Overview
Red Hat OpenShift is widely recognized as a leader in the enterprise Kubernetes platform space, setting the standard for open hybrid cloud environments. Its comprehensive operational suite, including robust automation, scalability, and security features not found in upstream Kubernetes, addresses the complex needs of today’s enterprise IT infrastructure. OpenShift’s ability to support diverse workloads, from microservices to AI/ML use cases, makes it a pivotal tool for businesses pursuing transformation. Moreover, OpenShift’s unique ecosystem of partnerships and integrations extends its capabilities, enhancing its appeal to a broad range of industries seeking agility and innovation. This leadership is further solidified by Red Hat’s decades-long commitment to open source, as evidenced by being the second-largest contributor to the Kubernetes project, fostering a vast community of developers and partners that contribute to the platform’s continuous evolution and reliability.
OpenShift Virtualization, a feature of OpenShift, enables organizations to run and manage VM’s alongside containers seamlessly. OpenShift Virtualization supports Windows VM’s and has all of the core equivalent features (like live migration) that the vast majority of customers need, at a fraction of your current solution’s old pricing, let alone its go-forward new pricing. (OpenShift Virt also entitles you to run unlimited RHEL VM guests on its worker nodes, similar to a RHEL Virtual Data Center subscription.) This accelerates the modernization of traditional apps and streamlines development processes, leveraging the underlying Kubernetes platform’s orchestration and flexibility, and provides an instant path to app modernization at the same time.
Key Benefits
Simplified Infrastructure Management: OpenShift Virtualization allows enterprises to manage both VM’s and containers within a single platform. This unification reduces complexity and operational costs, eliminating the need for separate management tools for VM’s and containerized apps.
Accelerated App Development: By hosting VM’s directly on Kubernetes, developers can utilize the same tools and lifecycle processes for VM’s as they do for containers. This consistency speeds up development cycles and enhances team productivity.
Enhanced Security and Compliance: The integration of VM’s into the Kubernetes environment benefits from Red Hat OpenShift’s robust security features, including automated policy updates and fine-grained access controls. This helps in maintaining compliance across both virtual and containerized environments.
Seamless Migration and Modernization: Enterprises can easily migrate existing virtualized applications to OpenShift Virtualization without redesigning them. This capability is crucial for organizations looking to gradually modernize their applications with minimal disruption.
Optimized Resource Utilization: OpenShift Virtualization improves resource allocation by allowing VM’s and containers to coexist on the same physical hardware. This leads to better utilization of underlying resources, reducing overhead and improving performance.
Highlighted Use Cases
Legacy App Modernization: Businesses can transition legacy systems into more agile and scalable applications within the OpenShift ecosystem, facilitating incremental updates and integration with modern microservices.
Hybrid Cloud Deployments: OpenShift Virtualization supports hybrid cloud strategies by enabling consistent management of both VM’s and containers across different environments, ensuring flexibility and control.
Conclusion
In 2024, OpenShift Virtualization represents a strategic opportunity for organizations aiming to reduce or even eliminate their risk/dependency on a legacy vendor who somehow manages to charge them more every 1-3 years for the same old solution, while simultaneously streamlining IT operations, enhancing developer efficiency, and adopting a truly hybrid cloud approach going forward. By choosing OpenShift, companies can ensure a smooth transition to modern, microservices-based architectures in the future while maximizing their existing investments in virtualized applications today, and all while benefiting from the engineering, support, and partner ecosystem of the world’s largest enterprise open source company: Red Hat.