Cohesity cyber resilience for Red Hat OpenShift Virtualization

Protecting modern applications

As enterprises accelerate migration from from traditional hypervisors to Red Hat® OpenShift® Virtualization, protecting those workloads demands more than a traditional backup. Organizations need immutable, cyber-resilient data protection that travels with the workload—on site, in a cloud environment, and everywhere in between.

Cohesity can deliver this protection across both Cohesity DataProtect and Cohesity NetBackup, fully supported with Red Hat OpenShift Virtualization in Cohesity Data Cloud.

Red Hat OpenShift Virtualization and Cohesity Data Cloud

Red Hat OpenShift is an industry-leading application platform powered by Kubernetes. Red Hat OpenShift Virtualization is an included capability of Red Hat OpenShift that allows organizations to run and manage VMs alongside containers on a single, modern platform.

OpenShift Virtualization offers a future-ready foundation that supports existing VMs while remaining flexible to accommodate modern workloads. Cohesity Data Cloud brings comprehensive data protection, cyber resilience, and AI-powered security to the OpenShift platform.

Customers can choose between two proven Cohesity data protection engines—Cohesity DataProtect or Cohesity NetBackup:

Cohesity DataProtect: Built for modern, cloud-native environments prioritizing simplicity, integrated security, and unified hybrid management while offering a scalable platform
Cohesity NetBackup: Built for organizations requiring highly reliable, disaggregated architecture

Key Benefits

Incremental backups with changed block tracking (CBT)*. After the first full backup, each run reads and sends only the blocks that changed. Backup windows shrink, network and storage use drop, and protection scales to hundreds of VMs.
Instant recovery. Bring a VM back online straight from backup storage without waiting for a full restore, then move its data back to production in the background. Minutes of downtime, not hours, whatever the VM size.
File- and folder-level recovery. Browse or search a VM backup and restore just the files or folders you need, without recovering the whole VM.
Dedicated backup VLAN. Send backup traffic over a separate network so it never competes with production applications, and so security teams can segment and firewall it independently.
Cyber resilience, not just backup, with anomaly detection, malware scanning, cyber vaulting, and clean-room recovery so you can keep operations running no matter what happens
Policy-driven workflows apply the same protection model to OpenShift VMs and containers as to any other source
Reduce manual maintenance with auto-upgrade of backup agents

Integrated cyber resilience

Cohesity’s multilayered security approach strengthens every layer of the architecture to protect OpenShift Virtualization environments throughout the full threat lifecycle. Cohesity Data Cloud provides:

Immutable backups and zero trust principles that help prevent unauthorized modification of backup data, providing a clean recovery point.
AI/ML-powered anomaly detection and malware scanning to identify threats early and prevent silent propagation into backup repositories.
Cyber vaulting and clean-room technology that offers isolated, verifiable recovery environments for critical workloads.
Federal Information Processing Standard Publication (FIPS) 140-3 support, enabled by default, to help maintain cryptographic standards in regulated environments.
Multifactor and multi-person authorization (MFA/MPA) that protects against credential-based attacks on administrative access.
Write once, read many (WORM) and audit capabilities to help satisfy governance obligations with tamper-proof retention.

Cohesity strengthens protection of OpenShift Virtualization

Cohesity DataProtect architecture

Cohesity DataProtect integrates with Red Hat OpenShift through OpenShift APIs for Data Protection (OADP). OADP deploys and manages the Velero lifecycle that handles Kubernetes metadata. Because OADP installs the Velero version supported for your OpenShift release, you don’t need to track Velero versions or compatibility, and Velero stays current as you upgrade OpenShift.

Cohesity’s own data mover handles the VM and application data, moving it at scale from the cluster to Cohesity. DataProtect also integrates with Kubernetes-native CSI snapshots and provide crash-consistent backups of your VMs.

Cohesity DataProtect paired with OpenShift Virtualization takes advantage of Cohesity’s application programming interface (API)-first approach and platform capabilities such as global search and global deduplication to help organizations simplify data protection, speed access to protected data, and increase storage efficiency.

The key elements of the solution are a Cohesity-developed data mover and Velero, acting together. The data mover is responsible for processing the actual data of the entities being protected, while Velero is used to process the associated metadata. These resources are deployed on the worker nodes in an OpenShift cluster as a daemonset, within a Cohesity-created namespace.

Additionally, Cohesity DataProtect integrates with Kubernetes-native snapshots using the Container Storage Interface (CSI).

Incremental backups with changed block tracking (Early Access)^* Cohesity DataProtect can use KubeVirt’s changed block tracking (CBT) to back up OpenShift Virtualization VMs incrementally. After the initial full backup, each run reads and transfers only the blocks that changed since the previous backup, rather than the full disk, which shortens backup windows, speeds recovery, and reduces the data moved.

Through Helios as the unified control plane for Cohesity Data Cloud, Red Hat OpenShift administrators can protect and recover workloads with remarkable ease. Coupled with security-first measures like immutability, quorum control, multifactor authentication, and RBAC, this means administrators get both comprehensive security and ease of management.

Cohesity NetBackup architecture

To reduce the operational overhead of workload administrators, Cohesity NetBackup can dynamically discover namespaces that contain OpenShift Virtualization VMs and protect them automatically with intelligent policies.

Administrators can also configure specific retention policies for each snapshot and backup copy for full flexibility and control. Additionally, administrators can throttle the number of concurrent data protection workflows or even change how often Cohesity NetBackup queries the Kubernetes cluster to discover new applications that need protection.

Once a snapshot is taken, Cohesity NetBackup’s elastic data mover dynamically tiers data off to the storage of choice, optimizing an organization’s network and storage costs. With the cloud-native scale of Cohesity NetBackup’s data mover, organizations can expand to an enterprise scale while maintaining a low total cost of ownership.

This growth can be accomplished by powering down data mover nodes when not in use, and by moving data off the primary storage to more optimized and protected storage targets.

With Cohesity NetBackup’s industry-leading ransomware resilience capabilities that provide immutable storage, malware scanning, anomaly detection, and support for Federal Information Processing Standards (FIPS), organizations can be confident in the recoverability of their OpenShift Virtualization environment.

“Red Hat’s collaboration with Cohesity with Cohesity is centered on accelerating customers’ modernization efforts across the hybrid cloud. Whether they are running traditional Red Hat Enterprise Linux workloads, migrating virtual machines to Red Hat OpenShift, or containerizing applications, Red Hat and Cohesity deliver operational simplicity and advanced capabilities to help smooth the transition to modern, cloud-native environments."

— Sachin Mullick, Director, Product Management, Hybrid Cloud Platforms, Red Hat

Cohesity Data Cloud’s advanced capabilities for OpenShift Virtualization

Increase operational efficiency and scale for data protection:

Centralized management: Cohesity Data Cloud and Red Hat OpenShift simplify operations, reducing the complexity and overhead associated with managing disparate systems.
Scalable architecture: Both Cohesity Data Cloud and Red Hat OpenShift offer highly scalable architectures, allowing your infrastructure to grow with your business needs without compromising performance or reliability.
Automated workflows: Use automation to simplify backup and recovery processes, reducing the administrative burden on IT teams and enabling them to focus on more strategic initiatives.
Auto-upgrade of backup agents: Backup agents are upgraded automatically, keeping protection current and reducing manual maintenance.

Ensure data is properly protected and can be restored quickly:

Ransomware protection: Cohesity’s multilayered security architecture, advanced ransomware detection, and immutable backups help safeguard VMs and containers against cyber threats.
Cyber vaulting with Cohesity FortKnox: Protect OpenShift Virtualization VM and container backups with an isolated, immutable copy in a cyber vault, giving you a clean recovery point if production and primary backups are compromised.
Data security: Extend data security capabilities, including anomaly detection and threat scanning, to OpenShift Virtualization backups to identify threats early.
Compliance and governance: Help customers comply with industry regulations and internal governance policies through immutability, comprehensive reporting, auditing, and data retention capabilities such as WORM and legal hold capabilities.

Use consistent data management and protection across environments:

Optimized performance: Maximize the performance of your virtual environments with Cohesity Data Cloud’s efficient data management capabilities and container orchestration of Red Hat OpenShift. Cohesity also supports incremental backups using changed block tracking, speeding up recovery as OpenShift environments scale across hundreds of VMs (Early Access)*.
Unified protection: Cohesity offers uninterrupted, end-to-end backup and recovery for VMs and containerized applications running on Red Hat OpenShift Virtualization, protecting your critical data.

Learn more

OpenShift Virtualization provides a unified, scalable platform for migrating VMs, supporting modernization and consistent management across hybrid cloud environments.

Cohesity Data Cloud, an AI-powered data security solution, can manage and protect VMs to help prevent data loss and provide rapid recovery in the event of a cyberattack or an outage.

Together, Red Hat OpenShift Virtualization and Cohesity Data Cloud provide a supported solution that addresses the challenges of modern environments, offering a platform that strengthens data protection, bolsters security, and simplifies operations.

^*Early Access: GA is dependent on Red Hat, and Cohesity is closely partnering with them to align on their upstream GA timeline. Cohesity will plan a corresponding GA release thereafter. Any unreleased Cohesity services or features referenced in this release are not currently available and may not be made generally available on time or at all, as may be determined in Cohesity’s sole discretion. Any such referenced Cohesity services or features do not represent promises to deliver, commitments, or obligations of Cohesity and may not be incorporated into any contract. Customers should make their purchase decisions based upon services and features that are currently generally available.