Red Hat launches new OpenShift Virtualization Engine

Red Hat has introduced Red Hat OpenShift Virtualization Engine, a focused solution for the deployment, management, and scaling of virtual machines.

Red Hat OpenShift Virtualization Engine aims to simplify operations by offering a virtualisation-centric edition of Red Hat OpenShift. This new offering is designed to address the needs of organisations looking to optimise their virtualisation platforms without the inclusion of non-essential features. By focusing exclusively on virtualisation workloads, the solution looks to enhance the efficiency and reduce the complexity of managing virtual machines in hybrid cloud environments.

The introduction of the Red Hat OpenShift Virtualization Engine comes in the wake of changes within the virtualisation market. While container technologies are gaining traction, virtual machines continue to play a pivotal role in IT infrastructure. The solution seeks to offer cost-efficiency by using essential OpenShift features and components necessary for virtualisation. Built on Red Hat OpenShift Virtualization and the KVM hypervisor, it supports both on-premises hardware and cloud services such as AWS bare metal instances.

To facilitate smooth migrations from legacy platforms, Red Hat includes a migration toolkit alongside a Virtualization Migration Assessment. The migration toolkit assists in transitions by simplifying the workflow and reducing downtime, while the assessment offers an evaluative workshop to guide organisations on their migration path.

Red Hat OpenShift Virtualization Engine also integrates with Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform. This integration allows IT teams to automate both large and small scale VM migrations and daily management tasks, aiming to improve operational efficiency across virtualised environments.

The Red Hat partner ecosystem is poised to support the new solution with a variety of capabilities, including storage solutions, backup and disaster recovery options, and networking tools to help meet modern IT needs.

Red Hat is also launching Red Hat Advanced Cluster Management for Virtualization, a new edition of its existing management platform that focuses on virtual machine lifecycle and compliance management, aimed at ensuring consistent operations within virtualised environments.

Mike Barrett, Vice President and General Manager for Hybrid Cloud Platforms at Red Hat, commented on the launch: "Virtualization solutions are in the bedrock of most private and public cloud environments. As organizations look to modernize their virtual environments to meet the demands of today's IT climate, we have found that no two organizations are at the same point in their virtualization journey. This causes diversity in the approaches they want to take with the solutions Red Hat provides. Red Hat needed to change how we were offering our virtualization solution to accommodate organizations that wanted to use only the Red Hat OpenShift product features focused on virtualization. Red Hat OpenShift Virtualization Engine and Advanced Cluster Management for Virtualization allow Red Hat to significantly lower the price point of the solution to meet those users where they are in their modernization efforts."

Stephen Elliott, Group Vice President for I&O, Cloud Operations, and DevOps at IDC, also provided insights: "Even as containers grow in adoption, virtualized infrastructure remains one of the backbones of modern computing for critical applications, driving a multibillion-dollar industry. With many organizations facing budget constraints, they are looking for streamlined options for managing virtual machines that reduce complexity and deliver scale, performance, and security."