Modernize virtual machines on Google Cloud with Red Hat OpenShift Virtualization

We recently announced that Red Hat OpenShift Virtualization is now available on OpenShift Dedicated on Google Cloud allowing customers the ability to migrate and modernize their VMs to Google Cloud. Running on Google Cloud C3 bare-metal instances, OpenShift Virtualization provides direct access to CPU and memory resources to help support performance-sensitive virtual machine (VM) workloads. Combined with the fully managed experience of OpenShift Dedicated, organizations can migrate and run VMs in the cloud while building a foundation for future innovation with cloud-native technologies.

As organizations modernize their infrastructure, many are looking for ways to run both VMs and containerized applications on a consistent platform in the cloud. While Kubernetes and containers continue to drive application innovation, many critical workloads still run on VMs. Red Hat OpenShift Virtualization, built directly into Red Hat OpenShift and powered by the kernel-based virtual machine (KVM) hypervisor, enables organizations to run and manage VMs alongside containers on a common hybrid application platform. With the scalability and infrastructure capabilities of Google Cloud, teams can migrate and modernize VM workloads while standardizing operations, automation, and lifecycle management across environments.

Migrating your virtual machines

For many organizations, virtualization environments support applications that are deeply integrated into business operations. These workloads often cannot be easily refactored or replaced, making migration an important first step toward modernization. OpenShift Virtualization simplifies this process by allowing organizations to move existing VMs to OpenShift without disrupting the applications running inside them.

OpenShift includes the migration toolkit for virtualization (MTV),  delivered as an OpenShift operator. MTV provides guided workflows that help administrators connect to existing virtualization environments and select the VMs they want to migrate. This approach simplifies the migration process while helping organizations transition VM workloads to a modern application platform.

Built for performance on Google Cloud

OpenShift Virtualization on Google Cloud is supported on Google Cloud C3 bare-metal instances.By allowing the KVM hypervisor to run directly on the hardware, these instances help deliver predictable performance for VMs while maintaining the flexibility and scalability of cloud infrastructure.

Google Cloud infrastructure also includes Titanium architecture, which offloads networking and storage processing to dedicated hardware. By handling these tasks outside the host CPUs, Titanium allows compute resources to focus on running VMs, helping improve performance consistency and resource efficiency for demanding workloads.

Together, Google Cloud C3 bare-metal infrastructure and OpenShift Virtualization provide organizations with a powerful platform for running VMs in the cloud while maintaining the performance characteristics many workloads require.

Storage availability 

OpenShift Virtualization on all OpenShift editions with Google Cloud is available with Google Cloud Hyperdisk storage and available in Technical Preview with Google Cloud NetApp Volumes. Both storage options provide more flexibility for VM workloads. 

Google Cloud Hyperdisk is able to decouple storage performance from compute, allowing organization to provision IOPs and throughput independently of capacity. This helps avoid over-provisioning resources and is especially beneficial for data-intensive VMs, enabling more precise performance tuning and improved cost efficiency. 

Google Cloud NetApp Volumes is well-suited for stateful and data-intensive virtual machines. It enables consistent performance, simplifies data management, and supports use cases that require scalable file storage within OpenShift environments. 

Get started with this demo 

Watch the demo below to learn more about installing the OpenShift Virtualization operator. 

More Resources: 

• 15 reasons to adopt OpenShift Virtualization on Google Cloud Ebook
• Explore the documentation
• Read more about Red Hat OpenShift Dedicated