Red Hat OpenShift Virtualization

Red Hat OpenShift Virtualization provides a modern platform to run and deploy new and existing virtual machine workloads.

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What is Virtualization?

Virtualization lets you create multiple simulated environments or resources from a single, physical hardware system. Using a hypervisor which is software that creates and runs virtual machines (VMs) to connect to the hardware and split the single system into separate and distinct VMs. Resources like CPU, storage, and memory can be pooled and relocated. Guests get access to the resources they need via operators.

Virtualization fundamentals

Virtualization

Creation of a virtual, rather than physical, version of a server, storage device, operating system, or network resource.

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Containers

Learn how containers and Kubernetes have changed development process and tools.

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What is a hypervisor?

Learn how hypervisors differ from VMs and the considerations to make when choosing one.

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What is a virtual machine?

Get an overview of VMs and their advantages.

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Overview

Red Hat OpenShift Virtualization is an operator included with all Red Hat OpenShift editions and available out of the box. It lets you run and manage virtual machine (VM) workloads alongside container workloads. Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) is a high-performing, secure, and stable operating system that can easily run virtual environments. If you need to implement virtualization, RHEL's reliability makes it a great choice.

OpenShift Virtualization, which uses the open-source projects Kernel-based Virtual Machine (KVM) and Kubevirt, lets you run VMs on the kernel of worker nodes and run via KVM as a standard VM that is managed and controlled by containers. Each VM has its own control plane that runs as a pod on OpenShift. Access controls (via ports), additional storage and start/stop/restart/delete are all executed and controlled by the virt-launcher Pod. The control plane controls access to the VM as a set of services on the SDN in OpenShift just like other workloads.

What is KVM?

Discover more about Kernel-based virtual machines.

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Try Red Hat Enterprise Linux for free

Activate your No-cost RHEL for developers subscription.

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Benefits of OpenShift Virtualization

Ease of migration

Supports slow path migration lift and shift as is and migration over time. Uses the migration toolkit for virtualization, included with OpenShift, to migrate existing VMs. Migrate VMs to a dedicated virtualization platform with OpenShift Virtualization Engine.

Speed up time to production

Developers can build, test, and deploy workloads more quickly.

One platform to manage

OpenShift Virtualization makes operations simpler by providing a single platform for VMs, containers, and serverless workloads.

Modernize application development

With Red Hat OpenShift, OpenShift Virtualization provides modern application development tools and processes to VMs to speed up the modernization of existing applications.

Certified hypervisor for MS

Microsoft Server Virtualization Validation Program supports Windows OS (10, 11, Server 2016, Server 2019, Server 2022) running on OpenShift Virtualization.

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OpenShift Virtualization for VMware administrators

Transitioning your infrastructure shouldn't feel like deciphering a new language. This concise guide helps VMware administrators efficiently manage virtual machines (VMs) within the powerful OpenShift platform and provides insight into features and functionalities found across both Red Hat OpenShift and VMware, including:

Storage: From datastores to PersistentVolumes, understand where your VM disks live and how storage is managed in OpenShift.
Networking: Demystify OpenShift network policies by seeing how to access features like network configuration, software-defined networking, and virtual machine connectivity.
Compute resources: Grasp compute concepts across monitoring, migration, resource balancing, and more in OpenShift, drawing parallels to vCenter and vMotion.
Observability: Learn how OpenShift's monitoring and alerting tools relate to functions across VMware vSphere.
Virtual machine components: See the direct mapping of VM tools, NIC types, SCSI controllers, snapshot functionalities, and more.

Download the cheat sheet