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About Red Hat OpenShift Virtualization

Red Hat OpenShift Virtualization enables you to bring traditional virtual machines (VMs) into OpenShift Container Platform where they run alongside containers, and are managed as native Kubernetes objects.

OpenShift Virtualization is represented by the OpenShift Virtualization logo.

You can use OpenShift Virtualization with either the OVN-Kubernetes or the OpenShiftSDN default Container Network Interface (CNI) network provider.

OpenShift Virtualization supported cluster version

OpenShift Virtualization 2.6 is supported for use on OpenShift Container Platform 4.7 clusters. To use the latest z-stream release of OpenShift Virtualization, you must first upgrade to the latest version of OpenShift Container Platform.

Supported guest operating systems

OpenShift Virtualization guests can use the following operating systems:

  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6, 7, and 8.

  • Microsoft Windows Server 2012 R2, 2016, and 2019.

  • Microsoft Windows 10.

Other operating system templates shipped with OpenShift Virtualization are not supported.

Making open source more inclusive

Red Hat is committed to replacing problematic language in our code, documentation, and web properties. We are beginning with these four terms: master, slave, blacklist, and whitelist. Because of the enormity of this endeavor, these changes will be implemented gradually over several upcoming releases. For more details, see our CTO Chris Wright’s message.

New and changed features

  • OpenShift Virtualization is certified in Microsoft’s Windows Server Virtualization Validation Program (SVVP) to run Windows Server workloads.

    The SVVP Certification applies to:

    • Red Hat Enterprise Linux CoreOS workers. In the Microsoft SVVP Catalog, they are named Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform 4 on RHEL CoreOS.

    • Intel and AMD CPUs.

  • Virtual machines that have the LiveMigratable condition set to True and the spec.evictionStrategy field set to LiveMigrate are now migrated when a node is drained in preparation for maintenance. You can set a node to maintenance mode in the CLI by running the oc adm drain command.

  • You can now boot a virtual machine (VM) in Extensible Firmware Interface (EFI) mode.

    OpenShift Virtualization only supports a VM with Secure Boot when using EFI mode. If Secure Boot is not enabled, the VM crashes repeatedly. However, the VM might not support Secure Boot. Before you boot a VM, verify that it supports Secure Boot by checking the VM settings.

Installation

Storage

  • When you add a virtual machine disk to a persistent volume claim (PVC) that uses the Filesystem volume mode, the Containerized Data Importer (CDI) now reserves 5.5% of the PVC space for file system overhead. If the default value is not ideal for your use case, you can change the percentage that CDI reserves for this purpose.

  • When preparing local storage for a virtual machine disk image, a volume might be allocated from a different node than is required by the virtual machine. To prevent scheduling problems, the Containerized Data Importer now integrates with the Kubernetes WaitForFirstConsumer binding mode to ensure that volumes are allocated from the correct node.

  • The Containerized Data Importer can now preallocate disk space to import and upload data and create blank data volumes at a faster speed.

  • You can now control which network the Containerized Data Importer (CDI) uses when importing virtual machine disk images by adding the following annotation to the metadata.annotations field of a DataVolume object:

    k8s.v1.cni.cncf.io/networks: <network_name>

    If you use this annotation, the transfer pod will use both the default network from the cluster and the secondary Multus network.

Web console

Notable technical changes

  • The procedure for installing OpenShift Virtualization in the web console has been streamlined. You can now create the HyperConverged custom resource immediately after installing the OpenShift Virtualization Operator by clicking Create HyperConverged.

  • Previously, there was a spec.BareMetalPlatform field in the HyperConverged object. This field has been removed.

  • The Containerized Data Importer (CDI) configuration parameters have moved from the CDIConfig object to the CDI object. All changes to the CDI configuration must now be made in the spec.config field of the CDI object.

  • Istio sidecar injection to transfer pods is now disabled by default. You can override the default option by using the following annotation in the metadata.annotations field of a DataVolume object:

    sidecar.istio.io/inject: “true”

    Set this option to enable sidecar injection to the transfer pods.

Known issues

  • A virtual machine instance (VMI) fails to migrate if the cdrom drive is set to readonly: true in the VMI spec. The following message is displayed: Operation not supported: Cannot migrate empty or read-only disk sdb. (BZ#1927378)

  • Some Containerized Data Importer (CDI) operations are currently not preallocated when requested. These include:

    • Creating blank block disks

    • Importing VMWare disk images

  • If a cloning operation is initiated before the source is available to be cloned, the operation stalls indefinitely. This is because the clone authorization expires before the cloning operation starts. (BZ#1855182)

    • As a workaround, delete the DataVolume object that is requesting the clone. When the source is available, recreate the DataVolume object that you deleted so that the cloning operation can complete successfully.

  • The Containerized Data Importer and KubeVirt depend on QEMU which does not support NFS version 3. Therefore, only NFS version 4 is supported. (BZ#1892445)

  • The name of the Fedora PVC in the openshift-virtualization-os-images namespace is fedora, instead of fedora32. If you populated the fedora32 PVC in OpenShift Virtualization 2.5 or earlier, the virtual machine does not appear in the web console and you cannot use it to clone another virtual machine. (BZ#1913352)

    • As a workaround, upload a Fedora image by naming the PVC fedora instead of fedora32.

  • When creating a HPP boot source, the data volume is pending with a WaitForFirstConsumer status if a user creates the boot source using any method except the Upload local file (creates PVC) option. (BZ#1929177)

    • As a workaround, in the StoragePersistent Volume Claims web console screen, edit the YAML of the underlying PVC of the data volume to add the cdi.kubevirt.io/storage.bind.immediate.requested: "true" annotation:

      metadata:
        annotations: cdi.kubevirt.io/storage.bind.immediate.requested: "true"
  • If you use a Fedora image as a boot source, it is no longer attached to a template if the PVC that you used to attach the boot source was previously provisioned. (BZ#1907187) (BZ#1913352)

    • As a workaround, attach a new PVC with the name fedora to a template before using it to create virtual machines from boot sources.

  • If your OpenShift Container Platform cluster uses OVN-Kubernetes as the default Container Network Interface (CNI) provider, you cannot attach a Linux bridge or bonding to the default interface of a host because of a change in the host network topology of OVN-Kubernetes. (BZ#1885605)

    • As a workaround, you can use a secondary network interface connected to your host, or switch to the OpenShift SDN default CNI provider.

  • Running virtual machines that cannot be live migrated might block an OpenShift Container Platform cluster upgrade. This includes virtual machines that use hostpath-provisioner storage or SR-IOV network interfaces. (BZ#1858777)

    • As a workaround, you can reconfigure the virtual machines so that they can be powered off during a cluster upgrade. In the spec section of the virtual machine configuration file:

      1. Remove the evictionStrategy: LiveMigrate field. See Configuring virtual machine eviction strategy for more information on how to configure eviction strategy.

      2. Set the runStrategy field to Always.

  • Live migration fails when nodes have different CPU models. Even in cases where nodes have the same physical CPU model, differences introduced by microcode updates have the same effect. This is because the default settings trigger host CPU passthrough behavior, which is incompatible with live migration. (BZ#1760028)

    • As a workaround, set the default CPU model in the kubevirt-config config map, as shown in the following example:

      You must make this change before starting the virtual machines that support live migration.

      1. Open the kubevirt-config config map for editing by running the following command:

        $ oc edit configmap kubevirt-config -n openshift-cnv
      2. Edit the config map:

        kind: ConfigMap
        metadata:
          name: kubevirt-config
        data:
          default-cpu-model: "<cpu-model>" (1)
        1 Replace <cpu-model> with the actual CPU model value. You can determine this value by running oc describe node <node> for all nodes and looking at the cpu-model-<name> labels. Select the CPU model that is present on all of your nodes.
  • If you enter the wrong credentials for the RHV Manager while importing a RHV VM, the Manager might lock the admin user account because the vm-import-operator tries repeatedly to connect to the RHV API. (BZ#1887140)

    • To unlock the account, log in to the Manager and enter the following command:

      $ ovirt-aaa-jdbc-tool user unlock admin