Enterprise Storage, Resiliency, and Disaster Recovery for Kubernetes

Are you running applications in containers? Are you considering using containers to run new IT services? As more business-critical applications are moving towards a containerized deployment model backed by Kubernetes, one of the challenges you are likely facing is finding a proven way to provide the enterprise storage, resiliency, and disaster recovery functionality that business-critical applications need.  

Veritas InfoScale for Kubernetes delivers all this functionality and more, enabling you to confidently run your enterprise applications in Kubernetes with the foundation they need to deliver the smooth and predictable experience your end users expect.

Container-native Storage and Resiliency

InfoScale for Kubernetes is a software-defined container-native solution that offers both a quick and easy deployment experience and a simple operational experience that can be managed using native Kubernetes functions and integrations.  This reduces complexity while enabling you to confidently run and manage your applications in Kubernetes with the enterprise foundation business-critical applications need to be fully production ready.

One of the main features InfoScale for Kubernetes provides is parallel access high performance persistent storage that can be provisioned with either traditional SAN, or using the storage directly attached to the cluster nodes with a feature called Flexible Storage Sharing (FSS).  FSS is designed to deliver block storage that can provide better performance and reliability than NFS while giving you the flexibility to use any type of underlying storage infrastructure.  InfoScale for Kubernetes also manages data integrity and reduces unplanned downtime with integrated I/O fencing that ensures pods are both moved and quickly brought online in the event of an infrastructure failure within the cluster.  

InfoScale for Kubernetes supports all storage access modes and provides several classes of storage by default (performance, resilience, encrypted), making it an ideal foundation for a wide variety of applications with several key benefits:

• Simplicity – as a containerized solution, InfoScale for Kubernetes runs as an application within Kubernetes.  This makes it easy to use and manage, reducing the complexity involved with implementing a hardware-based solution
• Functionality – InfoScale for Kubernetes delivers parallel access shared storage for Kubernetes with several advanced features that can help reduce your costs and optimize IT operations 
• Resiliency – easily implement full and comprehensive software-defined DR capability for Kubernetes clusters with a near-zero RPO and RTO (shown in figure 2)

Figure 1 is an example of how InfoScale for Kubernetes can help optimize operations and provide container-native advanced storage management for a complex multi-tier business application.

Figure 1. Microservice-based business application deployed using InfoScale for Kubernetes enterprise storage

Extending Kubernetes with Enterprise Functionality

Kubernetes provides excellent configuration management and operational orchestration for containers, but it relies on third party integrations for the data management functionality that many business-critical applications need to be production ready. InfoScale for Kubernetes extends Kubernetes and ensures that your containerized applications have a proven enterprise foundation – with storage, resiliency, and disaster recovery – to optimize operations and avoid unplanned downtime.  

InfoScale for Kubernetes provides important functionality for business-critical applications:

• High performance storage that can provide better performance and reliability than NFS-based storage while optimizing infrastructure costs.  InfoScale for Kubernetes can provide both persistent and ephemeral storage that can be deployed granularly to support different requirements for multiple applications running within a Kubernetes cluster.  The storage can be provisioned in a multi-tenant configuration where multiple storage pools can be created to support microservice architectures and other deployment models where multiple individual applications are running within a Kubernetes cluster (shown in figure 1).
• Disaster recovery for Kubernetes that can deliver a near-zero RPO and RTO and can be configured with namespace granularly to protect Kubernetes resources, multi-tier applications and entire Kubernetes clusters from site-level failures and outages (shown in figure 2).  This functionality can also help you manage maintenance windows and other planned outages by allowing you to easily switch your operations to a secondary cluster.  

Figure 2. InfoScale for Kubernetes provides full DR capability for Kubernetes clusters

Efficient service management and operational visibility is also key to ensuring that your applications are production ready. Understanding how your applications are performing relies on having real-time data and visibility into various system metrics that help you understand the state of your IT services.  InfoScale for Kubernetes includes an observability plug-in that provides key storage and system metrics to Prometheus where you can configure real-time monitoring and alerting.  From here, the InfoScale for Kubernetes metrics are accessible to corporate ITSM, observability, analysis and workflow management tools that can automate the process of managing service tickets and delivering operational intelligence (shown in figure 3).

Figure 3. InfoScale for Kubernetes exports metrics to Prometheus to simplify service management and observability

Summary

Veritas provides industry-leading data management technology that gives you the functionality and confidence you need to run your business-critical applications in Kubernetes.  With enterprise storage, resiliency and disaster recovery for Kubernetes, InfoScale for Kubernetes is a software-defined, flexible, enterprise-grade foundation that extends Kubernetes to ensure your business-critical applications are performant and resilient – delivering the premier experience that your end users expect.

For more information on InfoScale for Kubernetes, check out this short overview video.  You can also check out this whitepaper, see a short demo here and visit our website.