Red Hat has announced the release of OpenShift 4.18, which introduces several new features related to virtualization, deployment flexibility, and security.
The virtualization updates are designed to improve networking, simplify storage migration, and streamline virtual machine (VM) management. User-defined networks (UDNs) are now generally available, which makes it easier for users to get virtualization running and allows them to have similar networking capabilities in secondary networks like AWS as they do on-premise.
VM storage migration (in technology preview) has new improvements that allow for less disruptive movement of data between storage devices and classes while a VM is running.
Another technology preview in this release is tree-view navigation, which allows users to logically group VMs into folders and more easily navigate between VMs.
Additionally, OpenShift 4.18 adds support for Border Gateway Protocol, enabling more advanced use cases such as VM static IP assignment, live migration, and better multi-tenancy.
To support better deployment flexibility, the company also added support for more cloud providers. Bare-metal deployments are now supported on Google Cloud and Oracle Cloud Infrastructure, and Red Hat OpenShift Virtualization is available on Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (in technology preview).
And finally, for added security, the secret store container storage interface (CSI) driver is now generally available. This driver provides a vendor-neutral solution for managing credentials and other sensitive information.
“Many organizations have reached an inflection point with their virtualized infrastructure, needing to make decisions quickly on their future direction,” said Mike Barrett, vice president and general manager of Hybrid Cloud Platforms at Red Hat. “Red Hat OpenShift meets today’s virtualization needs and offers a simplified pathway to migration, but also enables organizations to keep an eye on the future via application modernization. With Red Hat OpenShift, organizations are able to protect their traditional investments while adopting a platform that enables them to seamlessly transition to an AI future.”
