15 reasons to adopt

Red Hat OpenShift

Virtualization
Contents

1 Virtualization infrastructure
continues to evolve

2 Choose a virtualization
platform for the future

3 Gain benefits across

your organization

4 See customer
success in action

5 Ready to simplify
your IT environment?

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Virtualization infrastructure
continues to evolve
For more than 2 decades, organizations have relied on virtualization technologies to deliver innovative
applications and services that streamline operations, enhance communication, and promote new
business opportunities. The introduction of virtual machines into datacenters helped IT teams efficiently
use resources, improve flexibility, and optimize infrastructure performance. As public cloud resources
became more accessible, virtualization platforms evolved to take advantage of the scalability, flexibility,
and cost-effectiveness offered by new cloud computing models.

More recently, new technologies like Kubernetes have shifted to containers—rather than virtual
machines—as the core building block of IT infrastructure. Just as virtual machines establish isolated
operating systems on a single physical server, containers create isolated application execution
environments within a single operating system.

Containers brought a new approach to building and deploying applications for businesses of all sizes.
With containers, developers can build efficient cloud-native applications that integrate with emerging
technologies like artificial intelligence and machine learning (AI/ML). At the same time, container
orchestration platforms introduced tools and automation that help IT teams streamline life cycle
management of these modern applications across massive hybrid cloud environments.

Even so, Gartner® expects “despite cloud migration and container

adoption, 70% of datacenter x86 workloads will continue to use
hypervisor-based virtualization through 2027 (down approximately 80% As per Gartner,
in 2020)1. And virtualization technologies continue to evolve. In fact, some
new cloud-native application platforms support both virtual machines
“
70%
and containers across hybrid cloud environments with consistent, unified of datacenter x86
management and operations. IT teams can deploy and administer all workloads will
workloads—virtualized or containerized—using common processes continue to use
and tools while taking advantage of new innovation in monitoring, hypervisor-based
development and deployment pipelines, GitOps, service meshes, and virtualization
serverless technologies. As a result, organizations can continue to run the through 2027.”1
virtualized workloads their business relies on while preparing for future
application modernization and cloud-native approaches.

1 Gartner. “Magic Quadrant for Distributed Hybrid Infrastructure,” By Julia Palmer, Tony Harvey, Michael Warrilow,
David Wright, Jeffrey Hewitt 27 September 2023. GARTNER is a registered trademark and service mark of Gartner,
Inc. and/or its affiliates in the U.S. and internationally, and MAGIC QUADRANT is a registered trademark of Gartner,
Inc. and/or its affiliates and are used herein with permission. All rights reserved. 1
Introduction | A platform for the future | Gain benefits | See success in action | Get started

Choose a virtualization
platform for the future

To be most successful in a digitally focused world, IT organizations need an application foundation that
meets current needs while preparing them for future modernization and change. Red Hat® OpenShift®
is a unified, enterprise-ready platform for application modernization and cloud-native innovation.
Powered by containers, Kubernetes, and DevSecOps capabilities, it provides a foundation for rapidly
building, deploying, running, and managing both existing and new applications at scale and with security
across hybrid, multicloud, and edge environments.

Unite virtual machines and containers on one platform

Red Hat OpenShift Virtualization, included
with Red Hat OpenShift, lets you run virtual Red Hat OpenShift Virtualization
machines and containers on a single platform.
By migrating virtual machines from other
platforms and running them on Red Hat
OpenShift, you can get the most from your Virtual machines Containers
existing virtualization investments while taking
advantage of cloud-native architectures,
streamlined operations and management,
and new development approaches. Red Hat
OpenShift Virtualization lets you create,
import, clone, migrate, and manage Linux®
and Microsoft Windows virtual machines on
Physical machine
a modern application platform.

Red Hat OpenShift Virtualization delivers value

for IT organizations, regardless of where you are
in your application modernization journey.

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Gain benefits
across your organization
Here are 15 key benefits of deploying Red Hat OpenShift as a unified
application platform for both virtualized and containerized applications.

1 Simplify IT operations
with a unified platform.
Managing separate platforms for containers
and virtual machines can lead to increased
complexity, resource fragmentation, and Red Hat technology
operational overhead. Unified platforms stands out from the
that streamline infrastructure deployment,
competition in terms
management, and monitoring across both
of its ability to run
virtual machines and containers can help you
optimize resource use, eliminate duplicate virtualized workloads
efforts, and quickly adapt to diverse workloads. and container
workloads in a
Red Hat OpenShift Virtualization simplifies
streamlined and well-
operations with a single platform for virtual
machines, containers, and serverless workloads.
integrated manner.
As a result, you can standardize infrastructure —
deployment and maintain all workloads using Gökhan Ergül
CTO, sahibinden.com
a common, consistent set of established,
enterprise tools. Plus, you can continue to
use your existing infrastructure with Red Hat
OpenShift via certified partner integrations.

2 Red Hat case study. “sahibinden.com delivers reliable retail services faster with Red Hat OpenShift,”
March 2022. 3
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2 Operate consistently across hybrid

and multicloud environments.
One of the key advantages of adopting hybrid and multicloud environments is flexibility.
During application deployment, these environments let you choose between various
datacenter and cloud resources to balance scalability, performance, and cost according
to your business objectives. Application platforms that run and migrate virtual machine
workloads consistently across hybrid and multicloud cloud environments help you simplify
application deployment, optimize resource use, and maintain operational consistency.

Red Hat OpenShift Virtualization supports self-managed physical servers in datacenters

and public cloud environments, including Amazon Web Services (AWS), so you can
choose the optimal infrastructure for your virtual machines. It is also available as part of
Red Hat OpenShift Service on AWS—a fully managed cloud service—to help you get
started and offload ongoing platform management and in less time.

Balance costs and effort with a turnkey application platform

Jointly engineered, operated, and supported by Red Hat and AWS, Red Hat OpenShift
Service on AWS is a turnkey application platform that helps you boost operational
efficiency and refocus on innovation. Learn more about this managed cloud service.

3 Consolidate your
virtualization platforms.
Migrating workloads between virtualization platforms can be complicated. To ensure a
smooth and efficient migration process, you need to carefully consider virtual machine
compatibility, possible configuration changes, and potential performance optimizations.
Additionally, differences in virtualization platform deployment and management processes
and tools need to be accounted for in your migration plans, especially when moving
between cloud providers. Preemptively validating virtual machine compatibility, using
warm migration capabilities, and transitioning multiple virtual machines at once can help
you move workloads between virtualization platforms rapidly and with less effort.

The Migration Toolkit for Virtualization simplifies and speeds the process of moving
existing virtual machines to Red Hat OpenShift Virtualization at scale, saving you time
and minimizing potential errors.

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4 Modernize your applications

over time, on your schedule. Transform your
applications
While migrating monolithic or n-tier applications
on virtual machines to containerized, microservices- Red Hat OpenShift is a
based workloads can enhance scalability, unified, enterprise-ready
improve productivity, and increase agility, it can application platform for
also require significant investments in time and cloud-native innovation.
resources. Combining platforms that support mixed
Read the e-book to
applications—those incorporating a combination
learn how you can
of virtual machines, containers, and serverless
simplify application
workloads—with modern application development
modernization.
processes and tools can help you strategically
transform your applications on your schedule and
according to your unique needs.

With Red Hat OpenShift Virtualization, you get all of the application modernization
features and benefits of Red Hat OpenShift. Integrated tools and capabilities help
you build, modernize, and deploy applications that include both virtual machine-
and container-based workloads.

5 Provide self-service options

for deploying virtual machines.
Manually deploying virtual machines is an inefficient, error-prone process that can result
in inconsistent configurations, long deployment times, and an increased risk of security
vulnerabilities. Self-service capabilities let users rapidly and reliably deploy preapproved,
security-compliant virtual machine configurations, when they need them and without
opening an IT service ticket.

Following standard Red Hat OpenShift roles, users can create virtual machines in their
projects—and then grant access to other project members—to help their entire team
quickly get the resources they need. Virtual machine instance types simplify self-service
provisioning via predefined operating system images, workload types, and hardware
requirements. You can also use templates to deploy virtual machines that require
advanced configuration, including virtual appliances.

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6 Integrate virtual machines into your

development and deployment pipelines.
Using virtual machines in development and deployment pipelines can increase the
scalability, consistency, and speed of your application delivery processes. Integrating
virtual machines in development pipelines lets you deploy standardized, isolated,
and reproducible environments for coding, testing, and debugging to increase
consistency across development teams. Using virtual machines in continuous
integration/continuous deployment (CI/CD) pipelines provides clean, isolated
environments for each stage—from build and test to release and deployment—
for controlled, reliable application delivery.

With Red Hat OpenShift Virtualization, you

can create, manage, and run commands
in virtual machines within development
and CI/CD pipelines based on Red Hat
OpenShift Pipelines to streamline
infrastructure and application delivery.

7 Take advantage of production-ready

virtualization hypervisor technologies.
Hypervisor performance, stability, and security are critical for efficient, dependable
virtualization infrastructures. Adopting extensively tested and validated hypervisors
that are supported by trusted vendors can help you better manage virtualized workloads
at scale and increase reliability across diverse environments.

As the underlying hypervisor for Red Hat OpenShift Virtualization, the Kernel-based
Virtual Machine (KVM) included in Red Hat Enterprise Linux is a security-focused, high-
performance, open source hypervisor. First released in 2007, KVM provides a stable,
efficient virtualization foundation for organizations worldwide. Today, Linux virtualization
powers critical IT infrastructure for a large number of global financial services firms,
airlines, manufacturers, public sector organizations, and telecommunications companies
and is a popular choice for public cloud deployments.

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8 Boost virtual
machine performance.
Speedy recovery times are critical when IT services become unavailable due to hardware
failures, power outages, or other issues that result in downtime. When this occurs, the
applications running in the virtual machines that were using those services are also
unavailable. An application platform that can recover and reboot virtual machines quickly
and efficiency is essential for keeping your business up and running at all times.

Red Hat OpenShift Virtualization exhibits near

linear boot times for large numbers of virtual
machines, so your critical applications can always Read the Red Hat
be available. Using a large-scale deployment OpenShift Virtualization
of 100 Red Hat OpenShift Virtualization nodes reference architecture
capable of accommodating 3,000 virtual machines, to learn more about
Red Hat engineers demonstrated the resiliency and performance and tuning for
performance of Red Hat OpenShift Virtualization production environments.
under conditions typically observed during disaster
recovery processes.3

3 Red Hat reference architecture. “OpenShift Virtualization with Red Hat Ceph Storage 5 external storage:
Large-scale tuning and performance,” July 2022. 7
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9 Accommodate multiple
guest operating systems.
In virtualized environments, support for guest operating systems increases the diversity
of workloads, applications, and services you can run on shared physical infrastructure.
Compatibility with a wide range of operating systems, advanced security features that
isolate guests and hosts, and support from experts with extensive experience simplifies
virtualization across varied IT environments.

Red Hat tests, certifies, and supports guest operating systems for use with Red Hat
OpenShift Virtualization—including certification for Microsoft Windows guest support
through Microsoft’s Server Virtualization Validation Program (SVVP)—to help you create
an IT environment that meets your business needs. You can also continue to use common
in-guest tools like PowerShell, Ansible, and Puppet with virtual machines running on
Red Hat OpenShift Virtualization.

10 Decrease risk with advanced

security features and best practices.
Security vulnerabilities in virtualized environments with shared hardware
infrastructure increase the risk of unauthorized access, data breaches,
and potential service disruptions. Strong isolation technologies,
consistent security policies, and adherence to least privilege principles
enhance the overall security of virtual machine workloads.

Red Hat OpenShift Virtualization

follows the restricted Kubernetes
pod security standards profile and
runs virtual machine workloads
without root privileges, helping
you comply with current, industry-
standard security practices and
protect your organization.

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11 Simplify live migration

of virtual machines.
Live migration—moving a running virtual machine
to another host without interrupting the workload —
is crucial for maintaining continuous operations as
infrastructure demands change. A virtualization
platform that lets you configure, initiate, monitor,
and cancel live migrations across your environment
helps balance workloads and avoid downtime during
maintenance activities.

Red Hat OpenShift Virtualization supports complete

live migration workflows with a unified management
console, configurable policies, virtual machine
metrics, and traffic encryption to help you keep
your applications running reliably.

12 Back up and restore

virtual machines.
When unexpected events or system disruptions occur, backup and restore capabilities can
help you recover virtual machines in less time and ensure continued operations. Creating
frequent backups — representations of the state and data of a virtual machine at a specific
point in time — provides the information needed to restore existing virtual machines.

Red Hat OpenShift Virtualization lets you back up virtual machines on demand or on
fixed schedules, manage saved images, and restore workloads quickly to minimize the
impact of disruptions on your business. Red Hat’s certified partner ecosystem also includes
many third-party products for data storage, backup, and restoration. Using the Red Hat
OpenShift Operator Framework, you can interact with many of these products directly
from Red Hat OpenShift.

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13 Scale infrastructure
as workloads change.
The dynamic workloads, diverse technologies, and rapid pace of development
and deployment associated with modern applications places high demands on IT
infrastructure. To ensure optimal performance and resource use, virtualization platforms
must dynamically and efficiently scale up and down as workloads change.

Machine management features in Red Hat OpenShift Virtualization—including autoscaling

based on workload policies and machine health checks—help you administer infrastructure
with greater flexibility and efficiency to meet modern application demands.

14 Support a collaborative,
open source model.
Open source development models promote collaboration, innovation, and community-
driven development to rapidly deliver new, advanced virtualization technologies. With
access to stable community innovation, open standards for broad compatibility, and
open application programming interfaces (APIs) for flexible integration, open source
technologies can help you build efficient virtualized environments across datacenter
and cloud infrastructures.

Red Hat OpenShift Virtualization uses container-

native virtualization technology to deliver ongoing
innovation. This technology is developed and
maintained in KubeVirt, a Cloud Native
Computing Foundation (CNCF) project.
As the foundation of Red Hat
OpenShift Virtualization, KubeVirt
provides a unified development
platform where developers can
build, modify, and deploy
applications residing in both
containers and virtual
machines in a common,
shared environment.

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15 Work with our

virtualization experts.
Successfully planning, deploying, and maintaining a virtualized environment requires
specialized skills and knowledge. Expert support and guidance, backed by extensive
virtualization experience and in-depth platform knowledge, can help you optimally
configure your environment, proactively resolve potential issues, and maximize
performance, security, and reliability.

With multiple tiers of support designed to meet your organization’s needs, Red Hat can
help you keep your IT operations up and running—and if an issue arises, quickly restore
services—as you innovate, scale, and deploy your critical applications and workloads.
You can also take advantage of Red Hat services, consulting engagements, and learning
programs to gain container and Kubernetes skills and experience.

Deploy a consistent foundation for innovation

By giving you a single scalable and flexible platform for virtual machines and containers,
Red Hat OpenShift Virtualization reduces operational overhead and opens a straightforward
path to modernization. This integration offers a unified approach for managing virtual machines
and containers in an efficient, security-focused manner.

You can also apply modern application development

principles to your virtual machines and run all of
your applications and workloads consistently across
on-site datacenter, edge, and cloud environments.
Increase developer productivity, simplify operations,
and streamline infrastructure and application
delivery to better support your business. With
Red Hat OpenShift Virtualization, you can meet
today’s business needs while preparing for future
modernization and change.

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See customer success in action:

sahibinden.com
To maintain its market-leading position against competition
from start-ups and global retailers, Turkish classified listing and Decreased system
e-commerce platform sahibinden.com decided to modernize its reliability incidents
IT infrastructure and work approaches. by 97%

The company began a 3-phase project to migrate its existing

virtual machines into container workflows with Red Hat
OpenShift, running in a private cloud environment across its 2
Improved DevOps
datacenters. As part of its shift to containers, sahibinden.com
experience with
adopted an active-active datacenter configuration, where both
unified management
datacenters share workload within the private cloud environment.
New and refactored container-based applications are deployed
across multiple Red Hat OpenShift nodes.

With this new architecture and DevOps workflows, sahibinden.

Optimized container
com has decreased system reliability incidents by 97%, improved
adoption with expert
developer productivity and time to market, and enhanced its
support and guidance
reputation for technology innovation.

Red Hat OpenShift is the clear leader in enterprise Kubernetes. And while the
virtualization market leaders can run Kubernetes on their virtualized infrastructure,
only Red Hat OpenShift can run our whole virtualization environment within its
Kubernetes container platform.
—
Tayfun Deniz
Director of Infrastructure Management, sahibinden.com

Read the success story

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Ready to simplify
your IT environment?
Unify and streamline IT operations with a single, enterprise-ready
application platform for virtual machines and containers.

Red Hat OpenShift Virtualization reduces operational complexity by providing a unified, modern,
cloud-native infrastructure for all of your virtualized and containerized applications and workloads.
Plan your path to modernization with a platform that brings modern application development
principles to existing virtual machines and prepares your organization for a cloud-native future.

Learn more about Red Hat OpenShift Virtualization.

Experience Red Hat OpenShift

Virtualization first hand, at no cost
The Red Hat Level Up Program gives eligible customers
fully supported access to Red Hat OpenShift, including
Red Hat OpenShift Virtualization, for their team,
department, or organization initiatives at no-cost for 1
year. Level Up OpenShift gives organizations a path to
a cloud-native future, while letting them keep existing
workloads running in virtual machines on a single platform.

Try it for free

Copyright © 2024 Red Hat, Inc. Red Hat, the Red Hat logo, and OpenShift are trademarks or registered trademarks of Red Hat, Inc. or its
subsidiaries in the United States and other countries. Linux® is the registered trademark of Linus Torvalds in the U.S. and other countries.

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