Release of Red Hat Virtualization 4 Offers New Functionality for Workloads

Red Hat has released Red Hat Virtualization 4 (formerly Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization), the latest release of its Kernel-based Virtual Machine (KVM) virtualization platform that provides a centrally managed platform for Linux and Windows based workloads. 

The new version offers an updated hypervisor, new system dashboard, and centralized networking. Built on Red Hat Enterprise Linux, Red Hat Virtualization 4 includes a high-performing hypervisor (Red Hat Virtualization Host) and a web-based virtualization resource manager (Red Hat Virtualization Manager) for management of an enterprise’s virtualization infrastructure. The new release offers the following attributes:

- Performance and extensibility

- Management and automation

- Support for OpenStack and Linux containers

- Security and reliability

- Centralized networking through an external, third-party API

- Performance and Extensibility

Red Hat Virtualization 4 offers a smaller footprint hypervisor co-engineered with Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7.2. The new hypervisor helps streamline the installation of system packages and driver updates, simplify the deployment of modern technologies, and provide better hardware support configuration management integration. Additionally, Red Hat Virtualization can now be installed via Anaconda, a common installer for both Red Hat Enterprise Linux and Red Hat Virtualization hypervisor.

The new platform also includes support for advanced network functionality offering the ability to add and support third party network providers via a new open API. This feature allows for the centralization and simplification of network management systems by enabling Red Hat Virtualization Manager to communicate with external systems to define networking characteristics that can be applied to a virtual machine’s network interfaces.

Red Hat Virtualization 4 also offers a new system dashboard that provides a comprehensive view of virtualized resources and infrastructure. This enables administrators to better diagnose and remediate problems before they impact operations. 

- A storage image uploader, which provides a browser-based interface to upload existing KVM Virtual Machine files directly or via a remote URL, placing the image in the storage domain without requiring third party tools.

- Advanced live migration policies to enable users to fine-tune granular migration characteristics of hosts, down to an individual VM or cluster level, enabling faster operations and overall performance.

Red Hat Virtualization 4 offers support for Linux container-based workloads as well as OpenStack private and hybrid cloud deployments. For containers, Red Hat Virtualization 4 supports Red Hat Enterprise Linux Atomic Host as a configurable guest system and allows guest agents to be run as, and report on, containers on the Atomic Host VM.

Red Hat Virtualization 4 also provides native support for Red Hat OpenStack Platform Neutron. This enables organizations to streamline shared services and minimize their operational footprint by deploying services more seamlessly across traditional and cloud-enabled workloads.

New security assets have been brought to Red Hat Virtualization through its base in Red Hat Enterprise Linux including the support of sVirt, which applies Mandatory Access Control (MAC) for greater VM and hypervisor security. This helps to improve overall security and harden the physical and virtual environment against vulnerabilities that could be used as an attack vector against the host or other VMs.

Red Hat Virtualization is also integrated with Red Hat Satellite, Red Hat’s systems management solution. Red Hat Virtualization standardizes infrastructure and virtual machine guest provisioning through existing Red Hat Satellite 6 implementations. It also provides visibility into the host and virtual machine errata details to ensure patch compliance across a physical and virtual environment.