Red Hat Debuts Versatile Software-Defined Storage for Cloud-Native Applications in Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform

Red Hat, Inc. today announced Red Hat Container-Native Storage 3.6, with support for containerized applications and infrastructure in Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform clusters. Red Hat Container-Native Storage 3.6 comes on the heels of Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform 3.6, the latest version of Red Hat’s enterprise-grade Kubernetes container application platform, announced in August.

Red Hat Container-Native Storage, built upon Red Hat Gluster Storage, is integrated with Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform and uniquely serves storage out of containers. Red Hat Gluster Storage is enterprise-grade, durable, more secure and well-suited for the hybrid cloud as it supports both on-premise or public cloud deployments. These attributes make it ideally suited to Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform deployments. Red Hat Container-Native Storage can eliminate the need to have an independent storage platform, enabling customers to achieve one integrated container platform that can span the hybrid cloud with greater efficiency and cost savings, a streamlined user experience, single control plane and a single point of support.

Red Hat Container-Native Storage 3.6

The move to container-based applications can bring challenges to existing traditional storage architectures, holding back the drive for innovation and progress. Software-defined container-native storage addresses the challenges with the ability to merge the storage services with the container platform like any other container service and runs on physical, virtual, public cloud and even on top of traditional storage appliances. Existing traditional storage architectures do not always offer this level of inherent scale and flexibility and, as a result, can fall short of unlocking the full potential of container application platforms like Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform.

With Red Hat Container-Native Storage 3.6, Red Hat demonstrates its leadership as a provider of native storage for container platforms with the following new features:

• Versatile storage platform for containers enabling customers to manage, scale, and upgrade their storage needs using a single control plane helping customers to achieve greater storage efficiency and cost savings. Red Hat Container-Native Storage now offers support for file, block, and object interfaces, enabling container applications portability to the container platform without change. The addition of block storage (via iSCSI) provides support for distributed databases and other low-latency workloads like Elasticsearch, while the addition of object storage (under Technology Preview) provides an embedded object store within Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform for cloud-native applications needing Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3) like protocol support.
• Support for all core infrastructure elements of Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform, including its registry, logging, and metrics. Support for these core components enables storage administrators to have Red Hat Container-Native Storage for infrastructure out-of-the-box, without needing to use disparate storage systems for different infrastructure aspects and have one integrated platform with simplified management, procurement, and support.
• Three-fold increase in the number of applications and microservices deployed on a single storage cluster. Increased persistent volume density offers customers greater resource utilization.

Test Drive Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform with Container-Native Storage

Red Hat is also rolling out a new OpenShift Container Platform with Container-Native Storage Test Drive, enabling customers to simulate Red Hat OpenShift deployments via the public cloud. This Test Drive aims to provide an inquiring administrator with a full multi-node Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform cluster, running in the cloud. Customers will be able to explore lab exercises designed to expose them to different administrative and operational tasks with both Red Hat OpenShift and Red Hat Container-Native Storage.