Fully managed OpenShift clusters for running containers in production on Kubernetes.
Choose Azure Red Hat OpenShift when your team already invests in OpenShift — its developer workflows, operators, and tooling — and wants a fully managed, jointly supported (Microsoft and Red Hat) cluster on Azure. It suits organizations standardizing on OpenShift across hybrid and multicloud.
Avoid Azure Red Hat OpenShift if you have no OpenShift requirement — plain AKS is a lighter, lower-cost managed Kubernetes. If you want containers without managing any cluster, Container Apps removes the orchestration overhead entirely.
| Hosting model | Managed Kubernetes (OpenShift) |
|---|---|
| Container support | Container-only |
| Minimum nodes | 6 (3 primary + 3 worker) |
| State management | Stateless or stateful |
| Web hosting | Agnostic |
| Autoscaling | Pod autoscaling and cluster autoscaling |
| Load balancer | Azure Load Balancer or Application Gateway |
| Scale limit | 250 nodes per cluster (default) |
| Multiregion | Single region only — external router plus multiple clusters |
| Virtual network integration | Supported |
| Hybrid connectivity | Supported |
| GPU support | Supported |
| TLS | Supported |
| Architecture styles | Microservices, event-driven architecture |
| Required skills | OpenShift or Kubernetes administration |
| Operational overhead | High — cluster management |
| Best for teams | Teams with an existing OpenShift investment |
It's jointly engineered and operated by Microsoft and Red Hat, with integrated support, so the cluster, control plane, and updates are managed for you.
Both are managed Kubernetes, but ARO is OpenShift — it adds Red Hat's developer experience, operators, and opinionated platform on top, and is the right choice when you've standardized on OpenShift.
A cluster starts with at least three control-plane nodes and three worker nodes, so six nodes is the practical minimum for production.
This is one candidate from the Azure compute decision guide. The right choice depends on your full requirements — evaluate scaling, cost, and operational fit before committing.
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