Red Hat, Inc., the leading provider of open-source solutions, has announced new features and enhancements for Red Hat OpenShift, its platform based on KubernetesKubernetes (commonly referred to in English as “K8s”) … for hybrid cloud applications, along with the beta release of Red Hat OpenShift Lightspeed. These updates, available with Red Hat OpenShift 4.17, aim to drive innovation in hybrid cloud while maintaining high standards of security and regulatory compliance.
With the rise of AI-enabled applications and edge computing, organizations are adopting more diversified infrastructures to respond to these demands, which increases complexity and associated risks related to security and compliance. The improvements introduced in Red Hat OpenShift simplify application development, reducing complexity and limiting bottlenecks through advanced security features. Furthermore, the beta version of OpenShift Lightspeed incorporates integrated generative AI to boost team productivity, regardless of their technical expertise.
Boost Productivity with Integrated Generative AI
Red Hat OpenShift Lightspeed includes a virtual assistant in Red Hat OpenShift that allows teams to ask technical questions in natural language and receive detailed responses, thereby optimizing their learning and work with OpenShift.
Using a natural language interface in English, users can consult the virtual assistant about OpenShift-related issues. This helps facilitate troubleshooting and resource exploration within the cluster by leveraging Red Hat’s extensive knowledge of the platform. As a result, users gain in productivity and efficiency, freeing IT teams to focus on innovation. The beta version of OpenShift Lightspeed is now compatible with Red Hat OpenShift AI and Red Hat Enterprise Linux AI as model providers, allowing organizations to utilize Red Hat’s technology as the foundation for the underlying LLM.
Optimized Experience Between Virtual Machines and Containers
As organizations integrate new intelligent workloads into their IT environments, traditional applications, including virtual machines (VMs), remain an essential part of their infrastructure. Having a unified solution that manages both VMs and containers with the same tools and provides a consistent experience is crucial for optimizing operations.
Red Hat OpenShift 4.17 incorporates significant enhancements to Red Hat OpenShift Virtualization, improving the management of virtualized workloads. Key features include improved secure memory overcommit, which increases workload density by allowing the execution of more virtual machines than the available physical memory, and enhanced dynamic workload balancing that ensures resource optimization and stability during cluster updates or changes in workload demand. A preview technology of live storage migration has been introduced, allowing the uninterrupted movement of data between devices and storage classes while a virtual machine is running. This release also presents, as a technology preview, a dedicated virtualization management console that offers a specific view for managing the OpenShift cluster, restricted to the features, add-ons, and plugins relevant to virtualization, thereby increasing administrator efficiency.
Additionally, Red Hat Advanced Cluster Management for Kubernetes, available separately or as part of Red Hat OpenShift Platform Plus, features new capabilities for managing virtual machines across multiple clusters. These include enhanced search and filtering for virtual machines, along with a technology preview capability to stop, start, restart, and pause virtual machines directly from Red Hat Advanced Cluster Management, providing a single management interface for VM administrators to interact with their resources, regardless of the cluster in which they are hosted.
Security Without Hindering Innovation
As developers accelerate workflows and the overall innovation of applications, it can be challenging to keep pace with security and regulatory compliance requirements. Red Hat OpenShift 4.17 introduces new security features to help organizations focus on innovation without compromising the platform’s security posture.
The new features in technology preview include native network isolation for namespaces to keep workloads and sensitive data separate, user namespaces in pods to protect against privilege escalation, as well as the Confidential Compute Attestation Operator that provides certification services for confidential container workloads, offering protection for data in use.