more about the cloud capability of our products? Then please get in touch with us.
