Modernizing IT infrastructure for organizations demands two different environments: traditional virtual machines (VMs) for legacy applications and Kubernetes for modern containerized workloads. This dual-platform approach leads to operational complexity, infrastructure costs, and management overhead.
Thanks to Red Hat OpenShift Virtualization on Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) that addresses this challenge by enabling organizations to run virtual machines and containers together on a single Kubernetes platform. This allows businesses to modernize at their own pace without having to rewrite existing applications. Migrate, deploy, scale, and manage all the modern and traditional workloads by leveraging OCI’s reliable, high-performance cloud potential.
What is OpenShift Virtualization?
OpenShift Virtualization extends Red Hat OpenShift by allowing virtual machines to run alongside containers within the same Kubernetes cluster. Built on the KubeVirt project, it enables organizations to manage both workloads using the same tools, security policies, automation, and operational processes.
Running OpenShift on OCI combines Red Hat’s enterprise Kubernetes platform with Oracle Cloud Infrastructure’s high-performance compute, networking, and storage services, providing a scalable and secure foundation for modern workloads.
How It Works
A typical deployment on OCI includes:
- OCI DNS and Load Balancer for application access
- OpenShift Control Plane for cluster management
- Worker Nodes running both Virtual Machines and Containers
- OCI Block Volumes or File Storage for persistent storage
With OpenShift Virtualization installed, Kubernetes schedules and manages VMs just like container workloads, simplifying administration and improving operational consistency.
Why Organizations Are Adopting It
OpenShift Virtualization provides several advantages for organizations looking to modernize their infrastructure:
- Unified Platform: Manage virtual machines and containers from a single OpenShift cluster.
- Gradual Modernization: Migrate existing VM workloads first and modernize applications over time.
- Operational Simplicity: Use common monitoring, security, CI/CD, and GitOps workflows across all workloads.
- Better Resource Utilization: Consolidate infrastructure while leveraging OCI’s scalable compute and storage services.
- Reduced Complexity: Eliminate the need to maintain separate virtualization and container platforms.
Live Migration for High Availability
One of the key capabilities of OpenShift Virtualization is Live Migration, which allows running virtual machines to move between worker nodes without downtime.
Using shared OCI storage, organizations can perform infrastructure maintenance, upgrades, and workload balancing while keeping applications available to end users.
Common Use Cases
OpenShift Virtualization on OCI is well suited for:
- VMware modernization initiatives
- Lift-and-shift migrations to OCI
- Running legacy enterprise applications alongside cloud-native services
- Hybrid application modernization
- Development and test environments
- Disaster Recovery and High Availability solutions
Conclusion
OpenShift Virtualization on OCI provides a practical path for organizations looking to modernize without disruption. By bringing virtual machines and containers together on a single Kubernetes platform, businesses can simplify operations, improve resource utilization, and adopt cloud-native technologies at their own pace.
For organizations planning their cloud transformation journey, OpenShift Virtualization on OCI offers a flexible, scalable, and future-ready platform that bridges traditional infrastructure with modern application development.
Ready to modernize your virtualization strategy? OpenShift Virtualization on OCI enables you to migrate existing workloads today while building the cloud-native applications of tomorrow.
