As more organizations double down on Kubernetes as the future of their application platforms, a new question is emerging: What do we do with our legacy virtual machines?
In the webinar VMs on Kubernetes: Making your KubeVirt migration happen, experts Jeremy Oakey from Spectro Cloud and Jared Cheney from SoftwareOne dive into that very question. Based on their real-world experiences helping organizations modernize, they offer a frank and insightful discussion about how — and why — to bring VMs to Kubernetes using KubeVirt.
Let’s break down some of their key insights.
The VMware shift that changed the game
The conversation opens with the elephant in the room: Broadcom’s acquisition of VMware and the licensing changes that followed. For many IT leaders, it’s prompted a fundamental rethink of their virtualization strategy,.
As Jared Cheney put it, “Pretty much every organization that has at least some VMware infrastructure… has got to have a solution that looks different than what they've done in the past.” Kubernetes — and specifically KubeVirt — is quickly becoming that solution.
Kubernetes isn't just for containers anymore
KubeVirt enables teams to run virtual machines alongside containers within Kubernetes. That means applications that haven’t been fully refactored can still benefit from modern orchestration, policy management, and scalability.
As Jeremy Oakey explained, KubeVirt builds on proven KVM hypervisor technology, which powers many hyperscale clouds today. “It’s not really new technology,” he said, “we’ve just adapted it to now run in a Kubernetes containerized environment.”
Why VMs on Kubernetes makes sense
According to both speakers, the top drivers for VMs on Kubernetes include:
- Speed: Migrating to containers takes time. Running VMs in Kubernetes helps teams move faster by bridging the gap.
- Data gravity: VMs and containers running side-by-side improves performance for apps that span both.
- Unified operations: A consistent way to manage infrastructure — across VMs and containers, in any environment.
This is especially valuable for organizations with hybrid or edge environments. Cheney noted that what once seemed like a temporary state — running workloads across data centers, clouds, and the edge — is now a long-term reality.
But it’s not one-size-fits-all
Oakey and Cheney were quick to emphasize that K8s isn’t the answer for every VM workload. Applications built around tightly coupled infrastructure, like those relying on specific storage arrays or networking configurations, can’t just be lifted and shifted.
“You have to make sure that you’ve thought through how you’ve designed that application initially,” said Cheney. “Where was the resiliency built in?”
Snowflakes vs cattle: making VMs immutable
A key challenge in virtualization is drift — VMs that start from a template but become unique over time. Spectro Cloud’s Palette platform brings the concept of “immutable infrastructure” to VMs. That means managing them like containers, through pipelines and blueprints, so they don’t become fragile snowflakes.
“We're extending [Palette] to virtual machines,” said Oakey, “so you can actually run a VM through a pipeline and treat it as a destroyable, immutable object.”
Reference architectures and real migrations
One of the most valuable insights from the webinar is the importance of proven reference architectures. Spectro Cloud and SoftwareOne have already validated configurations at scale — thousands of VMs tested with popular infrastructure vendors.
This reduces risk, improves quality, and accelerates time to value for teams embarking on their KubeVirt journey.
(Check out the Spectro reference architecture right here.)
Tooling and services: it’s more than just conversion
Palette includes a migration tool that converts VMDKs to KubeVirt-compatible formats (like QCOW) and can batch prepare VMs for migration. But as Cheney emphasized, tools alone aren’t enough.
“Give yourself enough time to do proper planning,” he said. “Know your dependencies… make sure you're grouping things appropriately… It becomes a process discussion and a people discussion.”
The most successful migrations combine the right tooling with expert services — planning dependencies, managing cutovers, validating performance.
Production-ready, feature-complete
KubeVirt itself is mature, but Spectro Cloud has gone further to ensure enterprises have what they need for production. From suspend/resume and remote consoles to live migration and policy-driven automation, the goal is to make VMs on Kubernetes as capable — and familiar — as traditional virtualization platforms.
“This is a production-ready solution,” said Cheney. “It gives you the completeness of the toolset… in the same or similar way that teams]have grown to know and love.”
Whether you're looking to avoid VMware lock-in, standardize operations, or enable hybrid strategies, running VMs on Kubernetes is a compelling path forward — and it’s already real, today.
Learn how Spectro Cloud can help you bring your VMs to Kubernetes with confidence. Visit our VMs on Kubernetes solution page to get started.