Bringing Advanced Data Management to OpenShift

I recently co-presented with the Google Cloud Platform team on “Seamless Data Management for Kubernetes” at Google Cloud Next’19. Google Anthos promises to be a cloud-neutral Kubernetes platform, similar to Red Hat OpenShift. Immediately after I finished my talk, I was surrounded by attendees, and quite a few of them were intrigued by whether the same data management approach I discussed during my session would also apply for OpenShift. I told them it absolutely would!

I am delighted to announce that we are bringing the same innovation and value to OpenShift. Robin Storage Is the first container native block storage to achieve Red Hat OpenShift Operator Certification and be featured on the Operator Hub. By declaring Robin Storage as the storage class, any application deployed using Helm or Kubernetes Operator can gain the advanced data management capabilities required for effective life cycle management. Backed by the engineering-engineering partnership with Google Cloud Platform that was announced at the recent Google Cloud Next ‘19, Robin Storage enables customers to bring enterprise-class stateful & data-intensive applications including MySQL, Postgres, MongoDB, MariaDB, Elastic, Kafka, Splunk, etc. to OpenShift.

Introducing Robin Storage for OpenShift

Robin Storage is a CSI-compliant block storage solution with seamless integration with Kubernetes-native tooling such as Kubectl, Helm, and Operators.

You can simply add Robin Storage to your existing OpenShift cluster with a single command specified in the OperatorHub listing. The OpenShift Operator certification provides the assurance that customers running Robin Storage with Red Hat OpenShift 3.x as well as the upcoming 4.0 release will have a seamless experience when onboarding enterprise-class stateful workloads.

Once Robin Storage is installed on an OpenShift cluster, any existing Operator or application can benefit from the advanced data management capabilities by setting the storage class to Robin Storage. Robin Storage turbo charges OpenShift implementations by bringing:

• Application-aware storage with advanced data management capabilities to Kubernetes-native frameworks including Helm and Operators
• Bare-metal performance required for running enterprise-critical applications
• Enterprise-class data services such as inline compression, thin provisioning and data-at-rest/at-motion encryption.
• Powerful hybrid cloud capabilities such as cloning an application using the snapshot feature and rehydrating in multiple availability zones
• Support for rapid failover of pods to meet enhanced application SLAs

Benefits of Advanced Data Management for OpenShift

Run mission-critical applications with confidence
Robin Storage provides built-in data replication to ensure high availability. Point-in-time snapshots for apps+data enable time-travel and recovering from user mistakes, and apps+data Backup & Restore functionality enables you to recover from application crashes and/or data center downtime (Disaster Recovery).

Deliver new products and features faster
Automating the apps+data management saves valuable time at each lifecycle operation. You can provision and manage stateful applications using familiar Kubectl, Helm, and Operator frameworks.

Collaborate better across teams
With Robin Storage, you can clone entire application environments, and share them across teams. While developing new features, your Dev team can use a clone of the production environment as the starting point to minimize errors. Upon finishing the implementation, the Dev team can create a clone of their environment and handover to QA for testing.

Never miss application SLAs
High priority applications need predictable performance. You can guarantee QoS for high priority applications by setting maximum IOPS limits per application. This enables you to consolidate applications on shared infrastructure and reduce hardware cost, without worrying about the noisy neighbors issue.

Avoid infrastructure lock-in
You can easily move apps+data, between on-prem and multiple clouds. Enjoy cost-efficiencies by choosing the most economic infrastructure at any given point. Avoid infrastructure lock-in with the flexibility to run your applications where you want.

To see the advanced data management capabilities of Robin Storage in action, visit this page Robin Storage in Action.
For detailed technical information download this whitepaper: Advanced Data Management for Kubernetes.

Look forward to working with customers and industry partners to run Stateful workloads on OpenShift to help enterprises across the globe them realize compelling agility and cost savings!