Red Hat brings OpenShift Virtualization preview to Azure users

Red Hat has launched the public preview of Red Hat OpenShift Virtualization on Microsoft Azure Red Hat OpenShift, giving organisations a new option for migrating and managing virtual machines in hybrid cloud environments.

This release introduces Red Hat OpenShift Virtualization as a self-managed operator included with Azure Red Hat OpenShift. The solution is designed to streamline the migration of virtual machines from existing platforms to Azure Red Hat OpenShift, which supports both VM and container-based workloads. It targets organisations seeking to move away from legacy virtualization approaches and embrace a more flexible, scalable infrastructure.

Chris Wright, Senior Vice President and Chief Technology Officer at Red Hat, highlighted the importance of secure and adaptable infrastructure options for organisations undergoing digital transformation. "As organizations continue to modernize and move away from legacy virtualization solutions, it is critical to choose a secure computing foundation for the future that can adapt to their current and evolving multi-infrastructure environments. Building upon our extensive history of collaboration and joint engineering efforts with Microsoft Azure, Red Hat OpenShift Virtualization running on Azure Red Hat OpenShift delivers more consistent orchestration for VMs and containers alike, setting organizations on a clear path to modern application development and deployment," said Wright.

Azure Red Hat OpenShift is a managed application platform jointly managed and supported by Red Hat and Microsoft. It aims to reduce the complexity associated with infrastructure management, allowing IT teams to concentrate resources on innovation and modernisation. The integration of OpenShift Virtualization supports hybrid applications by delivering a unified environment for both virtual machines and containers, facilitating cloud-native strategies and application modernisation efforts.

Red Hat OpenShift Virtualization on Azure Red Hat OpenShift offers several capabilities. It helps organisations accelerate the migration and scaling of existing VM workloads with migration and automation tools, including Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform and Red Hat Advanced Cluster Management. These features aim to simplify migration, limit disruption, and enable faster moves onto modern infrastructure.

The platform provides a unified view for operations that allows for seamless management of both VMs and containers across hybrid cloud environments. Automated deployment and management of Red Hat OpenShift clusters are intended to further reduce operational complexity and risk.

OpenShift Virtualization enables customers to build, modernise, and deploy applications at scale using a Kubernetes-based approach. This move is positioned to hasten cloud-native modernisation goals. With the platform, organisations can utilise modern application development tools and processes for their VM-based applications, helping to bring legacy workloads up to date with current technology standards.

The solution aims to optimise resources by improving DevOps productivity, decreasing application deployment time, and right-sizing VMs based on workload requirements. These features are intended to support efficiency and adaptation as organisations' needs continue to evolve.

Brendan Burns, Corporate Vice President for Azure Compute at Microsoft, commented on the collaboration between Microsoft and Red Hat and emphasised its impact on organisations moving to the cloud. "As customers modernize and move their apps from traditional virtual-machine-based fabrics that are on-premises to modern Kubernetes platforms, some components still need to run on traditional virtual machines for a while. To address this, Microsoft and Red Hat are collaborating to bring open source innovation from the KubeVirt project into Azure Red Hat OpenShift. What I'm most excited about is how this enables customers to add virtualization capabilities to Azure Red Hat OpenShift, which allows them to modernize at their own pace, and get the best return on investment as they transition to the cloud," said Burns.

Red Hat OpenShift Virtualization is immediately available in public preview as a self-managed operator on Azure Red Hat OpenShift. The offering permits organisations to apply their Microsoft Azure Consumption Commitment and participate in the Azure Migration and Modernization Program, as well as leverage the Azure Hybrid Benefit to reuse existing on-premise licences for both Red Hat Enterprise Linux and Windows.

The public preview makes Red Hat OpenShift Virtualization available to organisations looking to modernise their critical VM infrastructure while building toward future cloud-native application development.