IBM Enhances Data Storage for Containers

October 28, 2020

IBM made a strategic expansion of capabilities to provide clients with the flexibility to choose where to deploy workloads, from on-premises to the IBM public cloud, and drive forward their journey to the hybrid cloud. The new and enhanced solutions include containerized software across IBM IT Infrastructure via IBM Cloud Paks and advancements in data storage for containers.

According to a recent IBM commissioned Forrester study, "The Key to an Effective Hybrid Multicloud Strategy,1" 85 percent of respondents are increasing funding for IT infrastructure outside of public cloud, suggesting that organizations continue to rely on both on-premises and private cloud as part of their technology stack.

"The global pandemic and ensuing economic disruption have amplified the need for speed and flexibility and accelerated plans for digital transformation," said Tom Rosamilia, Senior Vice President of IBM Systems and Chairman, North America. "Our clients are increasing their investments in AI and cloud. They are moving swiftly to reduce costs while improving security with approaches like confidential computing and resiliency, and IBM's hybrid multicloud strategy with Red Hat is at the epicenter of this transformation."

Signaling strong adoption, many of IBM's top IBM Z and Power Systems clients are currently running proofs-of-concept with Red Hat OpenShift on Z, and over 100 more are ready to start. In addition, more than 40 IBM clients are already using IBM Storage as a persistent, highly available repository with strong security capabilities for OpenShift. This builds on a longstanding collaboration between IBM IT Infrastructure and Red Hat as well as previous investments made across IBM Z, LinuxONE, Power and Storage offerings to support Red Hat OpenShift, the industry's leading enterprise Kubernetes platform.

Today, over 100 new to LinuxONE and Linux on Z clients are now running mission-critical applications in the hybrid cloud. These clients are all sizes from startups to enterprises, representing industries ranging from healthcare, retail, transportation, financial and technology services, and public sector.

IBM announced new and upcoming capabilities designed to help clients implement hybrid cloud with IBM IT Infrastructure, including:

Ability to infuse AI throughout the business and consolidate databases with IBM Cloud Pak for Data, already available on IBM Power Systems, planned for November on IBM Z

Accelerate digital transformation and connect cloud native applications to existing workloads with IBM Cloud Pak for Integration on IBM Z

Faster cloud native development with integrated runtimes enabled by IBM Cloud Pak for Applications for IBM Z and Power Systems

Increased visibility, automation, and governance across the hybrid multicloud with IBM Cloud Pak for Multi-Cloud Management for IBM Z and Power Systems

Persistent Storage and Data Protection for Container Workloads

IBM Storage is also bringing extensive new and future enhancements to its storage and modern data protection solutions. These are primarily designed to support the rapidly expanding container and Kubernetes ecosystem, including RedHat OpenShift.

IBM Storage Suite for Cloud Paks is now expanding support for container-native data access on Red Hat OpenShift. This suite aims to provide the greatest flexibility for continuous integration and continuous delivery to teams who often need file, object, and block as software-defined storage. IBM Spectrum Scale also adds a fully containerized client and run-time operator to provide access to scalable data lakes on any Red Hat OpenShift cluster. IBM Cloud Object Storage adds support for the open source s3fs file to object storage interface bundled with Red Hat OpenShift.

"As we embark on a journey to modernize our infrastructure with containerized applications and Red Hat OpenShift we needed an infrastructure that could support our application modernization in a safe and secure way," says Christoph Buchstätter, Head of Computing and Platform Services, Porsche Informatik. "We chose IBM Cloud Object Storage because of the built-in security and stability with high availability it will provide our containerized applications. The system is simple to manage and maintains the data in our control."

This substantial shift to containers is having an enormous impact on modern data protection. Today's organizations want solutions that unify data recovery, retention, and reuse and also protect critical data workloads in hybrid cloud environments.

"Container technology such as Red Hat OpenShift is the foundation for hybrid cloud deployments, enabling application and data portability and scalability across private and public clouds," said Scott Sinclair, Senior Analyst, ESG. "IBM is delivering container-native data protection and persistent storage together with expanded hybrid cloud data protection support. IBM recognizes that many of their clients will continue to have non-containerized workloads for years to come. Consequently, IBM is providing tools that span containerized and non-containerized environments: common data protection infrastructure, and unstructured data support that expands existing data oceans to provide a single 'source of truth' for AI and ML workloads no matter what platform they run on."

To address these challenges, IBM will enhance IBM Spectrum Protect Plus to enrich protection for containers. IBM Spectrum Protect Plus will protect Red Hat OpenShift environments with an integrated experience that starts with the ability to deploy IBM Spectrum Protect Plus Server as a container using a Red Hat OpenShift Operator.