Red Hat OpenShift 4.20 boosts AI workloads, security

Red Hat OpenShift 4.20, the latest version of Red Hat’s Kubernetes-based hybrid cloud application platform, is now available. The Red Hat OpenShift 4.20 release features capabilities for accelerating AI workloads and strengthening security, according to Red Hat.

Introduced November 11, OpenShift 4.20 can be accessed from the Red Hat OpenShift product page. For AI, new capabilities are designed to streamline deployment and management of complex AI workloads, Red Hat said. The LeaderWorkerSet (LWS) API for AI workloads, for example, simplifies management of large, distributed AI workloads with automated orchestration and scaling, according to Red Hat. Deployment time is reduced using image volume source for AI workloads, allowing new models to be integrated in minutes without rebuilding application containers. These features together provide functionality for Red Hat OpenShift AI or other AI platforms to help users move more easily from experimentation to production. Cluster management is enabled via Model Context Protocol (MCP) using tools such as Visual Studio Code.

The 4.20 version of Red Hat OpenShift also helps secure the main traffic between control-plane components with initial support for post-quantum cryptography, delivering long-term cryptographic protection for critical communications, Red Hat said. The release also brings greater operational flexibility to the core platform and strengthens security capabilities for Red Hat OpenShift Platform Plus customers. This includes the availability of Red Hat Advanced Cluster Security 4.9 and enhancements to Red Hat Trusted Artifact Signer and Red Hat Trusted Profile Analyzer to help manage and analyze security data.

This release also adds CPU load-aware rebalancing and Arm support to boost performance and resource utilization for virtualized workloads, said the company. Expanded hybrid cloud extends Red Hat OpenShift Virtualization to bare-metal deployments on Oracle Cloud, providing more control over infrastructure and the placement of data. And with enhanced storage offloading functionality, the migration toolkit for virtualization accelerates VM migration from legacy solutions to OpenShift Virtualization through existing storage resources.