The latest version of the Red Hat OpenShift Kubernetes platform is now generally available. Red Hat OpenShift 4.5, which includes the general availability of OpenShift Virtualization, helps organizations break down application barriers between traditional and cloud-native infrastructure and extend control over distributed resources.

Red Hat OpenShift now includes OpenShift Virtualization, a new platform feature that enables IT organizations to bring standard VM-based workloads to Kubernetes.

First introduced at Red Hat Summit 2020 as a technology preview feature, OpenShift Virtualization is now generally available and included with Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform at no additional cost.

Derived from the KubeVirt open source project, OpenShift Virtualization enables organizations to develop, deploy and manage applications consisting of VMs alongside containers and serverless functions, all in one modern Kubernetes platform running on bare-metal infrastructure.

By bringing new and existing applications to the same architecture, OpenShift Virtualization is said to provide a consistent development experience and turbocharge an organization’s ability to deliver quickly on innovation. Once VMs are migrated to and managed by Red Hat OpenShift, they can be containerized over time, or be maintained as virtual machines. This allows users to develop and deliver hybrid applications built on containers and VMs to run side-by-side on the same platform.

Red Hat OpenShift 4.5 also introduces full-stack automation for VMware vSphere deployments, making it “push-button” easy to deploy Red Hat OpenShift on top of all currently supported vSphere environments.

With full-stack automation, the administrator only needs to provide credentials to a vSphere deployment, and the installer provisions all of the resources needed. This leads to a faster initial setup experience and easier ongoing management and maintenance.

This adds to OpenShift’s existing support for VMware vSphere deployments on pre-existing infrastructure, which provides administrators the flexibility to deploy OpenShift in highly customized vSphere environments.