Red Hat strengthens hybrid cloud management with OpenShift Virtualization Engine

Red Hat strengthens hybrid cloud management with OpenShift Virtualization Engine

Red Hat announces the availability of the Red Hat OpenShift Virtualization Engine. This is a version of the OpenShift orchestration platform focused exclusively on virtualization workloads.

The company also announced the availability of Red Hat Connectivity Link. This is a hybrid multi-cloud platform for traffic management, policy control and role-based access control. It allows different applications and infrastructures to be found with each other.

Red Hat describes the virtualization engine as a customized option for deploying, managing and scaling virtual machines. OpenShift is a Kubernetes-based platform for managing software containers in hybrid cloud environments. It offers services such as container orchestration, automated application deployment, scalability and lifecycle management. According to Red Hat, features not related to virtualization have been removed.

The company stated that the platform’s development was prompted by significant changes in the virtualization market in recent years. According to SiliconAngle, this likely refers to Broadcom’s acquisition of VMware and associated changes in licensing and support. A survey by CloudBolt Software found that 76% of VMware customers are extremely or very concerned about the impact of the acquisition on their business. Incidentally, most companies are in no hurry to make the switch.

Built-in security features

The OpenShift Virtualization Engine uses the open-source KVM hypervisor and can run on on-premises hardware running Red Hat Enterprise Linux or on bare-metal cloud services. The platform has built-in security features and tools to deliver consistent performance in a hybrid cloud environment.

The offering also includes access to Red Hat’s Migration Toolkit for Virtualization, which helps organizations transition from other virtualization platforms with minimal operational disruption. In addition, the company offers an interactive Virtualization Migration Assessment workshop and Advanced Cluster Management for Virtualization, a version of Advanced Cluster Management for Kubernetes designed to centralize management of VM lifecycles and simplify tasks such as VM provisioning, monitoring and daily compliance.

Simpler multicluster management

Red Hat said Connectivity Link manages application connections within single- and multicluster Kubernetes environments, simplifying the definition, management, and visibility of connectivity configurations and policies. It reduces complexity by consolidating features such as traffic routing, security, and policy management into a single Kubernetes-native package.

According to Red Hat, Connectivity Link eliminates the need for organizations to manage complex collections of separate tools for tasks such as API security, service mesh and application networking.

The product is based on Kuadrant, an open-source project within the Cloud Native Computing Foundation. It aims to improve application connectivity in Kubernetes environments by integrating the native Kubernetes Gateway API with other gateways, such as the Istio service mesh and Envoy Gateway.

Efficient management of application traffic

Red Hat stated that Connectivity Link provides a cohesive experience and efficient approach to managing application traffic using the Gateway API and Envoy proxy technology. Authentication policies, rate limiting, DNS configuration and TLS management are specified through Kubernetes objects, while operational data is made available through Kubernetes and customizable dashboards.

Both platforms are now available.

Also read: Red Hat introduces Red Hat Virtualization 4.4