Introducing Red Hat OpenShift Virtualization Engine: OpenShift for your virtual machines

Many organizations use Red Hat OpenShift Virtualization to manage and deploy virtualized workloads alongside containerized ones on the same unified OpenShift platform. For those prioritizing virtualization, Red Hat OpenShift Virtualization Engine, a new edition of OpenShift, provides a dedicated option focused entirely on virtualization workloads. It simplifies the process of deploying, managing, and scaling virtual machines by removing non-virtualization capabilities that they may not currently need. This targeted approach ensures teams can maximize the value of OpenShift Virtualization while aligning with their specific infrastructure requirements.

Learn about OpenShift Virtualization Engine

Focused solely on virtualization, OpenShift Virtualization Engine reduces unnecessary complexity and cost to align seamlessly with organizations’ immediate virtualization IT priorities while retaining the familiar OpenShift experience of the broader application platform.

For those looking to expand in the future, OpenShift Virtualization Engine offers an easy path to containerization and modernization options through an upgrade to broader OpenShift editions. With integration across the Red Hat portfolio and extended capabilities from an extensive partner ecosystem, OpenShift Virtualization Engine delivers a powerful, enterprise virtualization solution tailored to meet the needs of modern organizations.

Focused virtualization with future-ready flexibility in OpenShift

OpenShift Virtualization Engine still offers the same OpenShift experience as the other editions, with streamlined capabilities required for virtualization-only needs. Just like all OpenShift editions, users are able to leverage the OpenShift Virtualization function for their immediate, virtual machine needs. If and when you are ready, you can seamlessly explore containerization and application modernization options in the broader OpenShift solution without needing to reinstall or redeploy OpenShift. 

Key OpenShift features found in OpenShift Virtualization Engine include:

OpenShift Virtualization

OpenShift Virtualization is an included feature of all OpenShift editions and offers a modern infrastructure platform for VMs using the open-source projects KVM and KubeVirt. This allows organizations to use a single platform for all apps, whether they are virtualized or containerized, minimizing overhead with a single management interface and one set of tools for all workloads.

Bare metal OpenShift deployment and management

OpenShift Virtualization requires bare metal cluster nodes, and all editions of OpenShift, deliver robust management capabilities to simplify the deployment and management of physical servers in the cluster. This includes the ability to deploy the cluster using the OpenShift automated installer experience (IPI), assisted installer, agent-based installer and more, allowing you to customize the installation experience to fit your environment and your needs.

Explore OpenShift Virtualization Engine’s capabilities

OpenShift’s over-the-air update capabilities apply with bare metal OpenShift Virtualization Engine clusters just like with virtualized OpenShift Kubernetes Engine and OpenShift Container Platform clusters. This means that with just a couple of clicks, or a single CLI command, the administrator can kick off a non-disruptive update to the cluster and all the component services supporting the virtual machine infrastructure.

To further streamline day-to-day management, OpenShift Virtualization Engine includes a dedicated virtualization administrator view within the web-based management UI. This tailored interface provides virtualization-focused administrators with an intuitive environment to manage virtual machines, monitor performance, and perform routine tasks with ease, enhancing overall productivity.

Furthermore, OpenShift’s powerful node management features, such as the Machine Configuration Operator, NMstate Operator, and the native ability to automatically scale the cluster up and down using machine sets, and more all apply with bare metal clusters used for virtualization as well. Together, these features enable administrators to focus on more important higher level tasks, such as capacity and performance management, instead of micromanaging the day-to-day configuration of their virtualization environment.

Enterprise storage and networking capabilities

Virtual machines require storage for their disks, and application data, and the ability to connect to the outside world. OpenShift, built on Red Hat Enterprise Linux CoreOS and the KVM hypervisor, uses long-trusted Linux networking technology to connect virtual machines in the same way that you’ve come to expect with other KVM-based offerings like Red Hat Enterprise Linux and Red Hat OpenStack Services on OpenShift. This includes using Linux bridges and OVS virtual switches to connect VMs with VLANs and other network constructs. In fact, OpenShift Virtualization brings even more advanced features as a result of its Kubernetes foundation. For example, OpenShift’s network policy engine provides native platform-level microsegmentation for virtual machines, regardless of whether they’re connected directly to the outside world via a VLAN or to the software-defined network. As for storage, OpenShift takes advantage of the CSI (Container Storage Interface) paradigm as found in upstream Kubernetes, and is supported by both physical and software defined solutions from some of the largest names in enterprise storage including Dell/EMC, HPE, IBM, NetApp and Portworx, Hitachi and Infinidat  just to name a few. Each storage vendor has the ability to express the native functionality of their storage systems through their implementation of CSI, and the only thing that OpenShift Virtualization is dependent upon is that of RWX (ReadWriteMany) volumes whether they be file or block protocol based, to provide the disks for virtual machines and application data deployed in the solution.

Check out how Red Hat’s partner ecosystem helps you complete your virtualization solution with offerings in additional areas like networking and backup and disaster recovery.

Additional features focused on improving and enhancing the virtualization experience, including:

• User workload monitoring by namespaces: Designed for muli-tenant virtualization environments with automated failover and host remediation, user workload monitoring is enabled by default to allow configuration of fencing agent remediation. This enables a more rapid transition to take place during a node failure scenario and enables virtual machines to reschedule to available nodes quickly.
• Enhanced virtual machine platform logging: With enhanced platform logging, VM administrators can visualize and collect logs from all of the virtual machines they are entitled to manage across their entire deployment. This can be further enhanced by making use of Red Hat’s multi-cluster management tool specific for virtualization, Advanced Cluster Management for Virtualization, and Grafana to visualize the logs and telemetry from virtual machines deployed on managed clusters.
• Automated provisioning of virtual machines with OpenShift GitOps: Users have the ability to automate the deployment of virtual machines as code from the Advanced Cluster Management for Virtualization console with included GitOps functionality. Up until now, this feature was exclusive to containerization capabilities found in Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform. With OpenShift Virtualization Engine, users are now able to benefit from automated deployments of virtual machines to meet their immediate virtualization needs. 

Migrate VMs to OpenShift Virtualization in an interactive demo

Check out the capabilities across all of our OpenShift editions:

Learn more in our subscription guide

How to optimize OpenShift Virtualization Engine with the Red Hat portfolio

OpenShift Virtualization Engine easily integrates with tools across the Red Hat portfolio to deliver a complete automation and management solution. With Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform, you can accelerate at-scale migration of groups of VMs and automate migration and management of related infrastructure (networks, storage, etc.). Routine tasks for your virtual machines can also be automated, reducing manual workload, improving consistency, and increasing operational efficiency. Additionally, organizations can reduce operational overhead with Red Hat’s multi-cluster management tool, Red Hat Advanced Cluster Management for Virtualization. With this integration, clusters and applications can be centrally managed across a diverse VM landscape, with preconfigured governance policies to be applied consistently. By combining different tools from the Red Hat portfolio, administrators are able to deliver a complete ecosystem for managing and automating virtual machines and related infrastructure across the Day 2 operational lifecycle.