Virtualization is a cornerstone of the data center, providing a platform which organizations can use to more rapidly deploy new servers for applications, or to more confidently host existing applications which are critical to keeping the business operational. A virtualization platform should be a reliable and hardworking stalwart, ready to take on more work when needed.

Red Hat Virtualization should not be an exception to this. With a lengthy history of providing enterprise-ready virtual machine hosting, Red Hat Virtualization is an established virtualization solution used by customers all over the world to provide virtual servers for business-critical applications, helping to expedite the time to deploy new services and reduce complexity so that administrators can focus on other tasks.

We are happy to announce that the next version of Red Hat Virtualization, version 4.3, is available as beta. Version 4.3 brings stability, performance, manageability, and security improvements over version 4.2, while also adding features to enhance overall capability and functionality.

Highlights of Red Hat Virtualization 4.3 Beta include:

Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) 8 Beta guest support. Want to deploy RHEL 8 as a guest operating system? Red Hat Virtualization supports other OSes, with planned support for RHEL 8 when it is launched.

Live migration of high performance virtual machines.

Red Hat OpenStack Platform 13 and 14 SDN certification. This includes Open Virtual Network (OVN) and Open vSwitch (OVS), providing support of Red Hat Virtualization’s integration with OpenStack’s software-defined network capabilities.

Enhanced storage functionality using "managed block storage" domains. Managed storage domains enable Red Hat Virtualization to connect to Cinder, using CinderLib, for storage connectivity and functionality, such as copy and clone offload operations.

Expanded Ansible integration for automating more tasks.

The release notes for Red Hat Virtualization 4.3 Beta contain the full list of changes to expect; there are dozens of updates to other aspects of Red Hat Virtualization in this version.

Excited? Download and try

Red Hat Virtualization 4.3 beta is currently available from the Customer Portal. Be sure to follow the guidelines for deploying the beta, if you encounter issues or want to provide feedback, we look forward to hearing from you!