The Secrets of Modern Virtualization
In this blog, we will learn about the secrets of Modern virtualization.
Virtualization has evolved significantly over the decades, bringing with it fresh challenges around cost, licensing, and adapting to modern infrastructure needs. At the recent Red Hat Summit, Red Hat OpenShift Virtualization took center stage as a key player in this evolution, showing how it connects traditional virtual machines (VMs) with cloud-native applications seamlessly. Below is a summary of the stories and innovations featured during the Summit, showcasing how OpenShift Virtualization helps businesses migrate, secure, manage, and modernize their IT environments confidently.
1. Customer Stories: How Organizations Succeed with OpenShift Virtualization
Following the Summit, we reflected on how organizations worldwide have leveraged OpenShift Virtualization over the past year. Companies such as B2 Impact, Orange, Reist Telcom, TEKsystems Global Services, MultiChoice, and Tanobel have harnessed the platform to unify app management, speed up cloud adoption, cut costs, and modernize infrastructure. By consolidating VMs and containerized apps on one consistent platform, these organizations improved agility, efficiency, and maximized the value of their existing investments, illustrating how OpenShift bridges the gap between traditional and cloud-native worlds.
2. Building Momentum into 2025
OpenShift Virtualization adoption has grown significantly since early 2024, with customers like Emirates NBD, Orange, MultiChoice Group, and Tanobel transforming their IT landscapes. These companies achieved unified app management, accelerated cloud transformation, reduced expenses, and consolidated their infrastructure by combining VMs and containers on a single platform.
New features like a dedicated administrator dashboard for virtualization, improved networking (including user-defined networks), an enhanced migration toolkit, and the OpenShift Virtualization Engine edition demonstrate Red Hat’s commitment to supporting both legacy and modern workloads.
3. Mastering the OpenShift Virtualization Journey
Migrating from legacy virtualization platforms is easier than ever with OpenShift Virtualization. The AI-powered assistant, Red Hat OpenShift Lightspeed, helps users perform tasks like live migrations and network configurations. The migration toolkit makes it easier to move large numbers of VMs while maintaining existing investments. Red Hat Ansible further simplifies the process by automating both the migration and day-to-day management tasks. For a managed service, OpenShift Virtualization is available via Red Hat OpenShift Service on AWS and OpenShift on IBM Cloud, supported by comprehensive training programs to accelerate adoption.
4. Latest Updates in Red Hat OpenStack Services on OpenShift
The latest release of Red Hat OpenStack Services on OpenShift brings enhanced capabilities designed for users of Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) virtualization. It offers dynamic resource optimization to boost efficiency and lower costs, AI-driven infrastructure with GPU acceleration for generative AI tasks, an AI-based virtual assistant to simplify administration, and live kernel patching to apply updates without requiring a reboot — delivering a reliable, secure, and efficient platform for today’s workloads.
5. Advancing Migration and Modernization with a Growing Ecosystem
As costs climb and legacy systems become obsolete, many organizations are seeking modern solutions to replace traditional virtualization platforms. OpenShift Virtualization provides a quick, dependable migration pathway and a versatile approach to modernization by unifying VMs and containers on a single platform.
Its strong ecosystem of partners — such as Rubrik, Cohesity, NetApp, IBM, AWS, and Dell — further simplifies migration, strengthens data protection, and enables seamless hybrid cloud operations. This expanding ecosystem, combined with validated workloads and future support for Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI), positions OpenShift Virtualization as a trusted choice for enterprise IT.
6. Running RHEL-Certified Applications on OpenShift Virtualization
OpenShift Virtualization enables organizations to deploy RHEL-certified applications in virtual machines alongside containers on a single, integrated platform, leveraging RHEL’s extensive hardware support. Applications approved for RHEL operate smoothly on OpenShift VMs, providing reliability, security, and compliance. The platform also delivers near-native performance and supports hardware offloading, making it a powerful option for unifying existing RHEL investments with containerized workloads.
7. Driving IT Modernization
The virtualization landscape is shifting fast, pushing businesses to modernize their environments. OpenShift Virtualization extends cloud-native capabilities to virtual machines, offering a scalable, unified platform that supports hybrid deployments, incorporates AI, and provides consistent management, turning VMs into adaptable building blocks for innovation and modernization.
8. Unifying Legacy and Modern Workloads on IBM Z and LinuxONE
By running OpenShift Virtualization on IBM Z and LinuxONE, organizations can manage KVM-based virtual machines and containers side by side within the same OpenShift cluster.
This integration brings VM management into the Kubernetes-native control plane, enabling unified operations, streamlined CI/CD pipelines, and simplified modernization of legacy applications — all while benefiting from the reliability and performance of IBM hardware.
9. Easing Migration to AWS with OpenShift Virtualization
For Red Hat OpenShift Service on AWS (ROSA) users, VM migration has become more affordable and straightforward. Soon, Windows license-included support will simplify licensing. AWS’s VMware Migration Accelerator provides incentives to support the transition of VMware workloads. With ROSA, organizations can achieve Linux cost savings through hardware overprovisioning, while Red Hat Advanced Cluster Management is offered on the AWS Marketplace with flexible, on-demand billing — making virtual machine migration more cost-effective and efficient.
10. Bringing OpenShift Virtualization to Google Cloud
To tackle outdated infrastructure and high virtualization costs, OpenShift Virtualization is now offered on Google Cloud Bare Metal Solution and OpenShift Dedicated (currently in technology preview). This integration allows businesses to transfer virtual machines to Google Cloud’s scalable and economical infrastructure, leveraging tools like the migration toolkit and Red Hat Ansible Automation to simplify and accelerate the migration.
Enhanced by Red Hat Advanced Cluster Management, this solution provides a consistent, unified way to manage VMs and containers across hybrid environments while embracing innovations like generative AI.
11. Seamless Integration with Enterprise Storage
Migrating VMs can be challenging when integrating with existing enterprise storage systems. Red Hat collaborates with IBM and Arctera to connect existing storage systems to OpenShift Virtualization, eliminating the need for expensive hardware replacements. IBM Fusion Access connects SAN block storage to Kubernetes, and Arctera InfoScale adds a software layer to facilitate seamless integration, allowing organizations to leverage their existing storage infrastructure while adopting Kubernetes-native capabilities.
