Red Hat OpenShift 4.18 release enhances virtualisation

Red Hat has announced the availability of Red Hat OpenShift 4.18, an updated version of its hybrid cloud platform.

The latest version of Red Hat OpenShift aims to enhance the management of virtual machines and containers, thereby reducing operational complexity across IT environments. It also provides a unified infrastructure to facilitate the execution of generative AI initiatives.

New enhancements in OpenShift 4.18 are focused on improving the virtualization experience by enhancing networking capabilities and simplifying storage migration. This update aims to improve the efficiency of managing and adapting virtualized environments as technological needs change.

User-defined networks have been introduced to support common virtual machine networking scenarios. These are available with OpenShift on AWS and Red Hat OpenShift Service on AWS, providing users the ability to deploy similar networking capabilities both on and off premises.

A feature called VM storage migration is included as a technology preview, which allows for seamless data movement between different storage devices and classes, offering users increased agility.

The introduction of tree-view navigation and logical grouping offers a streamlined way for users to manage virtual machines, enhancing ease of access.

Red Hat OpenShift 4.18 has also expanded user-defined networks to include Border Gateway Protocol support, which assists with network segmentation and advanced use cases like VM static IP assignment.

The update extends support to more public cloud providers, adding Google Cloud and Oracle Cloud Infrastructure to existing choices. This allows for bare-metal deployments and virtualization in the public cloud.

Security enhancements have also been a focal point of the new release. The Secret Store Container Storage Interface Driver now generally available provides a solution for managing application credentials and sensitive information securely.

This security feature allows workloads to access external secrets managers without storing secrets directly on the cluster, thereby reducing overall risk and simplifying the management of credentials.

Commenting on the release, Mike Barrett, Vice President and General Manager of Hybrid Cloud Platforms at Red Hat, said: "Many organizations have reached an inflection point with their virtualized infrastructure, needing to make decisions quickly on their future direction. 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."

With these changes, Red Hat OpenShift 4.18 seeks to offer improved security, flexibility, and simplified operations for those using both virtual machines and containerized applications, aiming to cater to current requirements while preparing for future developments in IT infrastructure.