Red Hat OpenShift Virtualization
Red Hat® OpenShift® Virtualization on IBM Cloud® is used to run virtual server workloads alongside containerized applications that are within a unified Kubernetes environment. Red Hat OpenShift Virtualization is based on the KubeVirt Kubernetes operator, which means that you can deploy both new and existing virtual server workloads on a single, managed platform on IBM Cloud.
Red Hat OpenShift Virtualization servers run on bare metal servers within IBM Cloud VPC, which helps provide high performance, security, and network isolation.
Red Hat OpenShift Data Foundation (ODF) is software-defined storage that provides highly available, scalable, block, file, and object storage from local NVMe drives that are in the bare metal servers. ODF offers features such as encryption at rest and in transit, snapshots, and disaster recovery replication.
Red Hat Advanced Cluster Management (RHACM) provides a centralized control plane for multi-cluster and hybrid management to manage Red Hat OpenShift clusters across on-premises data centers, private clouds, and other public cloud environments. You can deploy RHACM into an IBM Cloud Red Hat OpenShift Kubernetes Service cluster that serves as the hub for orchestrating and governing Red Hat OpenShift deployments across hybrid and multi-cloud landscapes.
Red Hat OpenShift Virtualization on IBM Cloud architecture overview
The following diagram shows the high-level reference architecture for Red Hat OpenShift Virtualization on IBM Cloud.
Components
The following table outlines the products or services that are used in the architecture for each component.
| Component | Architecture components | Description |
|---|---|---|
| Workload migration | Red Hat OpenShift Migration toolkit for Virtualization (MTV) | A set of tools to migrate virtual servers from providers such as Red Hat OpenShift and VMware. |
| IBM Consulting and expert labs | Professional services organizations that provide Red Hat OpenShift services. | |
| Self-service and migration partners | Professional services from migration partners such as WanClouds and Primary IO. | |
| Security | 3rd party Virtual network functions | 3rd party firewalls |
| IBM Cloud Key Protect | IBM Key Protect for IBM Cloud® service helps you provision and store encrypted keys for apps across IBM Cloud services, so you can see and manage data encryption and the entire key lifecycle from one central location. | |
| IBM Cloud Security and Compliance Center Workload Protection | IBM Cloud Security and Compliance Center Workload Protection to find and prioritize software vulnerabilities, detect and respond to threats, and manage configurations, permissions, and compliance. | |
| Resiliency | Red Hat Advanced Cluster Management (RHACM), OADP, and ODF | RHACM, OADP, and ODF are combined to provide disaster recovery replication of persistent volumes and required cluster resources. |
| 3rd-party backup options | Self-managed backup options with Red Hat OpenShift Virtualization such as Veeam Kasten K10. | |
| Observability | Red Hat Advanced Cluster Management (RHACM) | Visibility and control over a hybrid cloud from a single console. |
| Red Hat OpenShift Observability | Information about the performance and health of Red Hat OpenShift Cluster. | |
| IBM Cloud Security and compliance workload protection | Agents that are deployed within virtual servers that provide vulnerability, posture, and compliance scans. | |
| IBM Cloud Monitoring and logs | Agents that are deployed within virtual servers that send logs and metrics to IBM Cloud logging and monitoring services. | |
| Storage | Red Hat OpenShift Data Foundation (ODF) | Software-defined storage that provides block, file, and object storage. |
| IBM Cloud Object Storage | Designed for unstructured data such as backup, archiving, big data analytics, and application data storage. | |
| IBM Cloud File Storage | Persistent, fast, and flexible network-attached, NFS-based File Storage for VPC | |
| IBM Cloud Key Protect | Provision and store encrypted keys that are used on Red Hat OpenShift Kubernetes Service worker nodes and storage. | |
| Compute | Red Hat OpenShift Kubernetes Service worker nodes | Worker nodes can be bare metal or virtual servers. A bare metal is needed to use Red Hat OpenShift Virtualization. |
| Bare metal and virtual servers | Bare metal servers are recommended to host Red Hat OpenShift Virtualization. Red Hat supports only bare metal servers for production workloads. You can use virtual servers for container-based workloads. |
|
| Networking | Open Virtual Networking (OVN), OVN-Kubernetes | Software-defined networking that is used by Red Hat OpenShift. |
| Cluster (CUDN) and user-defined networks (UDN) | CUDNs create a network across multiple namespaces. A UDN creates a network within a namespace. |
|
| IBM Cloud networking | VPC networking, Direct Link, Transit gateways, and VPNs | |
| Virtual Network Functions (VNFs) | Virtual firewalls that run on virtual servers. |
Next steps
Now that you understand the Red Hat OpenShift Virtualization architecture, explore the following resources:
- Plan your deployment: Review the design considerations for compute, networking, storage, and security
- Migrate workloads: Follow the Migration Toolkit for Virtualization tutorial to migrate from VMware
- Implement backup: Set up backup solutions with Veeam Kasten
- Get started: Deploy your first Red Hat OpenShift cluster on IBM Cloud