Red Hat's latest contribution to the storage agenda in the container-driven datacenter of the future

New solutions for enterprise-grade persistent storage for containerized applications

Linux containers offer greater definition of ownership, integration and portability of code to address several DevOps challenges. Containers are particularly relevant as enterprise IT transitions from an application- and infrastructure-centric model to an agile, microservices-centric one. We see container technology disrupting everything from applications and middleware to the way storage is dynamically provisioned and managed for containerized applications. In turn, we also see software-defined storage enabling increased flexibility, choice, and scale for containers and microservices.

Red Hat has shown leadership in Linux containers from the early days of Docker and Kubernetes, culminating in today’s introduction of new features built into OpenShift Enterprise 3.1 and Red Hat Atomic Enterprise Platform Public Preview.

With this announcement, the integration of Red Hat Gluster Storage and Red Hat Ceph Storage with OpenShift Enterprise 3.1 and Red Hat Atomic Enterprise Platform Public Preview is fully supported by Red Hat, with the goal to provide seamless, elastic storage for applications or microservices running in containers. This is the result of key contributions by the upstream Gluster and Ceph storage communities and the engineers at Red Hat. We developed several Kubernetes volume plugins, including those for GlusterFS, Ceph RBD, iSCSI, NFS, GCE, Fiber, and Amazon EBS. This offers an extensive choice of storage protocols for use with stateful container-based applications.

In a recent post on the Red Hat Storage blog, we described why we believe that software-defined storage is set to disrupt the world of containers and how it is likely to impact both developers and operators. Also, in a recent webinar by Steve Watt, chief architect at Red Hat’s Emerging Technologies Group, you can learn more about Red Hat’s vision to provide a single control plane for applications and storage that leads to storage as a microservice, deployed alongside applications running inside containers.

Below are links to more information about Red Hat Storage in a container and microservices environment.

• Ten minute webinar on why persistent storage for containers

• Interview at Red Hat Summit 2015 with Steve Watt, chief architect, Emerging Technologies, Red Hat

• Google Hangout on what you need to know about containers

• Red Hat Storage portfolio

Join the software-defined storage conversation on Twitter at @RedHatStorage and follow the story at the Red Hat Storage Blog at redhatstorage.redhat.com as we continue our work to drive the future of enterprise storage to petabytes and beyond.