Migrate and modernize virtual machines with Red Hat OpenShift Virtualization and Dell APEX Cloud Platform

This article was written with the help of Nancy Hurley, Dell.

Organizations continuously meet changing market demands by managing the future of application development, deployment, and management across their environments. As virtualization teams determine the future of their virtualization infrastructure, Red Hat and Dell are collaborating to provide a next-generation platform and migration strategy for virtual machines (VMs) that is a fundamental component of infrastructure modernization. Red Hat OpenShift Virtualization, when implemented on Dell APEX Cloud Platform for Red Hat OpenShift, simplifies how companies can deploy and manage their VMs, without the added complexity of designing and maintaining the underlying infrastructure.

Red Hat OpenShift Virtualization

Red Hat OpenShift Virtualization, an included feature of Red Hat OpenShift, provides customers with a more efficient way to migrate and manage their existing traditional VM workloads using a modern application platform. Red Hat’s free Migration Toolkit for Virtualization simplifies the process of migrating VMs to OpenShift. Red Hat also provides training and consulting services as well as products like Ansible Automation Platform that can help streamline the VM migration process.

Customers can preserve their existing virtualization investments while taking advantage of the simplicity and speed of a cloud-native hybrid application platform. Red Hat OpenShift Virtualization leverages the vibrant upstream community of Cloud Native Computing Foundation’s (CNCF) open source KubeVirt project, which provides continuous innovation from a broad group of corporate and individual contributors. Red Hat Engineering tests and merges the KubeVirt project, along with other key open source technologies, into Red Hat’s enterprise-ready OpenShift Virtualization offering.

As organizations consider their path forward to support their virtualized applications, it is important to weigh complexity, speed, cost and convenience. Often the best option to retiring technical debt is to move to an appliance-based infrastructure, which can help reduce the complexity and minimize the implementation and maintenance load from the system administrator teams. Let’s take a closer look at the Dell APEX Cloud Platform for Red Hat OpenShift.

Dell APEX Cloud Platform for Red Hat OpenShift

Dell APEX Cloud Platform is the first fully integrated infrastructure purpose-built for Red Hat OpenShift. Jointly engineered with Red Hat, it transforms how organizations deploy, manage, and run containers, alongside virtual machines, on-premises on a bare metal platform. It is designed to take out complexity and friction – from initial deployment, to scaling to on-going lifecycle management- essentially allowing customers to focus on enabling rapid development and deployment of revenue generating applications instead of having to focus on managing infrastructure.

The APEX Cloud Platform enables enterprises to run bare-metal containers and virtual machines on a common infrastructure. As organizations consider their long-term modernization strategy, Dell APEX Cloud Platform offers a unified experience for diverse workloads that hosts traditional applications while making it possible for customers to create modern applications that incorporate the latest AI/ML, analytics, and more. 

Key benefits of Red Hat OpenShift Virtualization and Dell APEX Cloud Platform for Red Hat OpenShift:

• Integration of hardware management within the OpenShift user interface: Customers can use a single management interface for the management of their containers, VMs, AI and serverless workloads, as well as the underlying Dell APEX Cloud Platform.
  
   

  

Snapshot of the Red Hat OpenShift console with the Dell APEX Cloud Platform.

• Simplified operations and upgrades: Dell APEX Cloud Platform Foundation Software is integrated with the OpenShift stack to vastly simplify deployment, day to day operations and lifecycle management.of the hardware and software.
• Reduced complexity for migration: Support for bare metal containers and virtualization on a single infrastructure enables customers to easily choose their best migration path and more easily migrate existing traditional VM workloads onto a hybrid cloud application platform with Red Hat’s migration tooling. 
• Modernize your VMs at your desired pace to incorporate cloud-native practices: OpenShift Virtualization enables customers to run VM-based applications alongside modern cloud native applications. Dell supports VMs and containerized applications on a single consolidated infrastructure.

Over the course of 25 years, Dell and Red Hat have developed deep engineering connections that enable us to bring to market a jointly engineered and fully integrated, validated solution to simplify IT modernization.

Red Hat OpenShift Virtualization paired with Dell APEX Cloud Platform for Red OpenShift, offers a transformative solution for migrating and managing VMs. Red Hat and Dell’s continuous collaboration provides customers with the solutions they need for infrastructure modernization for the future.

For more information:

• Watch the demo of Running Virtual Machines on ACP for Red Hat Openshift
• Learn more about Dell APEX Cloud Platform for Red Hat OpenShift
• See how Dell and Red Hat transform AI complexity into opportunity
• Check out these 15 reasons to adopt Red Hat OpenShift Virtualization
• Check out a Red Hat OpenShift Virtualization Workshop in a city near you