The fallout from Broadcom's acquisition of VMware has led to a surge in interest in KubeVirt, an open-source project that enables users to deploy and manage virtual machine (VM) workloads directly inside of Kubernetes deployments. KubeVirt bridges the gap between traditional virtualization platforms like VMware and container orchestration systems, allowing for a consistent operational model across both VM and containerized workloads.

In modern IT deployments, virtualization plays a crucial role in optimizing hardware utilization. While bare-metal deployments are still possible, virtualization enables multiple workloads to run on a single physical piece of hardware. With the advent of Kubernetes, container orchestration has become a popular approach to virtualization in cloud deployments. However, prior to Kubernetes, VMs were a popular choice for organizations, often using technology from VMware.

KubeVirt, started by Linux vendor Red Hat in 2016, combines Kubernetes with virtualization, enabling cloud-native deployments to run both VMs and containers in the same Kubernetes environment. The project has grown significantly since its inception, with a broad ecosystem of vendors contributing to the project, including Amadeus, Apple, CloudFlare, IBM, NEC, Nvidia, SAP, and SUSE.

The KubeVirt architecture is based on container-native virtualization, allowing VMs to run inside container pods. The project extends the Kubernetes API through Customer Resource Definitions (CRDs), enabling users to define VMs with specifications like CPU, memory, and network interfaces. The virt-api-server, virt-controller, virt-launcher, and virt-handlers components work together to manage the lifecycle of VMs, including creation and scheduling.

KubeVirt offers several key capabilities, including running traditional VM workloads alongside containerized applications, managing both VMs and containers using the same Kubernetes tools and workflows, migrating legacy applications to a cloud-native environment, optimizing resource utilization, and gradually decomposing and rewriting VMs into microservices.

The benefits of KubeVirt include unified management, resource efficiency, performance, built-in security, and deployment flexibility across major public cloud providers. However, there are also challenges associated with KubeVirt, such as a learning curve, potential performance overhead, and complex migration processes.

As organizations reevaluate their virtualization strategies amid Broadcom uncertainty, KubeVirt has emerged as a viable alternative. Red Hat's Sachin Mullick noted that there has been a multiple-fold increase in adoption and usage of KubeVirt and its ecosystem over the last year, with continued interest in 2025. SUSE's Forbes Guthrie also reported increased interest in SUSE's KubeVirt-based tools, including the SUSE Virtualization product and SUSE Edge.

KubeVirt can facilitate the migration of VMware-based workloads to a Kubernetes environment through lift-and-shift migration or rebuilding VMs. The migration process typically involves assessing the current VMware environment, setting up a Kubernetes cluster with KubeVirt, and transferring VM disk images using tools like virt-v2v or virt-p2v. SUSE's VM-Import tool allows users to import their virtual machines from VMware and OpenStack into SUSE Virtualization.

As the industry continues to navigate the implications of Broadcom's acquisition of VMware, KubeVirt is poised to play a significant role in the future of virtualization. With its ability to bridge the gap between traditional virtualization platforms and container orchestration systems, KubeVirt offers organizations a flexible and scalable solution for managing VM workloads in a cloud-native environment.