OpenShift Virtualization Architecture Guide

This document provides opinionated architectural guidelines for deploying Red Hat OpenShift as a platform for virtualization workloads using OpenShift Virtualization. The architecture design guidelines provide a target platform to host workloads that may currently reside on one of the following platforms:

• VMware vSphere Foundation
• Red Hat Virtualization
• OpenStack (any distribution including Red Hat OpenStack Platform)

This document is supplementary to the product documentation and provides opinionated suggestions and guidance for configuring OpenShift for hosting virtual machines (VMs). It provides an overview of the technology in use, design considerations, and prescriptive guidance for implementation. The guidelines in this document do not define a required configuration for support and are not exhaustive. Before implementing, consider the needs and requirements of your virtualized applications, and choose the configuration that best meets your needs.

Scope

This document provides an architectural overview and design guidance for deploying and operating OpenShift Virtualization in an enterprise environment. The content focuses on the infrastructure and platform architecture required to support VM workloads within an OpenShift cluster. Key considerations include the following:

• Node and hardware design for VM hosting.
• Networking configuration, including separation of traffic types.
• Considerations for storage performance and availability.
• Starting points for lifecycle and Day 2 operations for VM infrastructure.
• Dependencies on existing IT systems (e.g., DNS, authentication, etc.).

This guide does not provide step-by-step deployment instructions. Instead, this document is intended to help you make informed architectural decisions and align your platform design with virtualization requirements.

Assumptions

This architecture guide assumes that the reader has the following knowledge:

• Working knowledge of OpenShift on bare metal, including installation methods Installer Provisioned Infrastructure (IPI) / User Provisioned Infrastructure (UPI), node roles, and cluster operations.
• Familiarity with Kernel-based Virtual Machine (KVM) virtualization concepts, including CPU and memory tuning, hardware acceleration, and VM lifecycle management.
• Experience configuring enterprise networking and Virtual Local Area Network (VLAN) segmentation for virtualized environments, including familiarity with NMstate Operator.
• Understanding of persistent storage in OpenShift, particularly Container Storage Interface (CSI) drivers, storage classes, and shared storage concepts needed for live migration.
• Awareness of OpenShift Virtualization capabilities and administrative workflows, including the use of the OpenShift console. CLI experience such as oc and/or virtctl is not expected. A working knowledge of YAML is helpful.

Target audience

This guide is intended for the following audiences:

• Enterprise architects who design hybrid infrastructure platforms that unify container and virtual machine workloads.
  Platform engineers and SRE teams who are responsible for scaling and operating OpenShift clusters with virtualized workloads.
• Infrastructure and virtualization architects who are evaluating OpenShift Virtualization as a strategic platform for consolidating VMs.
• Cloud and datacenter teams who are transitioning from traditional hypervisors (e.g., VMware, KVM/libvirt) to a cloud-native virtualization model.
• Security and compliance stakeholders who are assessing how OpenShift Virtualization aligns with existing controls, audit frameworks, and infrastructure segmentation.