By Sean Mitchell
Publication Date: 2026-05-14 09:16:00
NetApp has announced a collaboration with Red Hat focused on Red Hat OpenShift deployments, with an emphasis on data protection and scale for virtualised environments.
The work includes new data management features for OpenShift in on-premises and cloud environments. These are intended to improve backup, recovery and day-to-day operations for virtual machines and container-based applications.
The announcement comes as businesses expand virtualised infrastructure to handle rising data volumes linked to AI use. NetApp cited Red Hat research showing that 90 per cent of organisations said virtualisation supports innovation, while 71 per cent said more than half of their IT infrastructure is virtualised.
As OpenShift virtualised environments grow, backup methods that scan full virtual machine disks can extend backup windows and make recovery timelines less predictable. Customers moving to or expanding OpenShift Virtualization need block-level change tracking to help meet backup and recovery targets while controlling storage costs, according to NetApp.
New features
Among the updates, NetApp Backup and Recovery for Red Hat OpenShift and OpenShift Virtualization now supports protection for virtual machines on OpenShift, with automated virtual machine-level protection and recovery workflows. The service uses incremental-forever backups with change block tracking, while preserving storage efficiency and shifting some processing load away from backup…
