Deploying OpenShift Virtualization on ARO

OpenShift Virtualization is a feature of OpenShift that allows you to run virtual machines alongside your containers. This is useful for running legacy applications that can’t be containerized, or for running applications that require special hardware or software that isn’t available in a container.

In this tutorial, I’ll show you how to deploy OpenShift Virtualization on Azure Red Hat OpenShift (ARO). I’ll show you how to create an ARO cluster, deploy the OpenShift Virtualization operator, and create a virtual machine.

It’s important to keep in mind that this tutorial is designed to show you the quickest way to get started with OpenShift Virtualization on ARO. It’s not designed to be a production-ready deployment. If you’re planning to deploy OpenShift Virtualization in a production environment, you should follow the official documentation and best practices.

Pre-requisites

1. You will need an 4.18+ ARO Cluster (see Deploying ARO using azurerm Terraform Provider if you need help creating one).

   Note: as of the writing of this guide 4.19 was used

2. CLIs and Command Line Tools Needed

• oc (logged into the ARO cluster)
• jq
• yq

1. Environment Variables

Create a machine pools for VMs

1. Create Azure Boost Machine Sets

   The following will create a machine set for VMs in each availability zone the cluster is in

Install OpenShift Virtualization Operators

1. Deploy the OpenShift Virtualization Operator

2. If you want to see the progress of the operator you can log into the OpenShift Console (hint run oc whoami --show-console to get the URL)

   

3. Create an OpenShift Virtualization operand

   Note: this is all defaults, so will not support a lot of the more advanced features you might want.

4. New “Virtualization” Section in the OpenShift Console

   Once the operator is installed you should see a new “Virtualization” section in the OpenShift Console (you may be prompted to refresh the page)

   

5. Close the popup window and click the “Download virtctl” button to download the virtctl binary.

Add OpenShift Data Foundation

Optional but highly recommended

To enable advanced OpenShift Virtualization features like Live Migration, you need a high-performing StorageClass. While numerous options exist, this tutorial will use OpenShift Data Foundation for storage. It offers excellent performance and has a strong record of success with OpenShift Virtualization.

Follow this guide to add OpenShift Data Foundation to your cluster.

Create a Virtual Machine

1. Create a project and a secret containing your public SSH key

2. Create a VM

3. Start the VM

4. Watch for the VM to be ready

   Every 2.0s: oc get vm NAME AGE STATUS READY example-vm 3m16s Running False

5. SSH into the VM

6. Congratulations! You now have a virtual machine running on OpenShift Virtualization on ARO!