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NetApp Solutions

NetApp Hybrid Multicloud solutions for Red Hat OpenShift Container workloads

Contributors kevin-hoke banum-netapp
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NetApp is seeing a significant increase in customers modernizing their legacy enterprise applications and building new applications using containers and orchestration platforms built around Kubernetes. Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform is one example that we see adopted by many of our customers.

Overview

As more and more customers begin adopting containers within their enterprises, NetApp is perfectly positioned to help serve the persistent storage needs of their stateful applications and classic data management needs such as data protection, data security, and data migration. However, these needs are met using different strategies, tools, and methods.

NetApp ONTAP based storage options listed below, deliver security, data protection, reliability, and flexibility for containers and Kubernetes deployments.

  • Self-managed storage in on-premises:

    • NetApp Fabric Attached Storage (FAS), NetApp All Flash FAS Arrays (AFF), NetApp All SAN Array (ASA) and ONTAP Select

  • Provider-managed storage in on-premises:

    • NetApp Keystone provides Storage as a Service (STaaS)

  • Self-managed storage in the cloud:

    • NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP(CVO) provide self managed storage in the hyperscalers

  • Provider-managed storage in the cloud:

    • Amazon FSx for NetApp ONTAP, Azure NetApp Files, and Google Cloud NetApp Volumes provide file-based storage in the cloud.

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NetApp BlueXP enables you to manage all of your storage and data assets from a single control plane/interface.

You can use BlueXP to create and administer cloud storage (for example, Cloud Volumes ONTAP and Azure NetApp Files), to move, protect, and analyze data, and to control many on-prem and edge storage devices.

NetApp Trident is a CSI Compliant Storage Orchestrator that enable quick and easy consumption of persistent storage backed by a variety of the above-mentioned NetApp storage options. It is an open-source software maintained and supported by NetApp.

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Business critical container workloads need more than just persistent volumes. Their data management requirements require protection and migration of the application kubernetes objects as well.

Note Application data includes kubernetes objects in addition to the user data: Some examples are as follows:
- kubernetes objects such as pods specs, PVCs, deployments, services
- custom config objects such as config maps and secrets
- persistent data such as Snapshot copies, backups, clones
- custom resources such as CRs and CRDs

NetApp Trident Protect, available as an open-source, free software maintained by NetApp, provides for advanced application data management capabilities that enhance the functionality and availability of stateful Kubernetes applications backed by NetApp ONTAP storage systems and the NetApp Trident CSI storage provisioner. Trident protect simplifies the management, protection, and movement of containerized workloads across public clouds and on-premises environments. It also offers automation capabilities through its API and CLI.

This reference documentation provides validation of data protection of container-based applications, deployed on RedHat OpenShift platform using Trident Protect. In addition, the solution provides high-level details for the deployment and the use of Red Hat Advanced Cluster Management (ACM) for managing the container platforms. The document also highlights the details for the integration of NetApp storage with Red Hat OpenShift container platforms using Trident CSI provisioner.