Integrating OpenShift and ionir to Improve Data Agility and Resilience in the Cloud

This is a guest post written by ionir.

Intro

Kubernetes is rapidly becoming the platform of choice for many customers. The latest Redhat Enterprise Open-source Report suggests 85% of enterprises agree that Kubernetes is key to cloud-native application strategies. Application modernization and redesign are critical to adopting containers as an infrastructure building block. Kubernetes was designed to run stateless applications, but not all workloads are born equal. As the industry embraces Kubernetes, new workloads that require state, aka persistent data, are introduced to Kubernetes, often leaving customers with more questions than answers.

ionir

ionir is a container-native storage and data management platform for Kubernetes that vastly simplifies the equation, especially when deployed on OCP. ionir virtualizes all available storage in a Kubernetes cluster to create a single pool of highly scalable storage. Having a Container Storage Interface (CSI) plug-in and an operator under OCP, ionir storage is provisioned and managed by OCP Operator Lifecycle Manager (OLM) within the OperatorHub. Of course, ionir is available from the  Red Hat Container Catalog.

In addition to providing resilient, high-performance storage, ionir also provides end-to-end data management capabilities. The ionir architecture separates the metadata from the data, which enables unique data management capabilities such as instant clones, instant volume copy  between clusters, and clone to time, which instantly creates cloned volumes at specific 1-sec RPOs. ionir is built using a microservices architecture, providing a unified data platform that is elastic, scalable, and agile -- just the data layer that containerized deployments require.

Data Challenges

Kubernetes Data should be as agile as Kubernetes applications. As mentioned in the Redhat global tech outlook report for 2021, 38% of enterprises already run in-hybrid or multicloud. Attributes like scalability, automation, simplicity, and the ability to move data anywhere in seconds are key for a successful deployment. In addition, Kubernetes is all about quick actions and decision making. Continuous integration and continuous deployments, for example, require fast cloning, versioning, and access to data from different sources and environments, on prem, or in the cloud. 

DB Workloads, Migration, Bursting, and Multicloud

When discussing data, databases are top of mind. MongoDB, PostgreSQL, Cassandra, and others are making their way into customer’s Kubernetes clusters as first-class citizens, using operators and other techniques to adjust to the new container world. Since pods are ephemeral by design, these operators manage scheduling, failover, and other configurations required to make the pods operate with minimal downtime and operations overhead. But what about the data?

ionir Kubernetes Native Storage manages your workloads’ data. ionir aggregates all local media on your worker nodes to a highly available, high-speed distributed storage system. All volumes get automatically replicated, meaning if a worker node crashes, your data is accessible anywhere in the cluster, instantaneously. No need for excessive replicas and complex application level replication.  ionir does the heavy lifting for you, lowering CAPEX and OPEX costs in a click of a button. 

Another unmatched capability ionir holds is the ability to expedite building local and remote replicas, migrations between clouds and locations in seconds. ionir moves and copies data between Kubernetes platforms with global deduplication, meaning if required blocks are already present at the target site, no transfer will be performed, leading to great network egress charges reduction. With ionir, your replica instance will be available in seconds for read/write operations no matter the size or distance, thanks to ionir's revolutionary data management approach.

This is true with other data-focused workloads like Observability and Logging solutions like Prometheus and ELK, Messaging Queues like Kafka, and others that all require data persistence by design. Instead of investing resources on managing the data and running additional replicas to support HA, ionir protects and enables data while compressing and deduplicating for efficiency.

Closing

Working closely with OpenShift, ionir has fine-tuned its platform for optimal performance, data protection, scalability, and ease of use. Offering an out-of-the-box solution on OCP, ionir installs in minute, and is fully configurable using standard K8s tools.