Learn about Red Hat OpenShift Virtualization
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Red Hat® OpenShift® Virtualization enables organizations to seamlessly migrate, run, and manage traditional virtual machines (VMs) alongside modern workloads on a unified, hybrid cloud application platform. OpenShift Virtualization is available as an operator included with any OpenShift subscription. This add-on to the OpenShift Container Platform provides a robust solution for integrating VMs with containerized applications. It uses Kernel-based Virtual Machine (KVM), the trusted Linux kernel hypervisor, known for robust performance, scalability, and stability to deliver enterprise-grade virtualization, for virtual machines, as native objects within OpenShift.
Key Features of Red Hat OpenShift Virtualization
Hybrid Workloads: Migrate and run VMs with cloud-native benefits, managing them alongside containers and serverless workloads using a unified toolset.
Gradual Modernization: Modernize at your own pace by adopting containers, implementing microservices, or integrating AI, without disrupting existing VMs.
Kubernetes Integration: Leverages Kubernetes custom resources to add virtualization capabilities to your OpenShift cluster.
Capabilities of Red Hat OpenShift Virtualization
VM Management: Create and manage both Linux and Windows VMs.
Unified Workloads: Run pod and VM workloads concurrently within a cluster.
Connectivity: Access VMs through various consoles and CLI tools.
VM Operations: Import, clone, and live migrate VMs between nodes.
Resource Management: Handle network interfaces and storage disks attached to VMs.
Compatibility
While OpenShift Virtualization differs conceptually from VMware vSphere, it offers a modern platform tailored specifically for virtualization administrators with familiar functionalities such as:
Live Migration: Equivalent to vMotion in vSphere.
Storage Management: Storage classes in OpenShift align with Storage Policy Based Management (SPBM) in vSphere.
Persistent Storage: Persistent Volume Claims (PVC) and Persistent Volumes (PV) correspond to Datastores in vSphere.
For vSphere administrators
For a list of vSphere concepts mapping to their closest OpenShift Virtualization counterparts refer to the documentation here.
Additional Resources
You can manage your cluster and virtualization resources through the Virtualization perspective of the OpenShift Container Platform web console or the OpenShift CLI (oc).
To learn more about Red Hat OpenShift Virtualization, see the documentation here.