We are excited to announce that Red Hat OpenShift Virtualization 4.14 is now generally available.

OpenShift Virtualization allows you to modernize your applications while allowing you to easily migrate and run your existing VMs on OpenShift. On your infrastructure modernization journey, you can take advantage of the speed and simplicity of a modern application platform, while preserving your existing virtualization investments. Lets dig into what’s new in our OpenShift Virtualization 4.14 release.

Multiple paths to modernization

Availability to run on Red Hat OpenShift Service on AWS (ROSA) and AWS:

We understand that wherever you are on your modernization journey, you need the flexibility to be able to run all of your application workloads consistently, whether on-premises or in the cloud. As you are planning your hybrid cloud future, OpenShift Virtualization can be there every step of the way, as it’s now fully supported when deployed natively to self-managed OpenShift running on AWS or  when using fully-managed Red Hat OpenShift Service on AWS (ROSA).

Running OpenShift Virtualization on ROSA gives you the benefits of a jointly managed application platform from AWS and Red Hat. The video below will show you how to configure OpenShift Virtualization on ROSA.

Once you have configured ROSA to run the OpenShift Virtualization operator you can begin deploying virtual machines. The video below explains how to do this.

Improved resource utilization with Hosted Control Planes

You can now deliver faster deployments along with reduced infrastructure costs with the introduction of hosted control planes for Red Hat OpenShift Virtualization. Run and manage virtual machine workloads alongside container workloads by placing multiple hosted control planes and hosted clusters in the same underlying bare metal infrastructure resulting in more efficient resource utilization.

Protect your business critical workloads

Recover from catastrophic failures with Metro-DR with ODF / ACM

Though no one likes to think about bad things happening, you must plan for these eventualities, like your datacenter flooding, or a complete network or power failure. Building a disaster recovery is a “belt-and suspender” approach to keeping your business running, with minimum disruptions or data loss.

We’ve extended the capabilities of OpenShift Data Foundation (ODF) and Advanced Cluster Management (ACM) Metro-DR solution to support virtual machine workloads. When the unthinkable happens, you can quickly redeploy your critical VM and cloud-native applications to your remote site, with zero data loss. This is in Technical Preview in ODF 4.14; we encourage you to try in for your non-production workloads, and send us your feedback.

Support for Microsoft Windows Server Failover Cluster

Microsoft clustering has been a standard for many disaster recovery scenarios. Now you can protect your Microsoft SQL Server, SharePoint, or other critical Windows-based workloads using Windows’ native technology when deployed on OpenShift Virtualization.

Enhanced flexibility in Networking configuration

Enhanced VM networking with OVN-Kubernetes

OVN-Kubernetes is the default network plugin in OpenShift 4.12 and later. New in OpenShift 4.14, virtual machines can be connected to OVN-Kubernetes secondary networks using the “flat” L2 topology. This creates a dedicated, isolated, logical network for the virtual machines to communicate across nodes in the OpenShift cluster.

Dynamic configuration - VM network adapter hotplug

Similar to being able to dynamically reconfigure virtual machine storage, you can now hot-add and remove network interfaces to a running VM. This makes it easy to change network configuration on the fly, without disruption to your application. Note that this feature is a Technical Preview feature in this release.

Bring along your Microsoft Windows VM

All versions of OpenShift are validated in Microsoft Windows Server Virtualization Validation Program (SVVP), ensuring full support of Windows guests by Red Hat and Microsoft. You can confidently run all supported versions from Windows Server 2016 to Microsoft Windows Server 2022 and Windows 11.

Start quickly with the Migration Toolkit for Virtualization

To make your infrastructure modernization journey as easy as possible, you can migrate production workloads from VMware vSphere, Red Hat Virtualization, and Red Hat OpenStack Platform (now generally available) using this free (with every OpenShift subscription) and easy to use VM migration toolkit utility. Highlights of Migration Toolkit for Virtualization 2.5 (MTV) include:

• OpenShift to OpenShift Migration

  • You can now migrate VM workloads between OpenShift clusters with OpenShift as a source as well as a destination. An example use case would be to move dev and test workloads amongst clusters, allowing you to replicate workloads and test scenarios.

• Bring along your virtual appliances

  • OVA is a common format to distribute applications and virtual appliances from vendors. Now you import OVA files created by VMware vSphere, easily creating VMs from standard OVA files as you do today.

Check out a new demo of using the Migration Toolkit for Virtualization below. 

Great collaboration with ecosystem partners.

We continue to have great success with our current ecosystem partners for Red Hat Virtualization, they have added support for OpenShift Virtualization. We have deep engineering collaboration with data protection partners like Kasten by Veeam, Trilio, Storware, and Portworx. We encourage you to check out their solutions, and ask your existing providers about their plans for VMs on OpenShift.

Come see us at KubeCon NA!

Stop by the Red Hat Booth, B2 at KubeCon NA in Chicago, Illinois.

The booth will be open the following times:

• Tuesday, November 7: 10:30 AM – 8:00 PM (includes KubeCrawl + CloudNativeFest from 6:00 – 8:00 PM)
• Wednesday, November 8: 10:30 AM – 5:00 PM
• Thursday, November 9: 10:30 AM – 2:30 PM

We’ll be featuring OpenShift Virtualization demos and you’ll be able to listen to mini-theatre sessions around Virtualization.

Check out the event here.

Conclusion

OpenShift Virtualization 4.14 propels your infrastructure modernization journey forward. The ability to run your VMs on AWS, self-managed or fully-managed, allows you to take advantage of the benefits of running your VMs and containers alongside each other, using the same toolsets and processes, in the public cloud. With the continuous addition of security features you can be ensured your most business critical workloads are protected. Finally, take advantage of the Migration Toolkit for Virtualization for a smooth transition in moving your VMs to OpenShift.

We look forward to seeing you at KubeCon and check out the links below to learn more about OpenShift Virtualization!

Become a certified specialist

As other Red Hat platforms, like RHEL and OpenShift, modernizing your infrastructure and operations is a skill set that is valuable for your company and career.  You can follow on your training be become a Red Hat Certified Specialist in OpenShift Virtualization

FIND OUT MORE

• OpenShift Virtualization: Why Bring Your Virtual Machines to Kubernetes?
• OpenShift Virtualization blogs
• OpenShift Virtualization demos on demo.openshift.com
• OpenShift Livestream
• OpenShift TV library of recorded OpenShift videos and streams

UPSTREAM PROJECT AND COMMUNITY

Red Hat initiated and continues to be a leading contributor to KubeVirt, the upstream CNCF project that users and vendors are adopting to integrate virtual machines in Kubernetes. We are also seeing additional companies choosing KubeVirt as a proven key technology. Our upstream-first approach ensures everything is open, secure, and stable for even your most challenging enterprise workloads.

Explore the upstream innovation from the KubeVirt 2023 Summit.