Simplyblock, the software-defined storage platform for Kubernetes, says its Container Storage Interface (CSI) driver and Operator have achieved Red Hat OpenShift certification and are listed in the Red Hat Ecosystem Catalog. Combined with the business continuity and disaster recovery features it launched in September, the company calls the result a blueprint for enterprises moving virtual machines from VMware and Nutanix to Red Hat OpenShift Virtualization.
Autonomy Magazine covered that September launch, which added synchronous and asynchronous replication, S3 backup and live cluster migration under a single per-node license. The certification supplies the other half of the story: a recognized listing for the storage layer beneath those features.
Simplyblock’s argument is that enterprises leaving VMware have plenty of storage options for OpenShift but no single validated design for running VMs the way they ran them before. Performance, capacity efficiency, live mobility and disaster recovery came from separate products. The company serves VMs and containers from one Kubernetes-native storage layer, with erasure coding that provides the failure protection of three-way replication at a fraction of the capacity cost.
Red Hat sees the fit. “Running virtual machines and containers on a unified platform like Red Hat OpenShift works best when teams can eliminate storage fragmentation and simplify operations,” said Steve Gordon, senior director, Hybrid Platforms, Red Hat. Simplyblock’s CSI certification, he said, helps support large-scale virtualized environments where storage efficiency, consistent performance and ease of management affect infrastructure economics and application availability.
We put questions about the announcement to simplyblock’s leadership. Their answers follow.
Q: What does certification change for a customer that the product alone didn’t?
Rob Pankow, co-founder and CEO: “Certification gives customers an independently verifiable basis for choosing simplyblock as part of their OpenShift environment. Our CSI driver and Operator have met Red Hat’s certification requirements, and the product is listed in the Red Hat Ecosystem Catalog.” Customers still make their own architecture and purchasing decisions, he said, “but they can make those decisions with evidence of the OpenShift integration.”
Q: What does “blueprint” mean in practice?
Michael Schmidt, CTO: “By blueprint, we mean a repeatable deployment approach for running and protecting virtual machines on OpenShift.” It brings together the storage architecture, OpenShift Virtualization integration and recovery design alongside a migration plan. An architect starts with the certified driver and Operator, the Catalog listing and deployment documentation. “The certification applies to the OpenShift integration,” Schmidt said. “The complete customer configuration is sized and validated against that customer’s workloads and recovery requirements.”
Q: How important is the Red Hat relationship to simplyblock’s growth?
Rob Pankow: “Red Hat is important to our growth because OpenShift is a destination for the enterprise customers we are building for: organizations bringing existing virtual machines and new containerized applications onto a common platform.” He said the Catalog listing “makes that integration visible and verifiable to enterprise buyers” and gives an architect a concrete starting point for evaluation.
The timing follows a wave of VMware reconsideration. Pankow said commercial changes have accelerated the discussion, but the larger question is how to modernize without rewriting every application.
Q: What is the hardest part of these migrations?
Rob Pankow: “The hardest part is usually reconstructing the operational environment around those VMs: storage performance, capacity, networking, protection and recovery. Moving a VM is one step. Giving the operations team confidence that it can run, maintain and recover the application is what makes the migration viable.”
Q: How does simplyblock replace vSAN, vMotion and Site Recovery Manager?
Michael Schmidt: “Simplyblock supplies the distributed storage and data protection that customers previously associated with vSAN. OpenShift Virtualization provides VM execution and live migration between hosts; simplyblock provides the underlying storage and online volume movement.” The September launch delivers zero-RPO protection in supported metro stretch configurations and asynchronous replication with RPO as low as one minute. Schmidt added a useful clarification: “a one-minute RPO is a data-loss objective, not a promise of one-minute application recovery,” so each migration should test recovery against its own applications.
Q: What does a typical migration look like?
Michael Schmidt: He described a staged path: inventory the VMs and dependencies, validate a representative workload, then migrate in manageable groups with an agreed cutover and rollback plan. Red Hat’s Migration Toolkit for Virtualization can handle the VMware conversion and import, with simplyblock supplying destination storage and protection. A pilot sets a realistic migration rate, and an illustrative starting point is “a small OpenShift cluster on eligible existing VMware hardware, followed by staged migration as capacity is released.”
Simplyblock will bring those conversations to Red Hat Summit: Connect in Stockholm on November 11, Darmstadt on November 18, Warsaw on November 30 and Milan on December 3. Details are on the simplyblock events page.
Q: What should attendees take away from those events?
Rob Pankow: Booth conversations will focus on reusing eligible hardware, supporting VMs and containers on one storage foundation, and matching protection to each application’s recovery needs. “Storage performance, capacity efficiency and business continuity belong in the migration design from the beginning.”
For architects weighing a move off VMware or Nutanix, the practical value is a certified reference to build from, plus candid guidance on testing recovery before cutover. Teams still validate the full configuration against their own workloads, and the certification gives that work a firmer starting point.
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