Organizations today are facing strategic decisions about migrating from older virtualization platforms. Rising costs, licensing changes and outdated infrastructure are pushing businesses to seek a reliable, efficient alternative. Red Hat OpenShift Virtualization provides a straightforward path for organizations looking to transition their virtual machines (VMs) quickly and confidently, minimizing operational disruption.
At the same time, OpenShift Virtualization supports organizations that want to modernize their infrastructure over time. By unifying VMs and containers on a single platform, it helps businesses streamline operations and move toward cloud-native architectures at their own pace. Customers can continue running traditional workloads while gaining the option to adopt containerization and modern development practices in the future, if and when they’re ready. OpenShift Virtualization doesn’t force a timeline—it provides the flexibility to modernize incrementally, on their terms.
OpenShift Virtualization, included with every edition of Red Hat OpenShift, lets you run and manage VMs alongside container workloads. It helps businesses migrate efficiently, providing stability and operational consistency across hybrid and multicloud environments.
Rapid growth in partner ecosystem
The partner ecosystem around OpenShift Virtualization is growing fast. At the time of writing this blog post, the information and partners featured in this blog are accurate although the list will shift quickly as new partnerships and integrations continue to grow.
Over the past year, OpenShift Virtualization has seen significant growth in its partner ecosystem. This momentum highlights the platform’s readiness for enterprises, providing essential integrations for data protection, storage, hardware platforms and critical workloads. It also reflects growing recognition from leading industry players across infrastructure, data services and software that OpenShift Virtualization is capable of supporting complex IT environments and strategic modernization efforts at scale.
Building confidence through collaboration
The increasing support from leading industry partners demonstrates OpenShift Virtualization’s maturity and growing market presence. Organizations benefit from simplified migration, reduced costs, consistent hybrid cloud management and a clear pathway toward modernization. These partnerships affirm that OpenShift is a trusted, robust platform ready to support organizations now and in the future.
The latter part of this blog post features a selection of current collaborations with partners across the OpenShift Virtualization ecosystem—offering a snapshot of a much broader and diverse array of certified partners across storage, networking, backup, disaster recovery (DR) and services that contribute to a trusted, flexible and comprehensive virtualization solution.
First, let’s take a look at our partners that offer backup and DR solutions that offer data protection to OpenShift Virtualization.
Enhanced data protection
Industry leaders have rapidly announced support for OpenShift Virtualization, delivering comprehensive data protection:
Rubrik: The General Availability (GA) of Rubrik Security Cloud support for OpenShift Virtualization enables customers to apply Rubrik’s core security capabilities to their VMs. This includes features like immutable backups, air-gapped architecture, role-based access control (RBAC) and rapid recovery. The integration uses Rubrik Custom Resource Definitions (CRDs), aligning with Kubernetes-native workflows to protect VM workloads throughout migration and modernization.Cohesity: With the release of Cohesity Data Cloud 7.2.2, support for OpenShift Virtualization was formally added. Customers can now use Cohesity DataProtect to secure workloads, aligning with their support for other major hypervisors such as VMware ESXi and Microsoft Hyper-V. This enables organizations to apply cyber resilience capabilities, such as global deduplication and fast recovery, to OpenShift VMs.Commvault: Commvault’s planned support for OpenShift Virtualization enables customers to automatically discover, protect and recover VMs on the OpenShift platform. Building on Commvault’s Kubernetes protection for OpenShift, this capability will allow customers to manage their entire virtualized estate—both VMs and containers—from a single, efficient platform and strengthen their cyber resilience with immutable, air-gapped VM protection and recovery.Dell Technologies: PowerProtect Data Manager (PPDM) version 19.19 provides GA support for OpenShift Virtualization. It includes per-VM restore, restores to original or alternate clusters with OpenShift Virtualization, storage class remapping, and optional power-on post recovery. Both Linux and Windows VM workloads are covered, allowing protection and recovery flexibility.CloudCasa by Catalogic: CloudCasa delivers GA support as a full-service solution for backup, restore, DR and migration tailored to OpenShift Virtualization. As a Red Hat Partner validated product, it offers unified management for both container and VM data protection, with features like immutable backups and multicloud compatibility through the OpenShift Virtualization Engine (OVE).Veeam Kasten: Veeam Kasten, integrated with OpenShift Virtualization provides comprehensive data protection for both containerized and virtualized workloads. With enhanced security and integration with Red Hat Advanced Cluster Security for Kubernetes, Veeam Kasten can help recover from ransomware attacks, provides NIST and FIPS 140-3 validation and can provide application and VM mobility, delivering freedom of choice.Trilio: Trilio collaborated with Red Hat to offer backup and DR solutions tailored for OpenShift Virtualization. Their joint efforts focus on providing extensive data protection strategies for enterprises transitioning to hybrid cloud environments.Veritas: Veritas NetBackup 10.5 has introduced support for OpenShift Virtualization, allowing for immediate VM protection upon migration. This integration offers advanced optimization with a lower total cost of ownership (TCO), flexibility across hybrid cloud environments and enhanced cyber resilience features, including AI-powered anomaly detection and immutable storage. NetBackup’s support ensures that enterprises can protect their OpenShift Virtualization workloads effectively, maintaining consistent data protection strategies across diverse environments.NetApp: NetApp expanded its collaboration with Red Hat to deliver enhanced data protection for OpenShift Virtualization. Through the integration of NetApp’s Trident CSI driver and ONTAP storage systems, organizations can take advantage of advanced replication and DR features, simplifying the management of virtualized environments within OpenShift.IBM: IBM Storage Fusion protects VMs from data loss and corruption by backing them up regularly, while IBM Storage Protect Plus delivers comprehensive data protection across diverse workloads, offering features like incremental forever backups, replication for DR and the ability to restore entire applications or granular data by taking advantage of technologies such as OpenShift APIs for Data Protection (OADP) and Container Storage Interface (CSI) snapshots. These solutions help ensure business continuity and data resilience for hybrid cloud environments.Storware: Storware Backup & Recovery is the backup and snapshot-management solution suite for OpenShift Virtualization. With the “freedom of choice” philosophy, Storware Backup & Recovery provides robust data protection and DR capabilities.Portworx: Portworx Backup provides storage-agnostic, Kubernetes-native backup and recovery for Red Hat OpenShift. With Portworx Backup version 2.7, they have extended support to OpenShift Virtualization delivering streamlined backup and recovery. In addition, Portworx also provides synchronous and asynchronous DR for workloads running in OpenShift Virtualization with Portworx Enterprise. These DR solutions can help protect workloads from disasters, including cybersecurity attacks, and help achieve near-zero recovery point and recovery time objectives.
Storage and networking support
Partners are deepening integrations for storage and specialized hardware:
NetApp: NetApp integrates with OpenShift Virtualization through its Certified Operator for Trident, which streamlines deployment and management of Trident, the NetApp CSI driver. Trident Protect adds snapshot-based backup and recovery for VMs using ONTAP storage, storing backups in S3-compatible object storage. It supports a wide range of protocols like Fibre Channel (FC), iSCSI, and NVMe/TCP, and is compatible with Red Hat OpenShift Service on AWS.IBM: In addition to robust file and object storage, IBM Storage Fusion SDS enhances workloads running in OpenShift Virtualization by providing RWX (ReadWriteMany) block storage, enabling live migration of virtual machines between nodes. It also offers high availability through three-way replication and integrated backup and DR capabilities for resilient and efficient storage management.Portworx by Pure Storage: At Red Hat Summit 2024, Pure Storage announced optimized integration of Portworx with Red Hat OpenShift. This collaboration enables enterprises to manage both virtual machines (VMs) and containers on a unified platform, streamlining operations and reducing costs. Notably, this integration offers an estimated 63% cost reduction in infrastructure expenses, licenses and subscriptions compared to alternative solutions. Portworx offers broad storage compatibility through Portworx Enterprise, regardless of the underlying storage infrastructure. In addition, the Portworx orchestrator delivers enhanced scalability for Pure Storage FlashArray and FlashBlade products via their CSI driver. Further announcements at Red Hat Summit 2025 highlight improved operational efficiency and cost optimization for OpenShift Virtualization.Arctera: InfoScale for Kubernetes is a software-defined storage solution that provides persistent storage volumes to containerized applications being managed within an OpenShift cluster. InfoScale uses its own CSI driver to manage persistent storage. InfoScale offers features such as I/O fencing for data integrity, stateful application failover, flexible storage sharing and DR.Hitachi: Expanding on its Storage Plug-in for Containers, Hitachi Vantara is introducing a set of collaborations with Red Hat that focus on transforming virtualization infrastructure and reducing operational costs. These include highly available multisite OpenShift Virtualization stretch clusters, faster VMware VM migration with “MTV+”, a GitOps-enabled DR blueprint for both applications and data, and new software-defined storage options for OpenShift on AWS.Dell: Dell Container Storage Modules (CSM) operator is a Kubernetes operator that can be used to install and manage Dell’s CSI drivers and CSM modules for Dell PowerScale, Dell PowerFlex, Dell PowerStore and Dell PowerMax, which all integrate with OpenShift Virtualization.Infinidat: Infinidat InfiniBox Container Storage Interface (CSI) Driver is a CNCF-compliant Kubernetes integration for InfiniBox storage systems, offering advanced enterprise functionality for OpenShift Virtualization, including multiprotocol flexibility, multipetabyte scalability and other advanced enterprise features.Tigera: Tigera’s Calico solution brings consistent networking and security to VMs and containers in OpenShift Virtualization. With unified policy enforcement and microsegmentation, organizations can extend existing network controls to VMs, easing transitions from platforms like VMware NSX.Cisco: Isovalent Enterprise Platform provides eBPF-based networking, observability and security with optimal scale and performance for platform teams operating Kubernetes environments across cloud and on-premise infrastructure. Also, the Cisco ACI CNI plugin for the Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform provides a single, programmable network infrastructure that eliminates bottlenecks between OpenShift workloads and the rest of the infrastructure while providing security capabilities and offers flexible microsegmentation possibilities.
Platforms
IBM Z: IBM introduced Technical Preview support for OpenShift Virtualization on IBM Z and IBM LinuxONE (s390x architecture), requiring OpenShift Container Platform 4.18 or newer. Customers can manage KVM-based VMs directly within OpenShift, using the same interfaces and tools available on x86 systems. This supports Linux workloads and allows standard networking and storage solutions, such as IBM Fusion Data Foundation.Dell Cloud Platform: Dell Cloud Platform for Red Hat OpenShift is a fully integrated platform built for Red Hat OpenShift. OpenShift Virtualization is supported out of the box to accelerate the migration and management of virtualized workloads.IBM Fusion: IBM Fusion HCI supports OpenShift Virtualization with integrated compute, storage and networking for VM and container workloads. In addition to robust file and object storage, it includes RWX block storage, three-way replication and live VM migration, enabling resilient virtualization on a hyperconverged OpenShift platform.HPE GreenLake: HPE GreenLake supports OpenShift Virtualization as part of its fully managed OpenShift platform, enabling VMs to run alongside containers on HPE infrastructure in a “pay-as-you-go” model. This helps customers modernize while continuing to run traditional workloads on trusted hardware, or repatriate workloads that are proving to be too expensive to remain in the public cloud.Cisco UCS: Cisco UCS provides a validated foundation for OpenShift Virtualization, supporting high-performance VMs on bare metal. With published designs integrating GPUs and high-speed fabrics, customers can consolidate VM and container operations on a unified platform. With Cisco Validated Designs, Cisco provides architectures for OpenShift Virtualization in collaboration with storage partners, such as NetApp and Pure Storage.Nvidia: You can use the NVIDIA GPU operator with OpenShift Virtualization to rapidly provision worker nodes for running GPU-enabled VMs. The NVIDIA GPU operator manages NVIDIA GPU resources in an OpenShift Container Platform cluster and automates tasks that are required when preparing nodes for GPU workloads. Typical GPU-enabled workloads are rendering (e.g., movies), as well as AI/ML workloads.
Cloud service providers
Red Hat OpenShift Service on AWS: OpenShift Virtualization is available on OpenShift Service on AWS, giving customers a fully managed, cloud-native experience for running VMsand containers side by side. This offering simplifies operations by offloading infrastructure management to Red Hat and AWS, while still providing full access to the tools and capabilities of OpenShift Virtualization.Red Hat OpenShift on IBM Cloud: OpenShift Virtualization is available on Red Hat OpenShift in IBM Cloud, allowing customers to deploy both new and existing VM workloads alongside containers on a single, managed platform on IBM Cloud.Stay tuned for more cloud announcements.
Expanded validated workloads
OpenShift Virtualization, using the trusted KVM hypervisor, supports a wide array of workloads, encompassing both Windows and Linux operating systems (OSs). Numerous software vendors have been, and are, actively engaged in validating their applications, ensuring the necessary performance and reliability on the platform. This growing validation strengthens confidence in deploying critical enterprise applications on OpenShift Virtualization, expanding the ecosystem and demonstrating the platform’s versatile capabilities. Here are some recent examples:
Leostream: Leostream’s Remote Desktop Access Platform is validated for OpenShift Virtualization, enabling organizations to deploy and manage Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) solutions. Leostream integrates with KubeVirt APIs to manage VM inventory, provisioning, power states and user access with security capabilities.Crunchy Data: Crunchy Data provides a Certified PostgreSQL operator via OperatorHub and explicitly certifies its Crunchy High Availability PostgreSQL solution for use with OpenShift Virtualization. This helps ensure enterprise-grade PostgreSQL deployments can be managed reliably within the platform.Checkmk: Checkmk integrates with OpenShift Virtualization by utilizing Kubernetes APIs and Prometheus to monitor cluster performance and VM hosting infrastructure. It provides insight into node status, CPU and memory usage, pod health and overall performance without requiring an in-cluster agent.HCL Tech: HCL supports OpenShift Virtualization across multiple tools. HCL Workload Automation is validated to manage complex workflows that include VMs. HCL BigFix Inventory supports software license metric collection in VMs, and the company offers migration services like Application to Container (A2C)-OpenShift and Kubernetes Migration Platform (KMP).Perpetuuiti: The Continuity Patrol platform includes OpenShift Virtualization as part of its DR and business continuity solutions. It enables orchestration of DR workflows for VMs, ensuring resilience for enterprise workloads on OpenShift.Palo Alto Networks: Palo Alto Networks’ VM-series, next-generation firewalls deployed on OpenShift Virtualization offer a scalable and agile security solution with modern security, threat coverage and unified management.Crowdstrike: By taking advantage of the CrowdStrike operator to deploy Falcon Sensors, customers can gain comprehensive breach protection for OpenShift nodes, workloads and containers by focusing on staying ahead of adversaries and reducing the attack surface and obtain unparalleled real-time visibility of events taking place in the environment as well as save operational time and effort with streamlined deployment.InfoBlox: Threat Defense uniquely combines advanced analytics based on machine learning (ML), highly accurate and aggregated threat intelligence and automation to detect and prevent a broad range of threats, including DGA families, data exfiltration, look-alike domain use, fast flux and many others. Universal DDI delivers centralized configuration and control, comprehensive DNS, DHCP and IP Address Management integration and support for flexible deployment models to streamline operations at scale; NIOS enables you to deploy large, high-performance, robust, manageable and cost-effective Infoblox Grids.RiverMeadow: RiverMeadow supports migrations to OpenShift Virtualization (including AWS, GCP, MSFT and IBM) as a target cloud.Microsoft: Microsoft Windows Server OS products have their Server Virtualization Validation Program (SVVP) which includes OpenShift Virtualization.EDB: EDB provides a robust Postgres platform for Red Hat OpenShift that delivers enhanced scalability and resiliency. Along with a focus on enhancing AI workloads, EDB delivers core database functionality for workloads running in OpenShift Virtualization and provides a clear path to support future application modernization strategies.
Strong future in VDI and beyond
Virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) is a priority growth area for OpenShift Virtualization. An upcoming integration with Citrix is expected to bring additional flexibility and options for desktop virtualization. While full details are pending launch, Citrix already integrates with OpenShift for ADCs, Ingress Controllers and API Gateways, setting a strong foundation for its expansion into VDI support.
Looking forward
While this post highlights numerous key collaborations, it represents only a portion of the extensive and continually expanding OpenShift Virtualization partner ecosystem. A diverse array of certified partners across storage, networking, backup, DR and services contribute to a flexible and comprehensive virtualization solution.
Red Hat will continue to support and enable our partners in their effort to validate their workloads running on OpenShift Virtualization through providing joint roadmap alignment, offering lab resources, directing engineering assistance as needed and creating joint go-to-market collateral.
The partner ecosystem for OpenShift Virtualization is consistently being added to and improved on. To explore the full range of validated partner solutions and integrations, visit the Red Hat Ecosystem Catalog.
