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OpenShift Virtualization for Azure Red Hat OpenShift (preview)

When you use OpenShift Virtualization for Azure Red Hat OpenShift (ARO), you can run virtual machines alongside container workloads and manage them within an Azure Red Hat OpenShift cluster. This ability allows for easy migration and management of traditional virtual machines onto a trusted, consistent, and comprehensive cloud application platform.

Important concepts

  • OpenShift Virtualization requires a persistent volume storage location. While you could use any storage available to the cluster, like Azure Files or Azure Disk, which supports the container storage interface (CSI), Red Hat OpenShift Data Foundation (ODF) is the current recommended solution for use with Azure Red Hat OpenShift.
  • OpenShift Virtualization on Azure Red Hat OpenShift is only supported on the Dsv5 family of nodes with eight (8) cores or higher. This instance type makes use of Azure Boost technologies to improve performance.
  • It also requires an Azure Red Hat OpenShift cluster of at least version 4.18. For more information, see Upgrade an Azure Red Hat OpenShift cluster.
  • Other considerations: Running OpenShift Virtualization on ARO might incur more performance overhead. This performance overhead can vary depending on the virtual machine workload being evaluated.

Prerequisites

  • Sufficient quota for an Azure Red Hat OpenShift cluster with at least one D8sv5 SKU in your subscription. The total is 44 cores.
  • At least one worker node of D8sv5 or higher. For more information about creating worker nodes, see Overview of machine management.
  • Deployed Azure Red Hat OpenShift cluster v4.18 and above. For more information, see Create a cluster documentation.

Installation

  1. Install the OpenShift Virtualization operator. For more information, see Installing the OpenShift Virtualization operator.

  2. (Recommended) For more advanced storage capabilities, you can install and configure Red Hat OpenShift Data Foundation storage solution. For more information, see Deploying OpenShift Data Foundation on Azure Red Hat OpenShift.

    Note

    After installation, you might need to change the default storage class on the cluster to be one of the ODF classes. The recommended storage class to use with OpenShift Virtualization is Ceph RBD volumes. For more information about storage, see Changing the default storage class.

Next steps