Simplify your VM migration to Red Hat OpenShift Virtualization

Recent fluctuations in the virtualization landscape have given companies reason to rethink their current virtualization solution. Many are facing rising subscription costs, vendor lock-in, and limited potential for future modernization plans. As a result, those companies are looking for an alternative platform for their virtual machines (VMs). 

At the same time, companies may feel apprehensive about a large migration project. Unplanned downtime, data security risks, performance deterioration, incompatibility, complexity, and cost are all valid migration concerns.

Red Hat® OpenShift® Virtualization helps organizations accelerate the migration of their traditional virtual machines (VMs) to a scalable, modern infrastructure platform through a rapid approach that mitigates risk. A feature of Red Hat OpenShift, OpenShift Virtualization allows customers to run VM workloads with a consistent management experience and set of tools and processes that increase operational efficiency and flexibility. 

To help organizations accelerate their migration and realize value more quickly, Red Hat offers a comprehensive suite of services—from consulting to training and certification to technical guidance— that support the entire migration journey.

Through hands-on guidance and a mentor-based approach, Red Hat Consulting helps organizations maximize the effectiveness—and therefore value—of their Red Hat technology investment. To assist organizations that need to exit their current virtualization solution and efficiently migrate their VMs to a modern platform while mitigating risk, Red Hat Consulting offers customized support that addresses every step of VM migration. 

Red Hat Consulting can help your organization migrate to Red Hat OpenShift Virtualization through services across 3 distinct phases:

Establish a strategy 

You have the option of starting your migration journey with a Red Hat Consulting: Virtualization Migration Assessment. During this 2-week assessment, Red Hat consultants work with your teams to create a strategic path forward for your VM migration.

Through an initial discovery session and a subsequent series of assessment workshops with your platform teams, Red Hat consultants develop a holistic understanding of the current state of your environment, as well as your needs and goals for your future state. More specifically, consultants will:

• Analyze your current VM infrastructure (including compute, network, and storage). 
• Identify VM workloads and define integrations. 
• Understand Day 2 operations, including automation, configuration management, monitoring, and backups.

Next, Red Hat Consulting will provide a tailored high-level solution design for your target virtualization environment and generate a customized roadmap for migrating to OpenShift Virtualization. This roadmap will include strategies for management, monitoring, risk mitigation, and disaster recovery, as well as a security-focused approach and timeline for VM migration.

At the end of the this phase, your teams will have: 

• A clear and strategic roadmap for migration.
• A path to retirement of your existing solution. 
• Expert recommendations and strategic advice.
• Customized training opportunities.
• A total cost for the complete migration.

Lay a foundation to accelerate migration

For a more efficient path to retiring your existing virtualization solution, Red Hat consultants will implement Red Hat Consulting: OpenShift Virtualization Production Build and Migration Factory engagement to help you migrate initial workloads to OpenShift Virtualization, and later to expand your virtualization footprint to scale migration. This engagement begins with production build and includes hands-on support and technical guidance to help your teams begin migration efforts, including:

• Deploying a Red Hat OpenShift cluster. 
• Enabling and validating virtualization features.
• Migrating initial selected VM workloads. 
• Validating your migration strategy. 
• Automating Day 2 operations.

During this phase, Red Hat recommends taking Red Hat training focused on OpenShift Virtualization. This self-paced training helps organizations develop the skills required to confidently migrate, create, and manage VMs on Red Hat OpenShift. It also provides strategies to connect VMs on Red Hat OpenShift to datacenter services outside of a Red Hat OpenShift cluster, and offers ample architectures to manage high availability of VMs using standard Kubernetes features and extensions from OpenShift Virtualization. 

By the end of the production build and initial migration phase, your organization will unlock benefits that include:

• Reduced complexity, with a unified platform for all workloads. 
• Preservation of your existing virtualization investments. 
• VM workload consistency, production-grade reliability, and operational excellence.
• The flexibility to modernize applications and infrastructure when you are ready.

Immediately following the production build and initial migration, Red Hat consultants will introduce the migration factory phase so that your organization can scale migration and bring over remaining workloads. Red Hat consultants will work with your teams to: 

• Automate the migration of batched VMs using Red Hat Ansible® Automation Platform.
• Automate the configuration of components (including networking).
• Develop repeat migration patterns to migrate groups of VMs in waves. 
• Validate complete migration. 
• Complete the retirement of your existing solution.

By working with Red Hat to expand the migration of your VM workloads to OpenShift Virtualization, your organization will have a smarter migration model that reduces complexity, mitigates risk, protects application quality, and lowers operational costs.

Evolve

OpenShift Virtualization offers your organization the flexibility to innovate and modernize at your own pace. As a comprehensive platform, Red Hat OpenShift makes it possible to both maintain your existing VM investments and work towards modernizing applications when you are ready, which can help your organization to:

• Take advantage of modern tools and management principles integrated into Red Hat OpenShift. 
• Achieve workload flexibility and management consistency with Red Hat OpenShift’s consistent operational model for managing workloads on premise, in a cloud environment, and at the edge. 
• Support Day 2 operations by optimizing configuration management and using Ansible Automation Platform to further implement automation to help reduce time-consuming manual processes.

Red Hat experts can collaborate with your teams to accelerate your migration success and help you make the most of OpenShift Virtualization through 3 distinct service offerings:

Red Hat Consulting 

Red Hat Consultants help tailor solutions to your specific needs. They can work with your organization to create and implement a strategy for migration and modernization, and help you build a foundation for long-term success.

Red Hat Training and Certification

Red Hat Training and Certification offers a suite of expert-created courses that equip organizations and individuals with the knowledge and expertise needed to successfully use Red Hat technologies—including OpenShift Virtualization. Role-based courses and hands-on exams develop and validate real-world skills.

Red Hat Technical Account Management 

A Red Hat Technical Account Manager (TAM) is a technical expert who serves as a single point of contact for technical advice and ongoing support. TAMs have specialized knowledge of Red Hat products and can help you achieve your migration goals and prepare for potential modernization.

Looking to accelerate your exit from your existing virtualization solution and safely and efficiently migrate your VMs to a trusted platform? Your quickest path to a new solution begins with a Virtualization Migration Assessment. Speak to a Red Hatter to learn more about the benefits, and how to get started.