Broadcom and VMware, it’s been almost two years.
On November 22, 2023, the latter completed the acquisition of the former. It wouldn’t be long before that move upended commercial policy, with the consequences that are now well known.
A host of competing offer providers rushed to seize the opportunity, aiming to capture the replatforming of VM fleets. Red Hat was no exception. It naturally highlighted containerization on OpenShift. But it also emphasized the virtualization component embedded in the platform since the summer of 2020. To the point of turning it into a dedicated product, launched in early 2025: OpenShift Virtualization Engine, which does not include a license to run application containers.
Localnet Topology and Custom Instances
Beyond commercial strategy, OpenShift Virtualization has seen notable functional advancements since the Broadcom–VMware merger. Six minor releases have rolled out, starting with 4.15 (released February 27, 2024; moved to end of life on August 27, 2025).
This version notably introduced hot-plugging of secondary network interfaces for VMs (excluding SR-IOV interfaces). It also added support for the localnet topology for secondary networks in OVN-Kubernetes (connection to the underlying physical substrate).
Another addition: Kernel Samepage Merging (KSM). This feature triggers when a node is overloaded and deduplicates identical data found in VM memory pages.
OpenShift Virtualization 4.15 also enabled access to the guest console logs and the ability to configure clusters for DPDK workloads (Data Plane Development Kit, which delegates packet processing to user-space processes) on SR-IOV. The web console was enhanced in parallel to allow installation and editing of custom instance types. And it supported importing secrets from other projects when adding a public SSH key to a VM being created or a secret to an existing VM.
Hotplug of vCPU and Headless Access to VMs
On June 27, 2024, OpenShift Virtualization 4.16 was released. This version is currently in maintenance mode, until December 27, 2025. Extended support will run until June 27, 2026. With it, hotplug of vCPU reached general availability.
It also became possible to access a VM via Kubernetes headless services, using its internal domain name. And to enable the gate AutoResourceLimits feature to automatically manage VM CPU and memory limits.
OpenShift Virtualization 4.16 also introduced the option to choose sysprep settings at Windows VM creation rather than retrospectively. It also allowed exposing certain host or guest metrics inside VMs, via the command line or through the vm-dump-metrics tool.
Workload Density Management and USB Device Exposure
OpenShift Virtualization 4.17, released on October 1, 2024, will move to end of life on April 1, 2026, with no extended support.
With this release, Red Hat certified Windows Server 2025 as a guest OS. It also enabled selecting a custom namespace for golden images. And it provided the ability to increase VM workload density by overcommitting RAM. It also enabled exposing USB devices within a cluster so VM owners could then attach them.
The hotplug of CPUs and memory from the console reached GA with OpenShift Virtualization 4.17. The same applied to the ability to configure cluster-wide VM eviction policies.
User-Defined Networks and Hot-Swapping Instance Types
Released on February 25, 2025, OpenShift Virtualization 4.18 will reach end of maintenance on August 25, 2026. Extended support will run through February 25, 2027.
From this version onward, you can attach a VM to a user-defined network on its primary interface. You can also change the instance type associated with a running VM without rebooting.
Another addition: the ability to create VM snapshots with a vTPM, and restore from those snapshots (though it’s not possible to create new snapshots or clone them).
Meanwhile, the console evolved to allow simultaneous control of multiple VMs. It also enables the display of workload-level metrics for the resources allocated to disks, CPU, and network within the VMs, both in command line and via vm-dump-metrics.
VM Protection and Multiple I/O Threads for Flash Storage
OpenShift Virtualization 4.19 was published on June 17, 2025. It will enter maintenance mode on December 17, 2025 and does not include extended support.
With this release, RHEL 10 becomes a certified guest OS. Red Hat also introduces a mechanism to protect VMs against accidental deletion. It additionally lets you update the machine type for several VMs at once from the OpenShift CLI.
The localnet topology on OVN-Kubernetes now becomes usable to connect a VM to a user-defined secondary network. It is also possible to configure a NodeNetworkConfigurationPolicy manifest to enable LLDP listening on all Ethernet ports across a cluster.
Another novelty: the ability to configure multiple I/O threads for VMs using flash memory. The console also evolved to offer more grouped actions on VMs (managing labels, moving to another folder within the same namespace). Additional metrics were made available, covering migrations, vNICs, and the storage allocated to VMs.
NUMA Topology and Patch-Release Jumping
The latest minor release to date (4.20) came out on October 21, 2025. It will reach end of life on April 21, 2027, with no extended support.
With it, Red Hat enables skipping patch versions (no need to install every intermediate release when upgrading).
Several features move to general availability, including the ability to leverage NUMA topology (non-uniform memory access) for VMs. This lets you define zones where CPUs enjoy faster access to local resources than external CPUs.
The KubeVirtRelieveAndMigrate profile, which improves VM eviction stability during hot migrations, is also GA. The capability to deploy OpenShift Virtualization on OCI and natively on bare metal on ARM64 clusters is likewise GA.
In the console, during hot migrations you can now specify the node to which a VM should be moved. At the same time, the hotplug of disks has gained an optional step to choose a bus type.
