IBM Corp. subsidiary Red Hat today announced the general availability of the Red Hat OpenShift Virtualization Engine, a version of the OpenShift orchestration platform that’s geared exclusively toward virtualization workloads.

The company also announced the general availability of Red Hat Connectivity Link, a hybrid multicloud traffic management, policy enforcement and role-based access control platform for connecting disparate applications and infrastructure.

Red Hat describes the virtualization engine as a tailored option for deploying, managing and scaling virtual machines. OpenShift is a Kubernetes-based platform for managing software containers across hybrid cloud environments, including services for container orchestration, automated application deployment, scaling and lifecycle management. Red Hat said it has stripped out features unrelated to virtualization.

The company said development of the platform was spurred by “significant changes” in the virtualization market in recent years, a likely reference to Broadcom Inc.’s acquisition of VMware Inc. and accompanying licensing and support changes. A study released last June by CloudBolt Software Inc. found that 76% of VMware customers characterized themselves as extremely or very concerned about the acquisition’s impact on their business, although most were in no hurry to make a switch.

The OpenShift Virtualization Engine uses the open-source KVM hypervisor and can run on on-premises hardware with Red Hat Enterprise Linux as well as bare-metal cloud services. The platform features built-in security capabilities and tooling to provide consistent performance across a hybrid cloud.

The offering also includes access to Red Hat’s Migration Toolkit for Virtualization, which helps organizations transition from other virtualization platforms while minimizing operational disruption. The company also offers a Virtualization Migration Assessment interactive workshop and Advanced Cluster Management for Virtualization, a version of the company’s Advanced Cluster Management for Kubernetes that’s designed to centralize VM lifecycle management and streamline tasks such as VM provisioning, monitoring and day-to-day compliance.

Simpler multicluster management

Connectivity Link manages application connections across single and multicluster Kubernetes environments, streamlining the definition, management and visibility of connectivity configuration and policies, according to Red Hat. That reduces complexity by consolidating functions such as traffic routing, security and policy management into a single Kubernetes-native package.

Red Hat said Connectivity Link obviates the need for organizations to manage complex collections of point tools for tasks like application program interface security, service mesh and application networking.

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

Red Hat said Connectivity Link provide a cohesive experience and efficient approach to managing application traffic leveraging 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 surfaced through Kubernetes and customizable dashboards.

Both platforms are available now.

Photo: Red Hat