What Is oVirt? History and Application

As the application of virtualization and cloud technology continues to increase, organizations must look for dependable and efficient solutions to manage their IT setup. oVirt is a cost-effective and competent resolution for this. oVirt is an open-source virtualization system that offers companies the powerful instruments they require to manage their data centers safely and effectively.

Whether you are a small business preparing to virtualize its first server, or a large enterprise aiming to supervise multiple virtual frameworks, oVirt has the tools and functions to help you meet your aims. As it is open-source, has a flexible design, and has a strong community, oVirt is a virtualization system you can trust for the long term. However, you need to understand how this software operates for maximum productivity. Therefore, in this blog, we will discuss what oVirt is and how you can protect your data stored and processed in virtual environments, using Storware Backup and Recovery.

Overview of oVirt

oVirt is a free and open-source virtualization platform based on KVM and created by Red Hat, Inc. It enables users to generate, operate, and launch virtual machines on their servers with the help of its reliable virtualization engine. It offers a competitive solution to expensive commercial virtualization programs such as VMware vSphere or Microsoft Hyper-V, giving users access to great virtualization features without hefty expenses. Additionally, oVirt provides an intuitive user interface, making it effortless to control and deploy virtual machines.

History of oVirt

The beginning of oVirt dates back to the Qumranet acquisition. Afterward, a team from Red Hat created the project and released it as part of their Virtualization package for customers. While oVirt is a single-made project by Red Hat, a board of Open Virtualization Alliance members initially governs the project. Now, Red Hat is the main contributor, as other members have resigned.

The initial launch was in 2011 and ran on the KVM hypervisor. Since then, the platform has been improved and added features like live migration, storage management, and high availability. As we advance, oVirt may proceed as a distinct venture since Red Hat released a current version of the Red Hat Virtualization product life cycle, with its end of life in August 2026 and OpenShift Virtualization as its replacement.

RHV is a paid software; however, oVirt is a community-driven project. RHV has a set end date. Regardless, this is not the case for oVirt. Companies can benefit from oVirt’s capabilities, such as managing virtual machines, networks, and storage, resulting in higher efficiency, cheaper costs, and increased security.

Components of oVirt

oVirt offers a complete solution to virtualization demands, from fundamental server consolidation to complex cloud infrastructures. Its major components include the oVirt-engine, a management platform that can install, supervise, migrate, shut down, and generate VM images, configure storage, networking, and other features. Moreover, it offers access to various administrative tools, such as setting up authentication and user permissions. Additionally, oVirt needs one or more nodes, which can be physical or virtual machines running the VMs.

In an oVirt setup, IT users refer to these nodes as hosts, and the number and type of hosts depend on the hardware and resources required to run the VMs. The other component of oVirt is the storage nodes. These are the storage locations where all the images and ISOs corresponding to the VMs are stored. There are various options available regarding storage nodes, ranging from local storage to distributed storage, such as Ceph.

Finally, to ensure the system’s security, all components of oVirt, including the oVirt-engine, the hosts, and the storage nodes, must be connected via a secure network. This step will ensure that all the components can communicate securely.

Features of oVirt

oVirt enables the virtualization of physical and virtual machines and provides a comprehensive range of features to coordinate and automate virtualized systems. The following are some of the advantages:

• Centralized governance of virtualized assets: oVirt facilitates adding compute nodes, storage nodes, networks, and other components to a virtual system.
• Moreover, it offers a user-friendly GUI to facilitate the organization of resources. It also allows for configuring and forming clusters and assigning assets to them.
• Robust command-line interface (CLI): This feature facilitates the prompt and straightforward implementation of tasks such as creating, provisioning, and observing virtual machines. The CLI also enables more efficient handling and arrangement of the virtualized environment.
• High availability and scalability: oVirt allows you to scale your virtual infrastructure according to its needs. Additionally, it supports automatic failover and live migration, ensuring that your virtual environment and resources are always available.
• Live storage migration: This capability enables you to quickly and easily move data between hosts without disruption.
• Secure platform for running VMs: oVirt also provides a secure platform for running VMs with encryption, authentication, and access control measures, ensuring only authorized users can access the virtual machines and resources.
• Easy-to-use API: This tool provides a quick and straightforward way to combine your virtualization environment with other solutions and services. Moreover, it allows you to create scripts and applications to manage your virtualized infrastructure.
• Storage management: oVirt facilitates a broad range of storage technologies, such as SAN, NAS, and block storage, to simplify the deployment and management of virtual repositories.
• Moreover, it is compatible with multiple storage protocols, such as iSCSI and NFS, making it possible to access and manage storage from numerous sources.

oVirt Applications in Business

Using oVirt, businesses may benefit from various applications such as server virtualization, cloud computing, and data center management. Server virtualization enables the formation of multiple virtual machines on one physical server, thereby decreasing the need for additional physical servers. This helps to cut down on hardware expenses while improving resource allocation. Cloud computing allows users to access applications and services on the internet, eliminating the need for dedicated hardware and providing a more economical solution. Lastly, data center management allows for the monitoring and managing the entire data center infrastructure from one central location, making it simpler to supervise and manage. Here are some real-life businesses that are using oVirt.

CERN

The European Organization for Nuclear Research, CERN, uses oVirt to manage its vast virtual infrastructure. The organization relies on oVirt’s scalability and high availability features to ensure that its critical applications remain available at all times.

Red Hat

Red Hat, a leading provider of open-source solutions, uses oVirt to manage its virtual infrastructure. The company relies on oVirt’s cost-effectiveness, ease of use, and scalability to support its business operations.

Cisco

Cisco, a global leader in networking solutions, has implemented oVirt in its data centers to manage its virtual infrastructure. The company relies on oVirt’s high availability and scalability features to ensure that its critical applications remain available and can be scaled as needed.

oVirt Data Protection with Storware

Storware is proud to be introduced to the oVirt Community as the official backup and recovery solution. It provides agentless, fast, and affordable data protection services for oVirt environments, with the easiest licensing model. Storware provides full and incremental backups with CBT, as well as application-consistent backups. It also supports a wide range of backup destinations, including local storage, cloud storage, and tape.

Importance of data protection in a business setting

Data protection is essential for businesses of any size as it guarantees that critical information remains protected, even during a disaster. Companies that have taken measures to ensure the safeguarding of their data will be better prepared for any data losses and able to reduce the effects of service outages in their operations. Moreover, data protection is a crucial part of conformity with laws and regulations, as many industries demand data security standards that organizations must adhere to. This necessity makes data protection a necessary component of any company’s safety and compliance plan.

How Storware provides robust data protection solutions for oVirt users

Storware equips organizations with numerous data security arrangements, including reinforcement, calamity recovery, and information chronicling. Its incorporation with oVirt empowers businesses to protect their virtual machines and information without needing costly or convoluted reinforcement arrangements. Also, the tool provides advanced features such as incremental backups at the block level, ensuring quick and efficient backups while backing up the modified data. This element assists with diminishing reinforcement times and limiting the effect on everyday business activities. Check out the [Solution PDF].

Benefits of Using Storware with oVirt

The integration of Storware into oVirt comes with many advantages. These includes:

• 5 agent-less backup strategies to choose from: Export Storage Domain, Disk Attachment with Proxy VM, Disk Image Transfer API, SSH transfer and Changed Block Tracking. CBT in oVirt simplifies, speeds up, and improves robustness by backing up only changed blocks, and avoiding temporary snapshots. Learn more about agent-less backup strategies available for oVirt and oVirt-based solutions.
• Storware provides oVirt UI integration plugin: This integration allows the administrator to monitor tasks progress, storage space, backup performance, assign virtual machines to selected backup policies, perform backups or restore selected machines on demand, and more.
• Automate VMs backup policy assignment. Storware uses tags and regular expressions (regex) to have your VM protected directly from your oVirt management console.
• Easy setup and use: Storware is designed to be easy to set up and use, so businesses can get up and running quickly and easily. This edge makes it an excellent solution for businesses of all sizes, including those new to virtualization and data protection.
• Robust protection: Storware provides complete data protection, which helps ensure that businesses can always recover from data losses and that their data is always available when needed. This is essential for companies that need to ensure business continuity and minimize downtime.
• Scalability: Storware is scalable, which means that businesses can easily add or remove virtual machines as their needs change. This makes it easy for companies to respond to changes in demand and helps ensure that their data protection solution can consistently meet their needs.
• Open API: All communication between 3rd party system goes via RESTful API exposed by the Server. Tasks are being performed by the Node behind the scenes. End-user is going to use only 3rd party system to invoke and monitor status of the tasks.

To Sum Up

oVirt is a powerful and robust open-source virtualization platform for managing virtual machines and applications in business. With its rich history, oVirt offers many benefits for your business, including high performance, scalability, and cost savings. Additionally, oVirt offers data protection through its partnership with Storware, ensuring businesses have access to secure backup and recovery options. Finally, depending on your business’s size, oVirt provides a cost-effective virtualization experience.