Cockroach Labs Collaborates with Red Hat on Comprehensive Solution for VM-based Migrations across Hybrid Cloud Environments

The solution enables enterprises to modernize databases and infrastructure on Red Hat OpenShift Virtualization—balancing cost, control, and cloud-native innovation

NEW YORK, May 21, 2025 /PRNewswire/ -- Cockroach Labs, a pioneer and leader of the cloud-native distributed SQL database market with CockroachDB, today announced a strategic collaboration with Red Hat to support CockroachDB on Red Hat OpenShift Virtualization. This effort offers enterprises a more seamless and cost-effective path to modernize their infrastructure while maintaining control over data—whether on-premises, in hybrid environments, or on the cloud.

Organizations running VM-based workloads are facing growing financial and operational pressure due to recent changes in the virtualization market—with rising licensing costs and uncertainty around platform direction. As a result, many are urgently exploring alternatives to cut costs and avoid renewed lock-in. But as they evaluate options, it's becoming clear that replacing infrastructure for mission-critical applications and databases can introduce significant risk and complexity.

"Large enterprises grappling with VMware-related cost increases are seeking comprehensive solutions that address their entire on-premises stack," said Allen Terleto, VP of Global Partners and Ecosystem at Cockroach Labs. "This includes virtualization, orchestration, application migration, and database modernization—ideally within a unified and cloud-native architecture. With CockroachDB now deployable on Red Hat OpenShift Virtualization, customers gain the flexibility to modernize on their terms: choosing which workloads move to the cloud and which remain on-premises—without incurring the complexity and overhead of managing fragmented, siloed architectures."

While cloud adoption has advanced, on-premises infrastructure remains essential for highly regulated sectors like financial services, healthcare, and government due to compliance, data sovereignty, and deep operational expertise. For these industries, pursuing an all-in cloud strategy to address VM-based migrations is often impractical due to cost, risk, and operational disruption. Instead, a hybrid approach—combining the reliability of on-premises environments with the agility of the cloud—is proving to be the most effective path.

CockroachDB now deploys natively on Red Hat OpenShift Virtualization, enabling distributed scale and resiliency across hybrid cloud environments. This empowers enterprises with a modern, distributed SQL database that evolves alongside their infrastructure. With feature parity to traditional relational databases and automated migration tooling, CockroachDB simplifies the shift from legacy systems not designed for the cloud, reducing both risk and cost compared to conventional lift-and-shift strategies. By leveraging CockroachDB on Red Hat OpenShift Virtualization, organizations can begin realizing the benefits of a cloud-native database without the need for immediate, large-scale architectural overhauls. This deployment model is already driving value in production environments.

"Our team chose CockroachDB deployed on Red Hat OpenShift to orchestrate everything using Kubernetes," said Stephen Boyd, IT Architect, Electrical Training Alliance. "The seamless integration allowed our services to be spun up as needed and closed down when not in use."

Together, Cockroach Labs and Red Hat provide a pragmatic and comprehensive path to modernization—enabling enterprises to transition from legacy virtualization platforms with greater confidence, flexibility, and control.

"Red Hat OpenShift Virtualization provides an open, flexible, and more cost-effective path for enterprises to migrate and modernize virtual machines while limiting the potential for production disruption," said Sachin Mullick, Director, Product Management, OpenShift Virtualization and Edge, Red Hat. "CockroachDB supported on Red Hat OpenShift Virtualization gives customers more choice in how they modernize operations across the hybrid cloud while still helping them maintain required levels of reliability and performance."

To learn more about deploying CockroachDB on Red Hat OpenShift Virtualization check out: https://www.cockroachlabs.com/partners/redhat/ 

About Cockroach Labs:
Cockroach Labs is a pioneering software company at the forefront of database technology, dedicated to delivering resilient and scalable database solutions to run mission-critical workloads for the world's most important businesses. The company's clients include Form3, Hard Rock Digital, and Shipt, Fortune 50 global financial institutions as well as retail and media industry leaders. With a mission to scale when others fail, Cockroach Labs is revolutionizing the way businesses manage their data with its innovative cloud native distributed SQL database, CockroachDB.

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SOURCE Cockroach Labs, Inc.