NetApp & Red Hat boost OpenShift data protection

NetApp has announced a collaboration with Red Hat focused on Red Hat OpenShift deployments, with an emphasis on data protection and scale for virtualised environments.

The work includes new data management features for OpenShift in on-premises and cloud environments. These are intended to improve backup, recovery and day-to-day operations for virtual machines and container-based applications.

The announcement comes as businesses expand virtualised infrastructure to handle rising data volumes linked to AI use. NetApp cited Red Hat research showing that 90 per cent of organisations said virtualisation supports innovation, while 71 per cent said more than half of their IT infrastructure is virtualised.

As OpenShift virtualised environments grow, backup methods that scan full virtual machine disks can extend backup windows and make recovery timelines less predictable. Customers moving to or expanding OpenShift Virtualization need block-level change tracking to help meet backup and recovery targets while controlling storage costs, according to NetApp.

New features

Among the updates, NetApp Backup and Recovery for Red Hat OpenShift and OpenShift Virtualization now supports protection for virtual machines on OpenShift, with automated virtual machine-level protection and recovery workflows. The service uses incremental-forever backups with change block tracking, while preserving storage efficiency and shifting some processing load away from backup operations.

NetApp's disaster recovery service also now supports Red Hat OpenShift and OpenShift Virtualization in public preview. The offering extends beyond backup to orchestrated disaster recovery for Kubernetes-based virtual machines, including guided failover and fallback workflows for workloads stored on ONTAP.

In cloud deployments, Google Cloud NetApp Volumes and the Trident CSI driver for Red Hat OpenShift Virtualization are now generally available on Red Hat OpenShift Dedicated on Google Cloud with certified support. This allows organisations to run both virtual machines and containers in the cloud through a single setup, NetApp said.

Another change affects NetApp Trident, the storage provisioner used with Kubernetes. Trident now supports parallel execution of controller operations for Amazon FSx for NetApp ONTAP and Google Cloud NetApp Volumes, replacing serial execution in those environments and reducing storage bottlenecks.

Hybrid cloud

The collaboration is intended to give customers more consistent operations across hybrid and multicloud environments, including the ability to run and move applications and data between on-premises systems and public cloud platforms.

For businesses using OpenShift as a base for both containers and virtual machines, the changes address a practical challenge: how to protect larger, more complex estates without adding administrative overhead. As data volumes increase, backup windows, recovery point objectives and recovery time objectives have become harder to meet.

"When IT teams are faced with slow scanning and backup processes, they're unable to meet recovery point and recovery time objectives," said Dallas Olson, Chief Commercial Officer at NetApp.

"NetApp's latest innovations with Red Hat enable predictable backup and recovery behavior even as the VM environment grows. Customers can now migrate, operate, and protect large-scale VM and container environments on Red Hat OpenShift with greater speed, predictability, and operational confidence," Olson said.

Red Hat described the collaboration as a response to the operational demands of larger virtualised estates, arguing that older disaster recovery models were not designed for the scale and pace of current deployments.

"Legacy disaster recovery models were not built for the scale and pace of today's virtualized environments," said Steve Gordon, Senior Director, Product Management, Hybrid Cloud Platforms at Red Hat.

"Our collaboration with NetApp directly addresses the most pressing challenges customers face as enterprise virtualized environments continue to grow in scale and complexity. Together, we're helping customers modernize data protection and disaster recovery for Red Hat OpenShift, delivering more predictable outcomes and a stronger foundation for hybrid cloud," Gordon said.