Jet Propulsion Laboratory uses Red Hat OpenShift Virtualization

Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), a NASA-funded research center dedicated to the robotic exploration of the universe, needed to replace its virtualization platform following an increase in costs. The team used the Red Hat Migration Toolkit for Virtualization to smoothly transfer 2,400 virtual machines over to Red Hat OpenShift Virtualization, which matched the functionality of the previous environment at a significantly lower cost. The organization is set to benefit from annual cost reductions and now has a reliable platform that supports daily operations.

Benefits

• Ensured reliable virtualized environment
• Learned transferable skills
• Prepared for containerization through a modern platform

NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory is a leading research and development center dedicated to Earth science and robotic space exploration of the universe. Funded by NASA and managed by Caltech, JPL is known for its Mars rovers and deep space exploration.

Behind these missions, the daily running of the organization relies on thousands of workloads running on virtual machines (VMs). These include database and website workloads, library science infrastructure, Microsoft domains, and workplace apps. 

Following a significant price increase from its incumbent vendor, JPL opted to migrate to a new virtualization platform with the same functionality and minimal disruption to operations.

JPL conducted a trade study to find the right virtualization platform, and decided to implement Red Hat OpenShift Virtualization, an included feature of Red Hat OpenShift that allows users to run and manage their VMs on a modern, hybrid cloud infrastructure, alongside container and serverless applications.

With 20 years’ experience using the Red Hat Enterprise Linux® operating system, and a growing Red Hat OpenShift environment supporting application lifecycle management, JPL had prior knowledge and experience with Red Hat solutions.

The organization used Red Hat Migration Toolkit for Virtualization, a suite of tools included in Red Hat OpenShift that ease the VM transition to a modern, hybrid application platform. The JPL team also used Red Hat Learning Subscription to access the virtualization learning path on the Red Hat Partner Training Portal, building on its existing Red Hat OpenShift knowledge to support the migration.

The migration was completed over a year, and 2400 VMs were moved onto the platform, with plans to expand in the future. JPL employed GitOps practices for infrastructure management. For example, the team uses continuous integration/continuous delivery (CI/CD) pipelines to automate deployment workloads.

Red Hat provided support throughout the migration and helped JPL to resolve any roadblocks the team encountered. For example, the previous solution took daily backups, which is not typical in Red Hat OpenShift. When trying to find a workaround resulted in performance issues, Red Hat recommended a storage solution that takes snapshots, which allowed the organization to maintain its performance service-level agreements.

Ensured a reliable virtualized environment

JPL now has a reliable virtualization platform underpinning business operations at a lower cost than the previous solution. It also benefited from updating its enterprise infrastructure, with simpler, faster deployment thanks to automated workflows.