The virtualization landscape is changing rapidly, particularly with VMware’s acquisition by Broadcom. This significant change leads organizations relying heavily on VMware to reconsider virtualization’s role in their IT infrastructures and application architectures. As a result, many enterprises are now speeding up their efforts to modernize traditional applications into cloud-native or microservices-based architectures.
Modern virtualization solutions are leading this transformation. These technologies allow containers and virtual machines to run concurrently on the same infrastructure, leading to significant consolidation and cost savings.
In this article, we’ll learn about modern virtualization, its benefits and use cases for enterprises, and the 5 best modern virtualization solutions available.
Modern virtualization enables VM administrators to integrate VMs into containerized workflows by running a VM within a container. This approach allows the deployment and management of VMs alongside containers on a single platform, leveraging existing virtualization investments while benefiting from the simplicity and speed of modern application platforms and developer-friendly DevOps practices.
Figure: Thanks to Portworx
While traditional virtualization primarily focuses on server consolidation, modern virtualization, or Cloud-Native Virtualization (CNV), extends far beyond. Modern virtualization emphasizes the following features:
Containerization: Containers, such as those managed by Docker, provide a lightweight alternative to VMs. They share the host machine’s operating system kernel, offering faster startup times and improved resource utilization.
Cloud-Native Virtualization: Cloud-native virtualization platforms facilitate the seamless management of VMs and containers within a cloud-native environment, addressing diverse application needs.
Software-Defined Approach: Modern virtualization extends beyond servers to include storage (Storage Area Network – SAN), networking (Software-Defined Networking – SDN), and even desktops (Virtual Desktop Infrastructure – VDI), simplifying IT infrastructure management through a holistic approach.
Benefits of Modern Virtualization
Modern virtualization offers several benefits to businesses, including:
Enhanced efficiency: By optimizing hardware resource utilization, virtualization reduces the number of physical servers required, lowering energy consumption and operational costs.
Increased Scalability: Organizations can easily add or remove virtual resources as required, adapting to changing workloads without making large hardware investments.
Greater Agility: Provisioning and deploying new VMs or containers is faster and more automated, reducing development and deployment cycles.
Simplified Management: Central management tools allow for effective monitoring and control of virtual resources while reducing administrative overhead.
Greater cost-effectiveness: Cost savings can be achieved by optimizing resource utilization and reducing hardware requirements.
Modern virtualization incorporates these advanced features and benefits to meet enterprises’ changing needs, resulting in a more flexible, efficient, and cost-effective IT infrastructure.
Challenges with Traditional Virtualization Infrastructures
While traditional virtualization is fundamental in IT infrastructure, it poses several challenges that modern virtualization seeks to address:
Complexity
Managing separate environments for VMs and containers can be complicated and resource-intensive. Traditional virtualization often requires separate tools and processes, increasing operational overhead.
Inefficient resource utilization
Traditional virtualization infrastructures, due to the separation of VMs and containers, may result in underutilized resources. This inefficiency can lead to higher operating costs and lower overall performance.
Scalability Limitations
Scaling traditional virtualization infrastructures can be difficult because they are not built to support the dynamic scaling capabilities offered by modern orchestration tools such as Kubernetes.
Integration Challenges
Integrating traditional virtual machines with modern cloud-native applications can be difficult, resulting in a fragmented infrastructure and increased management complexity.
Modern virtualization solutions address these challenges by offering a unified, scalable, and efficient approach to managing both virtual machines and containers, creating the way for seamless infrastructure modernization.
5 Best Modern Virtualization Solutions in 2024
Here are the five best modern virtualization solutions integrating virtual machines (VMs) and containers, providing unified management and enhanced capabilities.
KubeVirt
KubeVirt is an extension of Kubernetes that enables the management of virtual machines (VMs) alongside container workloads within a Kubernetes cluster. It bridges the gap between traditional virtualization and modern container orchestration, allowing organizations to integrate VMs seamlessly into their containerized environments.
Figure: Thanks to kubebyexample
Key Features
Kubernetes Integration: KubeVirt integrates tightly with Kubernetes, leveraging its native features like Persistent Volume Claims (PVCs) for VM storage and Kubernetes pods for VM deployment. This allows for a unified management experience across VMs and containers.
VM Management: VMs are treated as first-class citizens within Kubernetes, enabling using standard Kubernetes tools and APIs to manage them. This includes capabilities like scheduling, scaling, and lifecycle management.
Live Migration: KubeVirt supports live migration of VMs, allowing them to be moved between nodes without downtime, which is crucial for maintaining high availability and minimizing service disruptions.
Benefits
Unified Management: By integrating VMs into the Kubernetes ecosystem, KubeVirt provides a single interface for managing VMs and containers. This simplifies operations and reduces the complexity of maintaining separate environments.
Resource Optimization: Running VMs and containers on the same infrastructure optimizes resource utilization, leading to cost savings and improved performance.
Scalability and Flexibility: KubeVirt leverages Kubernetes’ robust orchestration capabilities, enabling dynamic scaling and flexible resource allocation. This makes it easier to adapt to changing workload demands and business requirements.
Modernization Path: KubeVirt facilitates the gradual modernization of legacy applications. Organizations can containerize new applications while continuing to run existing VMs, providing a smooth transition to cloud-native architectures.
Use Cases
Hybrid Workloads: KubeVirt is ideal for environments where both containerized applications and traditional VM-based applications need to coexist. This is common in enterprises transitioning to cloud-native architectures while maintaining legacy systems.
DevOps and CI/CD: By integrating VMs into containerized workflows, KubeVirt supports modern DevOps practices and continuous integration/continuous deployment (CI/CD) pipelines. This enables faster development cycles and more efficient deployment processes.
Disaster Recovery: The ability to perform live migrations and automated failover ensures high availability and robust disaster recovery capabilities, which are critical for maintaining business continuity.
Red Hat OpenShift Virtualization
Red Hat OpenShift Virtualization, built on the KubeVirt project, is an integral part of the Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform. It enables organizations to manage virtual machines (VMs) alongside containers, providing a comprehensive and unified platform for all workloads. This integration supports seamless migration and managing traditional VM-based applications within a modern, cloud-native environment.
Figure: Thanks to NetApp
Key Features or Red Hat OpenShift Virtualization
Unified Platform: Red Hat OpenShift Virtualization offers a single platform to run and manage VMs, containers, and serverless applications, streamlining operations and improving efficiency.
Kubernetes-Based Management: OpenShift Virtualization leverages Kubernetes for orchestration and provides advanced scheduling, scaling, and lifecycle management capabilities for VMs.
DevOps Integration: It integrates with CI/CD pipelines, enabling automated workflows and enhancing development and deployment processes.
Enterprise-Grade Security: The platform includes robust security features, such as role-based access control (RBAC) and network policies, ensuring secure operations across all workloads.
Benefits
Simplified VM Migration: OpenShift Virtualization simplifies the migration of VMs to a cloud-native environment, enabling organizations to modernize their infrastructure without disrupting existing operations.
Operational Efficiency: The platform reduces complexity and administrative overhead by unifying the management of VMs and containers, leading to more efficient IT operations.
Enhanced Developer Productivity: Developers can leverage a consistent set of tools and processes across all types of workloads, improving productivity and accelerating time to market.
Cost Savings: Consolidating VMs and containers on a single platform optimizes resource utilization and reduces infrastructure costs.
Use Cases
Application Modernization: OpenShift Virtualization supports the gradual modernization of legacy applications, allowing organizations to run traditional VMs alongside new containerized applications.
Hybrid Cloud Environments: The platform’s flexibility makes it ideal for hybrid cloud deployments, providing consistent management across on-premises and cloud environments.
DevOps and CI/CD: Integration with DevOps tools and practices enables streamlined development, testing, and deployment processes, enhancing the agility of IT teams.
Platform9 offers managed KubeVirt, providing a single interface for running Kubernetes clusters and virtual machines (VMs). It is designed to deliver a seamless hybrid cloud experience, making it easier for enterprises to manage and scale their cloud-native and traditional workloads.
Key Features
Managed KubeVirt: Platform9 provides a fully managed service, reducing the operational burden on IT teams and ensuring high availability and performance.
Broad Hardware Support: VM HA, Live Migration, Broad Hardware Support.
SR-IOV: I/O Controls, Acceleration, and SR-IOV.
Bare Metal OS Provisioning: Bare metal OS provisioning is available separately.
Single Interface Management: Single pane mgmt of the large-scale virtualized environment.
Ease of Use: With a fully managed service, Platform9 allows IT teams to focus on innovation rather than infrastructure management. The platform handles updates, security patches, and monitoring.
Scalability: Platform9’s hybrid cloud capabilities enable organizations to scale their operations dynamically, adding or removing resources as needed to match workload demands.
Cost Efficiency: The platform’s pay-as-you-go pricing model aligns with business needs, allowing enterprises to manage costs effectively while optimizing resource utilization.
Flexibility: Support for multiple environments and integration with existing infrastructure make it easier for enterprises to transition to cloud-native architectures at their own pace.
Use Cases
Hybrid Cloud Deployments: Platform9’s flexibility and support for various environments make it an ideal solution for hybrid cloud strategies, providing consistent management across on-premises and cloud resources.
Enterprise DevOps: With built-in CI/CD integrations and comprehensive monitoring, Platform9 supports agile development practices, accelerating application development and deployment.
Disaster Recovery: Platform9’s managed services ensure high availability and disaster recovery capabilities, which are critical for maintaining business continuity.
Proxmox VE
Proxmox VE (Virtual Environment) is an open-source virtualization management platform that supports KVM-based virtual machines and LXC containers. It offers a robust, enterprise-ready solution for managing various workloads through a single web-based interface. The integrated web-based user interface allows you to easily manage VMs and containers, high cluster availability, and integrated disaster recovery tools.
Comprehensive Management Interface: Proxmox VE offers a user-friendly web interface for managing VMs and containers, allowing administrators to perform tasks such as deployment, configuration, and monitoring with ease.
High Availability and Live Migration: The platform supports high availability clusters and live migration of VMs, ensuring minimal downtime and maintaining service continuity.
Backup and Restore: Proxmox VE includes integrated backup and restore capabilities, providing data protection and disaster recovery options.
Integrated Storage Solutions: It supports various storage types, including local storage, network-attached storage (NAS), and storage area networks (SAN), with integration for Ceph and ZFS.
Use Cases
Data Center Virtualization: Proxmox VE is ideal for data center environments, offering robust virtualization capabilities, high availability, and efficient resource management.
Development and Testing: Proxmox VE’s support for both VMs and containers makes Proxmox VE a versatile platform for development and testing environments, allowing developers to easily create and manage isolated test environments.
Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises (SMEs): Proxmox VE’s cost-effectiveness and rich feature set make it an excellent choice for SMEs looking to implement virtualization without significant capital expenditure.
VMware Tanzu
VMware Tanzu is a comprehensive suite of products designed to help organizations build, run, and manage modern applications on Kubernetes. It integrates virtual machines (VMs) and containers, providing a unified platform for modern IT infrastructures. VMware Tanzu leverages VMware’s extensive ecosystem and expertise in virtualization to deliver robust, enterprise-grade solutions.
The vSphere IaaS control plane provides VM Service functionality, allowing DevOps engineers to deploy and run VMs and containers in a shared Kubernetes environment. The VM Service manages the lifecycle of virtual machines in a namespace, stand-alone VMs, and VMs within TKG clusters.
Key Features
Multi-Cloud Support: VMware Tanzu offers extensive support for multi-cloud environments, allowing organizations to deploy and manage applications across different cloud platforms seamlessly.
Unified Management: The platform provides a single interface for managing both VMs and containers, simplifying operations and enhancing efficiency.
Enterprise-Grade Security and Compliance: Tanzu includes advanced security features and compliance capabilities, ensuring that applications and data remain secure and meet regulatory requirements.
Integration with Existing VMware Ecosystem: Tanzu integrates seamlessly with other VMware products, such as vSphere, NSX, and vSAN, enabling organizations to leverage their investments in VMware technologies.
Use Cases
Application Modernization: VMware Tanzu supports the modernization of legacy applications by enabling the concurrent management of VMs and containerized workloads, facilitating a smooth transition to cloud-native architectures.
Hybrid and Multi-Cloud Environments: The platform’s extensive multi-cloud capabilities make it ideal for organizations implementing hybrid and multi-cloud strategies, ensuring consistent management and operations across diverse environments.
DevOps and Agile Development: Tanzu’s integration with CI/CD tools and support for DevOps practices make it a powerful platform for agile development, enabling faster and more reliable application delivery.
Conclusion
The shift towards cloud-native and microservices-based architectures has underscored the need for modern virtualization solutions that can manage both virtual machines (VMs) and containers. In this article, we cover the five best modern virtualization solutions: KubeVirt, Red Hat OpenShift Virtualization, Platform9, Proxmox VE, and VMware Tanzu. Each of these solutions comes with its own unique features and benefits, enhancing resource utilization, operational efficiency, and scalability, making them essential for hybrid and multi-cloud environments.
These solutions address the limitations of traditional virtualization by offering improved efficiency, agility, and cost-effectiveness. Organizations can streamline their IT operations, optimize their resources, and support the dynamic needs of modern applications by adopting these advanced platforms. For detailed information on each solution, it is recommended to refer to their respective documentation and official sites.
Nisar Ahmad
Nisar is a founder of Techwrix, Sr. Systems Engineer, double VCP6 (DCV & NV), 8 x vExpert 2017-24, with 12 years of experience in administering and managing data center environments using VMware and Microsoft technologies. He is a passionate technology writer and loves to write on virtualization, cloud computing, hyper-convergence (HCI), cybersecurity, and backup & recovery solutions.