Red Hat Launches OpenShift 4.18: A Leap Forward for Hybrid Cloud Innovation
Red Hat, Inc., a global leader in open source solutions, has officially unveiled the latest iteration of its flagship hybrid cloud application platform, Red Hat OpenShift 4.18. This new version, built on Kubernetes, introduces a suite of enhancements aimed at optimizing operations and strengthening security across diverse IT environments. With these updates, Red Hat continues to deliver consistency and reliability to a wide array of applications, spanning from cloud-native and AI-powered to both virtualized and traditional setups.
Meeting Modern Virtualization Demands
Red Hat OpenShift is engineered to address the current virtualization challenges organizations face while facilitating a seamless migration path towards modernization. This platform empowers businesses to safeguard their existing investments while also providing them with the tools to transition effortlessly into a future driven by artificial intelligence (AI). According to Mike Barrett, Vice President and General Manager of Hybrid Cloud Platforms at Red Hat, OpenShift not only fulfills present virtualization needs but also supports forward-looking application modernization strategies.
Aligning with Industry Trends
The recent Gartner report, "Top Trends Impacting Infrastructure and Operations for 2025," highlights revirtualization and devirtualization as critical trends. This shift necessitates a reevaluation of virtualized infrastructures, providing organizations with an opportunity to adopt technologies that meet both current IT demands and future needs. Red Hat OpenShift 4.18 is designed to simplify the management of virtual machines and containers, offering a unified infrastructure that supports the realization of generative AI initiatives.
Enhanced Virtualization Experience
The virtualization enhancements in Red Hat OpenShift 4.18 aim to streamline networking, simplify storage migration, and improve virtual machine (VM) management. These updates are intended to reduce the operational complexity often associated with virtualized environments, thereby enhancing flexibility and resource efficiency.
- VM-friendly Networking: With the introduction of user-defined networks, OpenShift now supports common VM networking scenarios, making it easier for users to deploy their virtualization platforms. This feature is available on both OpenShift on AWS and Red Hat OpenShift Service on AWS, providing similar networking capabilities for secondary networks on AWS as those found on-premises. This advancement offers greater flexibility for hybrid cloud operations.
- VM Storage Migration: Available as a technology preview, this feature allows for non-disruptive data movement between storage devices and classes while a VM is operational. This capability enhances agility, enabling organizations to adapt swiftly to changing storage requirements.
- Tree-view Navigation: Another technology preview feature, tree-view navigation, allows users to organize VMs into logical folders, facilitating a more granular grouping. This, alongside logical grouping, enables simpler and quicker navigation between VMs with just a single click.
Additionally, Red Hat OpenShift 4.18 enhances user-defined networks with the Border Gateway Protocol (BGP), which supports advanced use cases such as VM static IP assignment, live migration, and improved multi-tenancy.
Extending Choices for Greater Hybrid Cloud Innovation
Red Hat OpenShift 4.18 expands its support to include additional public cloud providers, thereby offering users increased flexibility in choosing where and how to run their workloads. Notably, OpenShift now supports bare-metal deployments on Google Cloud and Oracle Cloud Infrastructure. For those interested in public cloud virtualization, Red Hat OpenShift Virtualization is now available as a technology preview on Oracle Cloud Infrastructure.
Simplified Security Operations
To bolster security, Red Hat OpenShift 4.18 introduces new features designed to enhance operational resilience while minimizing potential risks. The Secret Store Container Storage Interface (CSI) driver is now generally available, offering a vendor-neutral solution for managing sensitive information and credentials. This driver allows workloads on OpenShift to access external secret managers without retaining secrets within the cluster, thereby enhancing security hygiene and simplifying credential management. By keeping clusters unaware of secrets, this feature further reduces risk. Moreover, the Secret Store CSI Driver enhances complementary solutions such as OpenShift GitOps and OpenShift Pipelines by enabling secure consumption of secrets from external managers.
Availability and Support
Red Hat OpenShift 4.18 is now generally available. For more information on upgrading to the latest version, interested parties can visit the official Red Hat website here.
Reflections and Industry Reactions
In the words of Mike Barrett, "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."
This release marks another significant step for Red Hat in reinforcing its position as a leader in hybrid cloud solutions. By continuously adapting to the evolving needs of the industry, Red Hat demonstrates its commitment to providing robust, flexible, and secure platforms that empower organizations to navigate the complexities of modern IT landscapes. As businesses increasingly rely on cloud technologies to drive innovation and efficiency, platforms like Red Hat OpenShift 4.18 will be crucial in facilitating this transformation.
For more detailed insights and to explore the full capabilities of Red Hat OpenShift 4.18, readers are encouraged to visit the official Red Hat page.
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