F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition is now validated for Red Hat OpenShift Virtualization

A lot of teams we work with are juggling 2 worlds at once: the Red Hat OpenShift projects that keep accelerating, and the previous hypervisor platforms or physical infrastructure that need to be kept to run the traffic management and security policies of the BIG-IP appliances.

This gets the job done, but nobody enjoys maintaining 2 sets of infrastructure with 2 different lifecycles. It’s a tax we all pay because there hasn’t been a clean alternative.

Now there is.

F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition (VE) is officially validated by F5 to support Red Hat OpenShift Virtualization and listed in the Red Hat Ecosystem Catalog. With this milestone achievement, F5 provides further validation of customer demand for a hybrid container and  virtualization platform. 

Run BIG-IP where you’re already running the rest of your platform

OpenShift Virtualization lets you run virtual machines (VMs) directly on your worker nodes. With the validation in place, BIG-IP VE can now be deployed among them, rather than requiring a separate environment you keep around solely for network appliances. Administrators can enjoy 1 control plane, 1 lifecycle, 1 place to look when something needs patching.

No change to your security model or traffic logic

This isn’t a cut-down version or a feature-limited build. VE inside OpenShift is the very same BIG-IP. Your existing configs—WAF policies, iRules, routing decisions, all the customizations required for your applications—can be used as is.

If you're moving from another hypervisor to OpenShift Virtualization, your existing application customizations for BIG-IP VE can also be used without change. For example, you don't need to alter the interface configuration or request new license keys. (For more details, see this F5 blog post.)

This also applies when using BIG-IP in the ingress or egress paths for your microservices in the OpenShift cluster. Given the migration to OpenShift Virtualization doesn’t require changes in the VLAN layer and up, no changes are required even when using the F5 Container Ingress Services (CIS) controller for OpenShift.

Supported by F5

A common hesitation with running network appliances inside a Kubernetes platform is the lack of support. This "partner validated" status settles that. F5 has gone through the work to make sure the data-plane wiring and performance behave predictably inside OpenShift and, as always, Red Hat fully supports the hypervisor layer. You’re not venturing into “it probably works” territory—this is a supported, documented deployment path.

What this means in practice

If you’ve been keeping an old virtualization cluster alive just because BIG-IP was sitting on it, you now have an option to retire that stack. Everything—from your microservices, to your mission-critical virtual machines to the traffic management in front of everything—can sit on OpenShift without losing the capabilities your network and security teams depend on.

If you’re evaluating your next step, start with the listing in the Red Hat Ecosystem Catalog. It has the supported versions, the validated configurations, and the deployment guide to get BIG-IP VE running directly inside your OpenShift cluster.