Are you running containers and don’t like the complexity involved with managing Kubernetes? Do you need an enterprise-focused platform to help make managing containers easier? Red Hat OpenShift is a market leading platform that extends Kubernetes with more advanced features for enterprise applications, and a modern intuitive interface that simplifies usability and operations. With that being said, OpenShift does not natively provide persistent storage or data protection – 2 things you’ll likely need for your applications. This is why you need Veritas!
Veritas Storage and Data Protection for Red Hat OpenShift
Veritas InfoScale and NetBackup work together to provide enterprise storage and data protection for OpenShift clusters. InfoScale provides persistent software-defined storage for containerized applications running in OpenShift, and NetBackup provides data protection for OpenShift namespaces with the ability to restore granularly – even to different clusters.
Veritas InfoScale and NetBackup integrate seamlessly with OpenShift and offer an easy installation and setup, as well as an intuitive experience configuring storage and data protection for your containers. Here’s a quick overview of the features and functionality that InfoScale and NetBackup provide for OpenShift:
- NetBackup – protect OpenShift namespaces quickly and easily. The NetBackup kOps operator is installed in a namespace within your OpenShift cluster and manages data protection for your namespaces – including persistent volumes. With a single pass backup, you have several granular recovery options which gives you the flexibility to recover only specific resources or data. You can also recover to alternate clusters, and even alternate Kubernetes distributions.
- InfoScale – setup software-defined storage for your OpenShift cluster quickly and easily using the InfoScale SDS operator which is available in Operatorhub.io – accessible directly from the OpenShift console. The InfoScale storage cluster runs on the OpenShift worker nodes and can be fully installed and configured in the OpenShift console. InfoScale’s high performance shared storage for OpenShift can be configured using either storage directly attached to the OpenShift cluster nodes, or external SAN connected to the cluster. InfoScale also has DR capability, which enables you to replicate your data and metadata to another OpenShift cluster in case you need additional resiliency for your containerized applications.
By using InfoScale and NetBackup together in an OpenShift environment, you have the foundation your stateful containerized applications need to be production ready. Let’s take a closer look at how it works.
InfoScale: Software-defined Storage for OpenShift
InfoScale’s CSI drivers allows OpenShift to mount persistent enterprise grade storage in application pods, which can then be used by stateful applications that can be easily scaled to run across multiple containers. InfoScale’s software-defined high performance persistent storage for OpenShift can be provisioned with either traditional SAN, or using the storage directly attached to the OpenShift worker nodes using InfoScale’s Flexible Storage Sharing (FSS) feature – which can provide higher performance storage than SAN at a reduced cost. InfoScale also helps ensure data integrity and resiliency with integrated I/O fencing that ensures pods are moved and brought online in the event of a system or network failure within the cluster. If you need DR and site-level resiliency, this can be easily configured using the InfoScale DR operator which enables data and metadata replication to another cluster.
NetBackup: Data protection for OpenShift
NetBackup offers a new approach to data protection for Kubernetes that lets you protect your entire OpenShift environment from a single interface. NetBackup automates the discovery, protection, and recovery for all the resources and persistent data within OpenShift projects. NetBackup connects to your OpenShift cluster and provides a Kubernetes workload option for backups that is fully integrated into the NetBackup workflow – making it both a familiar and easy experience to provide data protection for your OpenShift cluster.
The NetBackup kOps operator is deployed in the cluster using a helm chart and NetBackup uses an Elastic Data Mover Pod to copy snapshot backups to off-cluster backup media, including NetBackup appliances and cloud storage. With a single pass backup, you can granularly recover resources, entire workloads, and persistent volumes – within the same OpenShift cluster, or to a different cluster. There are 2 types of backups that you can run:
- Standard Backup – NetBackup initiates a snapshot of an OpenShift namespace and provides either full or granular recovery to the same, or a different cluster.
- Backup from Snapshot – After creating a namespace snapshot, NetBackup copies the snapshot data to a NetBackup managed data source external to the OpenShift cluster. In this scenario, you can still fully recover the namespace, or granularly recover individual resources or data volumes
Enterprise Functionality for OpenShift
While OpenShift helps simplify Kubernetes with a comprehensive and intuitive user experience, it relies on third parties for the data management functionality that typical enterprise applications need. With Veritas, your OpenShift environment will have the storage and data protection needed by stateful applications along with several other benefits:
- InfoScale helps eliminate data loss and downtime risks such as hung processes and inaccessible storage that could otherwise go undetected
- Distribution mobility allows you to move your containers between platforms and Kubernetes distributions (on-prem or in the cloud)
- High performance persistent storage with integrated data integrity management that works with nearly any type of hardware, giving you freedom of architecture while avoiding vendor lock-in
Summary
Veritas InfoScale and NetBackup work together to enable organizations to take advantage of the benefits of containerization with advanced protection and storage management. Veritas software-defined storage and data protection integrates seamlessly with Red Hat OpenShift and provides the functionality you need to run containerized applications with confidence, with an intuitive user experience that helps make running applications in containers easy.
For more information on the Veritas solution for containers, check out this solution paper. You can also visit the NetBackup website and the InfoScale website.
