In 2017, the KubeVirt crew launched the venture to handle digital machines (VMs) alongside containers in Kubernetes. The open supply venture’s intent was to make VMs first-class residents on this surroundings.
Since its introduction at Open Source Summit 2018, KubeVirt has continued maturing and rising. It’s reached greater than 200 stars on GitHub and even launched its personal occasion, KubeVirt Summit, in February 2021.
KubeVirt is the muse beneath OpenShift Virtualization, which helps builders convey VMs into containerized workflows.
Leveraging VMs in Kubernetes
KubeVirt lets you use Kubernetes natives on VMs. This means they will connect with pod networks which might be accessible utilizing commonplace Kubernetes strategies, together with Service, Route, Pipelines, and many others. Network insurance policies apply to VM pods the identical manner they apply to utility pods, offering a constant mannequin to handle VM-to-pod (and vice-versa) communication.
An actual-world instance of that is the way in which an aeronautical firm leveraged outdated simulator software program. It injected fashions with synthetic intelligence and machine studying (AI/ML), then robotically deployed and examined them on a VM-based simulator. This allowed it to completely automate acquiring take a look at outcomes and new telemetry coaching knowledge utilizing Kubernetes and Kubeflow.
Konveyor.io is an open supply venture that helps transition current workloads (improvement, take a look at, and manufacturing) to Kubernetes. Its instruments embody Crane, to maneuver containers from one Kubernetes platform to a different; Move2Kube, to convey workloads from Cloud Foundry to Kubernetes; and Tackle, to investigate Java purposes to modernize them by making them extra commonplace and transportable for the runtimes accessible in containerized platforms like Kubernetes.
These instruments are helpful in transformation patterns, however many tasks wish to make the most of Kubernetes at earlier phases to change into extra agile and productive. On the infrastructure aspect, these advantages can embody blue/inexperienced load balancing, route administration, declarative deployments, or (relying on the way you deploy) simpler upgrades resulting from immutable infrastructure. On the event aspect, they might embody integrating steady integration/steady improvement (CI/CD) pipelines with the platform, getting apps to manufacturing quicker, self-provisioning assets, or integrating well being checks and monitoring.
KubeVirt may help you by operating workloads as VMs in a Kubernetes surroundings. It lets you onboard your workloads to Kubernetes rapidly, take pleasure in its advantages, and steadily modernize your workloads over time. But, you continue to have the difficulty of bringing your VMs out of your conventional virtualization platform to the trendy Kubernetes platform. This is the place Konveyor’s Forklift venture is available in.
About Forklift
Forklift migrates virtualized workloads from completely different sources to Kubernetes utilizing KubeVirt. It is designed to make the duty easy as a way to migrate something from one or two machines to a whole bunch of them.
Migration is an easy, three-stage course of:
- Connect to an current virtualization platform (generally known as a “source provider”) and to a Kubernetes surroundings (a “target provider”).
- Map community and storage assets from the supply supplier to the goal supplier, on the lookout for equal assets in each.
- Select digital machines emigrate and assign the community and storage mappings to formulate a migration plan. Then run it.
How to get began
To get began with Forklift, first, you want a suitable supply supplier. You additionally want a Kubernetes surroundings with KubeVirt zero.40 or newer and bare-metal nodes (though for testing, you need to use nested virtualization). Configure your storage lessons with read-write-execute (RWX) capabilities, and use Multus to configure your networks to match those your VMs are utilizing within the supply supplier. (If you’ll be able to’t do that, no worries; you even have the choice to rearrange IP addressing.)
Finally, install Forklift in your Kubernetes utilizing the supplied operator, and entry the person interface to start out operating your first take a look at migrations.
Forklift is the upstream model of Red Hat’s Migration Toolkit for Virtualization. Therefore, if you wish to use it in a manufacturing surroundings, chances are you’ll want to think about using that supported model of the software.
Happy migrating!
