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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.

Navigating storage options with OpenShift Virtualization for VMware admins

5 mins

Storage plays an incredibly important role in your organization’s infrastructure. Where you plan to host resources can change with your needs. In this section you will learn how to access common storage features in Red Hat® OpenShift®, and what each of the Red Hat® OpenShift® Virtualization storage 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)

Feature mapping chart

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

Feature VMware OpenShift
Where VM Disks are stored Datastore PersistentVolumeClaim/PersistentVolume
Policy based storage management vVols, Storage Policy Based Management (SPBM) Storage Classes
Non-Disruptive VM storage migration Storage vMotion PersistentVolume (PV) and PersistentVolumeClaim (PVC) paradigms to manage storage for VMs.

Container Storage Interface (CSI) paradigm to allow for seamless integration with various storage backends or Software Defined Storage solutions.

Accessing legacy storage arrays Compatible with all major storage vendors All major storage vendors have a CSI compliant driver
Storage accelerated cloning Yes, via VAAI Yes, via CSI driver
Disk resizing Yes Yes
Disk/VM snapshots Yes Yes. Backup and restore by using VM snapshots.
Storage Distributed Resource Scheduler
(SDRS) Yes N/A

Menu mapping chart

This section addresses what OpenShift Virtualization storage menu selection items 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. In the instances that there is no VMware equivalent option, they will be marked as "N/A".

OpenShift Virtualization menu item VMware comparable Explanation
Storage - Data Foundation (requires OpenShift Data Foundation storage and its console plugin) vSAN or Local Raided disk set up as a VMFS filesystem Entry point to in the web console to manage OpenShift Data Foundation storage
Storage - Object Storage (requires OpenShift Data Foundation storage and its console plugin) N/A Configure and manage Object storage, including policies, buckets, claims or replication
Storage - PersistentVolumes List of vVols or VMDKs Manage and troubleshoot statically or dynamically provisioned file and block based persistent volumes (PVs). Each persistent volume represents a single storage volume that is blacked by one of the existing storage providers
Storage - PersistentVolumesClaims N/A Manage and troubleshoot storage requests, their binding to persistent volumes and their allocation to workloads (containers and VMs). PVCs also define characteristics of how PVs are bounded and their lifecycle
Storage - StorageClasses Storage Policies Manage the classes of storage providers integrated in your cluster. Each storage class is a profile that maps dynamic storage requests to a storage provider and defines provisioning properties determined by the cluster administrators
Storage - VolumeSnapshot Virtual Machine Storage Snapshot Manage and troubleshoot volume snapshot and restore requests
Storage - VolumeSnapshotClasses N/A Manage the classes of snapshot providers integrated in your cluster. Each snapshot class is a profile that maps snapshot requests to a snapshot provider and defines snapshot configuration properties determined by the cluster administrators.
Storage - VolumeSnapshotContents N/A Manage and troubleshoot existing volumes snapshots. Each snapshot is backed by an integrated snapshot provider. It is similar to a Persistent Volume

Now that you have a baseline of some OpenShift storage features and their comparables to VMware vSphere, next is a dive into network features.

Previous resource
Overview: A high-level guide to Red Hat OpenShift Virtualization as a VMware admin
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Networking

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

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