Virtualize and containerize together: Red Hat OpenShift Virtualization is now available on IBM Cloud

As organizations push towards cloud native agility, one of the many challenges they face is having to manage disparate environments featuring virtual machines (VMs) and containers.  

Today, IBM Cloud is excited to announce the general availability of Red Hat OpenShift Virtualization on Red Hat OpenShift on IBM Cloud, a virtualization solution based on a Kubernetes operator (KubeVirt) in Red Hat OpenShift. This operator has been built to allow you to run and deploy both new and existing virtual machine (VM) workloads on a single, managed platform on IBM Cloud. It aims to ease VM migration, simplify your operations, accelerate time to value, add flexibility and optimize TCO.

With this offering, organizations will have a broad choice of solutions to optimize their virtualization environment in the cloud based on what suits best for their applications and workloads:

• IBM Cloud for VMware Cloud Foundation (Customer managed and Cloud managed as a Service options)
• Red Hat OpenShift Virtualization on IBM Cloud Bare Metal Servers
• Red Hat OpenShift on IBM Cloud
• Cloud-native VPC environments.

For organizations, especially those already using containers in Red Hat OpenShift and that have related skills within their organization, Red Hat OpenShift Virtualization on IBM Cloud provides a pathway for optimizing their environments.

Enterprises expect rapid technology service rollouts—think e-commerce scaling for Black Friday or telehealth apps launched overnight—which legacy setups can struggle to support. While modernization is imperative for these enterprises to help drive agility, they cannot abandon their virtualized workloads.

Scenario 1: Regional bank expanding OpenShift with Virtualization

• A regional bank leveraging Red Hat OpenShift for containerized microservices, such as mobile banking apps and fraud detection systems, but still running critical applications on a separate virtualized infrastructure, like its core banking system.
• They also want to consolidate onto OpenShift but can’t containerize the heritage system yet due to its complexity and regulatory requirements. Meanwhile, integrating VM-based analytics with containerized fraud detection is slow, delaying actionable insights

Scenario 2: Mid-sized retail chain scaling e-commerce

• A regional retailer with 50 stores runs its inventory and point-of-sale systems on an aging VMware setup. Licensing costs have fluctuated, and their new e-commerce platform, built on containers, requires rapid scaling for seasonal demand.
• Separate VM and container teams create delays, and the budget is strained.

Scenario 3: Healthcare provider enhancing OpenShift with Virtualization

• A mid-tier hospital network already using Red Hat OpenShift to run containerized applications, such as a telehealth platform and patient appointment microservices, has its electronic health record (EHR) system and medical imaging workloads on heritage virtualization platform.
• The EHR system and imaging applications have monolithic design and strict regulatory requirements (e.g., HIPAA). They cannot easily refactor the EHR system to containers due to complexity and compliance constraints.

In all 3 sample scenarios, which are meant to be representative of a broader perspective, key patterns of pain points emerge, including:

1. Migration risks and downtime fears: Moving VMs to an alternate platform can be challenging, especially when uptime is non-negotiable.
2. Modernization bottleneck: Organizations can’t abandon VMs but need a way to align them with their OpenShift strategy without a risky overhaul.
3. Integration lag: Lack of a unified platform slows data sharing between VM-based legacy systems and containerized apps, impacting real-time decision-making.
4. Dual-platform overhead: Managing containers and VMs duplicates effort, tools, and training, inflating operational costs.
5. Cost creep: Rising licensing fees eat into the budget, limiting investment in new digital services.
6. Data integration delays: Slow handoffs between VM-based EHRs and containerized analytics hinder real-time insights, such as identifying care trends or optimizing resource allocation.

Available now on IBM Cloud, an enterprise cloud platform designed for security to manage even mission critical applications in regulated industries, Red Hat OpenShift Virtualization offers the following benefits:

1. Streamlined operations through unified platform: A single, managed platform for VMs, containers, and serverless workloads on IBM Cloud allows you to standardize infrastructure deployment and maintain workloads using a common set of established, enterprise tools on Red Hat OpenShift Container platform.
2. Optimized total cost of ownership (TCO):  Move virtualized workloads to cloud-native workloads without disrupting your infrastructure. To reduce TCO during virtual machine (VM) migration, focus on optimizing resource utilization, automating tasks, leveraging cloud-based solutions.
3. Streamlined migration: Choosing efficient migration tools, ultimately streamlining operations to reduce expenses. This cost-effective approach is key to a modernization strategy.
4. Engineered to accelerate time to value: Experienced with the speed and simplicity of cloud-native platforms, while preserving your virtualization investments. As a managed service, IBM Cloud provides support during the modernization period through IBM Technology Expert Labs (TEL). TEL offers hands-on support with your migration, as well as mentor-based consulting, including the Virtualization Migration Assessment.
5. Enhanced flexibility: IBM Cloud managed operations also give you the flexibility to manage the cloud your way, with access to OpenShift Virtualization.
6. Improved scalability: From edge to multicloud, you can adapt the solution to your growing and seasonal needs.
7. Enabled strategic alignment: For banking industry, it bridges legacy VMs with a container-based banking strategy, enabling gradual modernization without disrupting critical services.

Stop complexity that hold you back from innovating. Join the many organizations that use Red Hat OpenShift on IBM Cloud and optimize your infrastructure integrating virtual machines to it.

Learn more about Red Hat OpenShift Virtualization on IBM Cloud