Skip to main content

A high-level guide to Red Hat OpenShift Virtualization as a VMware admin

Learning path 8 resources 1 hr Published on April 8, 2025

Learn how to navigate features in Red Hat OpenShift and Red Hat OpenShift Virtualization coming from a VMware vSphere background.

Learn how to navigate features in Red Hat OpenShift and Red Hat OpenShift Virtualization coming from a VMware vSphere background.

Exploring compute options in Red Hat OpenShift as a VMware admin

5 mins

Monitoring, migration, resource balancing, there are several compute options that go into any tool for managing your infrastructure. In this section, we will explore common features in Red Hat® OpenShift®, and what Red Hat® OpenShift® Virtualization compute menu options mean for VMware vSphere admins.

What will you learn?

  • How OpenShift menu and features map to ones you may know from VMware

What do you need before starting?

  • VMware vSphere 8.0 or higher (as referenced in this path)
  • Red Hat OpenShift (as referenced in this path)

Compute feature mapping chart

This section addresses commonly used compute features in VMware and how they map to deploying, managing, and maintaining virtual machines in OpenShift.

Feature VMware OpenShift
Resource balancing Distributed Resource Scheduler Descheduler pod eviction policy
Host / VM metrics vCenter, Aria Operations OpenShift Metrics and Monitoring, Red Hat Advanced Cluster Management
Compute Live migration vMotion Live Migration
CPU overcommitment Yes Yes
Memory Overcommitment Methods Ballooning and Transparent Page Sharing (TPS), Swap KSM and free page reporting
(Co)Scheduling constraints Affinity rules for VMs to VMs and VMs to Hosts (anti)affinity rules for VMs, Pods and hosts
Node failure Node failure detection and VM rescheduling happens within 15-30 seconds, even without vCenter Supported through fencing agents' environments. See KCS for HA configuration.
Dynamic reconfiguration CPU, Memory, Disk, network and some additional hardware is supported for hot add/remove and reconfiguration Hot add supports storage, CPU, SR-IOV and Bridge Network,
and memory
Compute acceleration PCI passthrough for CPUs, VGPU supported GPU, generic PCI passthrough, and CPU passthrough supported, (NVIDIA) vGPU supported
Template management Template VMs, OVA/OVF deployment, and content libraries offer the ability to provision VMs using a simplified process

Catalog to manage boot sources, VM templates and instance types.

VMs can be created from VM templates, instance types or declarative raw VM definitions when associated with a specific boot source.

VM export/import Import and export VMs using the OVF and OVA formats Import and export OVA/VMs using migration toolkit for virtualization (export example).

Menu mapping chart

This section addresses what compute menu selection items in OpenShift Virtualization mean from a VMware vSphere perspective. As noted in previous resources, OpenShift is conceptually different in select areas from VMware to achieve the same or similar items. These instances will be marked as "N/A".

OpenShift Virtualization menu item VMware comparable Explanation
Nodes Host and Cluster > Host List and troubleshoot current nodes in the cluster and their configuration and runtime details

NodeHealthChecks

(Node Health Check Operator is needed)

Config > vSphere DRS Configure remediation actions for different node states. There is a range of remediation operators that go from soft rebooting a node that is in Not Ready or Unknown state, hard rebooting it from the BMC APIs or forcing a reinstallation of the node after unsuccessful reboot remediations
Machines
(Automation) Aria Automation or PowerCLI List and troubleshoot the metadata of nodes installed and automated through the OpenShift Machine API operator using manual or automatic scaling
MachineSet
(Automation)

Host Profiles

Aria Automation + Operators or PowerCLI

List and troubleshoot the metadata of nodes installed and automated through the OpenShift Machine API operator using manual or automatic scaling
MachineSet
(Automation) Host Profiles Configure automation profiles to manually or automatically scale infrastructure. A scaled MachineSet will create a Machine object to allocate an available bare metal host and trigger the installation and configuration defined in the MachineSet
MachineAutoscalers
(Automation) Aria Automation + Operators or PowerCLI Define autoscaling rules to scale a MachineSet
MachineHealthChecks Aria Automation + Operators or PowerCLI Alternative mechanism to NodeHealthChecks when the desired remediation is to delete a Machine, which triggers a fresh installation of the node. In cloud providers it causes the deletion of the node and the creation of a new bare metal node

Bare Metal Host
(Automation)

(additional Operator needed)

Aria Automation + Operators or PowerCLI List and operate bare metal servers added to the cluster. Bare metal hosts include manually installed servers and servers made available for and installed by MachineSet scaling. Integrated with BMC APIs it enables full server lifecycle
MachineConfigs
(Automation)

Host Profiles

Aria Automation + Operators or PowerCLI

Manage declarative host configurations to ensure consistent groups of configurations per machine pools and avoid configuration drifts
MachineConfigPools
(Automation)

Host Profiles

Aria Automation + Operators or PowerCLI

Manage different host configuration pools allocating MachineConfig objects to nodes based on roles. MachineConfigPools also allow to segment nodes and define different HA policies when rolling platform updates/upgrades
Hardware Devices N/A N/A (specialty hardware enablement)

Now that you have explored the common compute options available in OpenShift as to how they pertain to VMware vSphere, it's time to see comparisons between observability offerings.

Previous resource
Networking
Next resource
Observability

This learning path is for operations teams or system administrators
Developers may want to check out Migrate virtual applications in Red Hat OpenShift Virtualization on developers.redhat.com.

Get started on developers.redhat.com

Hybrid Cloud Logo LinkedIn YouTube Facebook Twitter

Platforms

Tools

Try, buy, sell

Communicate

About Red Hat

We’re the world’s leading provider of enterprise open source solutions—including Linux, cloud, container, and Kubernetes. We deliver hardened solutions that make it easier for enterprises to work across platforms and environments, from the core datacenter to the network edge.

© 2025 Red Hat

AltStyle によって変換されたページ (->オリジナル) /