Red Hat has announced the general availability of Red Hat OpenShift 4.18, providing enhanced features aimed at improving security, virtualization management, and operational efficiency. This latest version of the hybrid cloud application platform powered by Kubernetes includes updates designed to facilitate the management of both virtual machines and containers.

The enhancements come as organizations face shifts in virtualization strategies. According to a Gartner press release, revirtualization has emerged as a prominent trend requiring companies to rethink their virtual infrastructures. Red Hat OpenShift’s updates aim to streamline operations across diverse IT environments.

Key features of OpenShift 4.18 include improved networking tailored for virtual machines, which allows for user-defined networks that enhance hybrid cloud flexibility. The update also introduces improvements in VM storage migration and a tree-view navigation feature for easier virtual machine management.

Red Hat has expanded OpenShift’s support to include additional public cloud providers, enabling users greater flexibility in workload management. The virtualization features of Red Hat OpenShift can now be utilized on Google Cloud and Oracle Cloud Infrastructure.

Security has been a focal point in this update. The new Secret Store container storage interface (CSI) driver enables secure credential management, allowing workloads on OpenShift to access external secret managers without directly storing sensitive information within the cluster.

Red Hat OpenShift 4.18 is now available, and organizations can access further details on upgrade instructions directly from the Red Hat website.

Mike Barrett, vice president and general manager at Red Hat, stated, “Many organizations have reached an inflection point with their virtualized infrastructure, needing to make decisions quickly on their future direction.” He emphasized that OpenShift can help manage both current and future IT needs.