Welcome to UpLift and Shift!
Introduction to the UpLift and Shift: Enhancing Legacy VMs with OpenShift Virtualization Lab
Welcome to the UpLift and Shift lab, where we explore how OpenShift Virtualization enables organizations to accelerate the migration of traditional virtual machines (VMs) to a modern, cloud-native platform. This hands-on experience demonstrates how you can transition VMs from current virtualization environments to a scalable and secure environment powered by Red Hat OpenShift Service on AWS—without sacrificing the stability and reliability you value.
As businesses seek alternatives to traditional virtualization platforms, many face the challenge of balancing speed, cost-efficiency, and modernization. Customers who have successfully migrated workloads to public clouds are often familiar with the traditional lift-and-shift approach of moving on-premises workloads to cloud environments. While this method simplifies the initial migration, it often presents two primary, often undesirable, options:
- Application Modernization
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Re-architect, rewrite, and re-platform legacy applications to align with modern service-oriented architectures. This process, while transformative, is time-intensive and resource-heavy.
- Lift and Shift
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Quickly migrate VMs to the cloud with minimal changes. However, this approach often results in higher costs without unlocking the benefits of modern features or capabilities.
The UpLift and Shift strategy offers a compelling alternative:
Migrate VMs to Red Hat OpenShift Service on AWS, where they inherit modern platform features—such as scalability, self-service provisioning, and CI/CD pipeline integration—without requiring changes to the VMs themselves. This approach blends the speed and simplicity of lift-and-shift with the added value of advanced functionality, enabling legacy applications to evolve at their own pace.
Why OpenShift Virtualization on AWS?
Red Hat OpenShift Virtualization, available as part of Red Hat OpenShift Service on AWS, provides a fully managed platform to rehouse your VMs onto modern infrastructure without the burden of managing hardware in your datacenter. This hybrid cloud solution delivers consistent processes and tools for managing VMs across on-premises, cloud, and edge environments.
Key benefits include:
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Simplified Migration and Management: Seamlessly move VMs off legacy platforms and onto a modern, managed infrastructure.
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Accelerated Time to Value: Deploy VMs and integrate with CI/CD pipelines for improved efficiency.
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Hybrid Cloud Flexibility: Operate VMs and containerized workloads consistently across diverse environments.
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Innovation at Your Pace: Leverage OpenShift’s cloud-native capabilities, such as container-based workloads and serverless applications, when you’re ready to modernize.
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Managed Services: Offload routine platform management to Red Hat and AWS experts, freeing IT teams to focus on strategic initiatives.
By combining the ease of lift-and-shift with modern cloud-native features, OpenShift Virtualization on AWS accelerates your organization’s journey to modernization, offering a unified operational experience for VMs and container applications across your cloud and on-prem environments.
This lab will guide you through the process of leveraging OpenShift Virtualization to "uplift" your VMs and unlock the potential of hybrid cloud infrastructure—empowering your team to innovate faster and deliver greater value.
Next Steps
If you would like to learn more about Red Hat OpenShift Virtualization, please visit this landing page, review the documentation, or view some of our demo videos on YouTube.