Optimize your virtualization platform: IBM Turbonomic now manages VMs on Red Hat OpenShift

With many businesses rethinking their reliance on their traditional virtualization platform, IT teams are looking for ways to manage costs without compromising performance or control. For organizations migrating VM workloads or running them side by side with containers, IBM Turbonomic and Red Hat OpenShift Virtualization now offer a unified, intelligent platform to optimize and enable innovation.

The powerful new integration between IBM Turbonomic, a leader in application resource management (ARM) and Red Hat OpenShift Virtualization extends OpenShift by adding support for virtual machines (VMs) alongside containers. Powered by KubeVirt and the KVM hypervisor, OpenShift Virtualization lets you run, manage, and migrate Linux and Windows VMs. For organizations focused solely on virtualization, Red Hat also offers OpenShift Virtualization Engine, a dedicated edition of OpenShift that provides the same proven virtualization capabilities without the container platform and application development and delivery features found in the broader OpenShift platform. 
 
IBM Turbonomic already helps OpenShift users automatically manage and optimize container workloads. With this new integration, Turbonomic extends those same capabilities to VMs running on OpenShift Virtualization, providing teams with unified control of resource optimization across both VMs and containers in hybrid environments.

What is IBM Turbonomic? 

IBM Turbonomic is a platform designed to manage and optimize application resources automatically. It continuously checks resource demands and provides clear recommendations and automated adjustments to keep applications running smoothly and efficiently. 

At its core, Turbonomic takes a unique application-centric approach to resource management. It automatically discovers your entire environment, from applications to infrastructure, and maps the dependencies between them. Using real-time analytics and AI-driven decision making, it determines the exact resources each application needs and takes action to ensure those needs are met. This may involve resizing workloads, relocating them to different hosts, or scaling the infrastructure up or down. The result is applications that perform reliably, infrastructure that's used efficiently, and IT teams that are freed from constantly addressing urgent issues to focus on strategic initiatives.

What is OpenShift Virtualization? 

Red Hat OpenShift Virtualization is included with every OpenShift edition and enables organizations to run and manage VMs alongside containers. Built on the proven KVM hypervisor, it supports existing Windows and Linux VMs while providing virtualization features such as live migration, high availability, and VM templates.

For teams focused purely on virtualization, the OpenShift Virtualization Engine offers the exact same virtualization capability found in all OpenShift editions, delivered in a VM-only, cost-efficient edition without the full container and comprehensive set of modern application development features.

Organizations can choose the approach that best fits their current infrastructure and application goals. The full OpenShift platform unifies VMs and containers under consistent management while providing modern application development capabilities. Alternatively, OpenShift Virtualization Engine delivers virtualization-only functionality for teams not yet investing in containers.

Both options include the migration toolkit for virtualization, which enables smooth migrations from traditional virtualization platforms while maintaining operational continuity. 

How Turbonomic enhances OpenShift Virtualization

With the integration between Turbonomic and OpenShift Virtualization, Turbonomic can now directly support VM workloads on OpenShift. Users will get clear visibility into resource usage, better understand performance, and receive straightforward suggestions on how to optimize their infrastructure. 

Key business drivers

Initially, Turbonomic supported only container workloads on OpenShift. As organizations increasingly seek to manage VMs and containers on a unified platform for efficiency and cost savings, this gap needs to be addressed. Additionally, organizations considering alternatives to their existing traditional virtualization platform now have a modern unified solution for both VMs and containers with OpenShift Virtualization.

With this new integration, Turbonomic supports VMs running on OpenShift, simplifying resource management across hybrid environments.

Benefits  

Turbonomic helps ensure applications perform reliably by: 

• Intelligent sizing: Automatically adjusting resources allocated to VMs and containers based on real-time demand.
• Avoiding resource bottlenecks: Continuously balancing workloads to prevent performance issues.
• Dynamic resource scaling: Automatically scaling resources to meet real-time demand efficiently.
• Proactive planning: Providing accurate forecasts and clear action plans based on actual utilization data.

Common use cases

• VMware-to-OpenShift migration with continuous optimization: Organizations migrating from their existing traditional virtualization platform gain immediate access to Turbonomic's DRS-like capabilities on OpenShift Virtualization. The platform provides automated VM placement, nondisruptive workload moves between nodes, and continuous rebalancing—maintaining the operational experience teams expect while eliminating vendor lock-in.
• Unified hybrid workload management: Turbonomic treats VMs and containers as equally important in its optimization engine, managing both through OpenShift's unified Kubernetes architecture. This eliminates the need for separate management tools and enables consistent policy application across all workloads.
• Cost optimization through intelligent resource management: By continuously analyzing actual application demand rather than allocated resources, Turbonomic identifies and eliminates waste across VM estates.
• Enterprise-scale automation: For organizations running hundreds or thousands of VMs, Turbonomic automates the complexity of resource management at scale. The platform executes thousands of optimization actions monthly without human intervention, from VM resizing to workload placement decisions. This automation frees IT teams from constantly addressing urgent issues to focus on strategic initiatives that facilitate business value.

Together, IBM Turbonomic and Red Hat OpenShift Virtualization simplify the journey to effective hybrid cloud management. Organizations can now confidently run, migrate, and optimize their entire application portfolio—whether containerized or virtualized—on a single platform with our OpenShift solutions.

Request a free trial or demo of IBM Turbonomic and Red Hat OpenShift Virtualization. Read more on OpenShift Virtualization or Turbonomic.