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Red Hat OpenShift Virtualization for Administrators

Published by O'Reilly Media, Inc.

Intermediate content levelIntermediate

Comprehensive administration, infrastructure integration, and workload lifecycle strategies

What you’ll learn and how you can apply it

  • Deploy and validate the OpenShift Virtualization operator to run virtual machines natively alongside containers
  • Configure advanced multihomed networking architectures using the Multus CNI plug-in and network attachment definitions
  • Establish resilient disaster recovery and migration patterns using OADP, CSI snapshots, clones, and the Migration Toolkit for Virtualization (MTV)
  • Migrate legacy VM workloads from separate OpenShift or legacy container environments into a unified production OpenShift cluster
  • Isolate and control virtual machine ingress and egress traffic using standard Kubernetes network policies and external load balancers

Course description

The enterprise virtualization market is undergoing a significant architectural shift. For decades, VMware was the go-to solution for enterprise-level virtualization. But after recent shifts in industry licensing models and product portfolios, organizations are looking for alternatives to optimize costs and streamline platform management. Red Hat OpenShift Virtualization allows teams to run legacy virtual machines directly inside a modern Kubernetes-native control plane.

Muhammad Umer bypasses basic introductory content to provide senior infrastructure engineers and platform administrators with the precise technical skills required to deploy and maintain these environments at scale. The session focuses entirely on hands-on infrastructure tasks: implementing complex multihomed networks using the Multus CNI, provisioning persistent storage volumes, configuring the OpenShift API for Data Protection (OADP) operator for disaster recovery, and managing workload mobility using the Migration Toolkit for Virtualization (MTV). By practicing directly within interactive lab environments, engineers will learn how to transition enterprise VM workloads into production-ready OpenShift clusters while maintaining strict uptime standards.

Hands-on learning with interactive labs

All exercises and labs are provided as O'Reilly interactive labs—complete development environments that are preconfigured with everything you need. There’s nothing to install or configure; just click a link and get started! Interactive labs are sandboxed, so you can explore, experiment, and tinker without fear of breaking anything. And you can revisit them anytime after class ends to practice and refine your skills.

This live event is for you because...

  • You’re an infrastructure engineer looking to transition VMware workloads to OpenShift.
  • You’re a virtualization administrator who wants to move from traditional hypervisor management to cloud native infrastructure architecture.
  • You’re an OpenShift administrator who wants to become more proficient at executing Day 2 operations for virtualization environments.
  • You’re an OpenShift virtualization administrator who’s preparing for the Red Hat Certified Specialist in OpenShift Virtualization (EX316) certification.

Prerequisites

  • Familiarity with basic Red Hat OpenShift cluster administration layouts
  • Strong intermediate knowledge of enterprise Linux administration, networking, storage, and virtualization
  • Functional understanding of core Kubernetes/OpenShift concepts (how the control plane interacts with Pod scheduling, YAML manifests, and persistent volume claims)

Recommended preparation:

  • Access code examples, custom YAML manifests, and step-by-step lab tasks in the public GitHub repository (provided four weeks before course)

Recommended follow-up:

Schedule

The time frames are only estimates and may vary according to how the class is progressing.

Architecture, prerequisites, and operator setup (60 minutes)

  • Presentation: The KubeVirt architecture; how VMs exist inside standard Pod structures; comparison with traditional hypervisors; reviewing cluster physical compute/memory resource requirements; prepping custom resources for operator deployment
  • Interactive lab: Initialize the OpenShift Virtualization Operator and verify the health of the core control plane pods
  • Q&A
  • Break

VM provisioning, lifecycle, and command-line operations (60 minutes)

  • Presentation: Managing guest operating systems via the console versus CLI utilities (oc/virtctl); architectural deep dive into Containerized Data Importer (CDI) and DataVolume objects; storage classes, access modes (RWO/RWX), and live storage hotplugging mechanisms for persistent data
  • Interactive lab: Deploy a RHEL instance via the CLI, establish console connectivity, and dynamically hot plug a new block storage device without restarting the guest OS
  • Q&A
  • Break

Storage integration and OADP data protection (60 minutes)

  • Presentation: Deep dive into storage class profiles, CDI boot sources, and the OADP operator architecture; understanding how local volume snapshots coordinate with backup storage locations (S3/MinIO); defining backup storage locations, configuring Velero-based CRDs via OADP, and building golden templates using fast-cloning mechanisms
  • Interactive Lab: Provision persistent volumes, execute a full namespace backup via OADP, corrupt the local disk state, and run a complete restore to verify guest file integrity
  • Q&A
  • Break

High availability and cross-cluster MTV migration (50 minutes)

  • Presentation: Cluster high availability policies, node taints, and workload eviction rules during hypervisor maintenance; MTV with OpenShift as a source provider; configuring the Migration Toolkit for Virtualization control plane, adding external cluster provider credentials, and designing network/storage maps for incoming VMs
  • Interactive lab: Establish an MTV provider link between your source and target environments, map resource targets, and execute a complete cross-cluster workload migration

Wrap-up and Q&A (10 minutes)

Your Instructor

Muhammad Umer

With a nine-year professional trajectory from foundational system administration to site reliability engineering, I specialize in the architectural design and automation of high-availability enterprise platforms. My career has focused on transitioning legacy infrastructure into scalable, resilient systems that prioritize performance and uptime.

My core expertise involves deep root cause analysis of complex system bottlenecks and engineering automated solutions to eliminate operational toil. I manage the entire infrastructure lifecycle, including performance tuning, secure system hardening, and enterprise storage, by treating infrastructure as code. I hold advanced architectural certifications in container orchestration and enterprise Linux (RHCA), with a focus on bridging the gap between traditional operations and modern reliability engineering. Beyond my core engineering roles, I work as an independent trainer specializing in Linux and DevOps. I have also authored a book titled “Architecture and Design of the Linux Storage Stack". It has been published by Packt Publishing.

Skills covered

  • Virtualization
  • OpenShift