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Trilio and Mirantis Bring End-to-End Data Security to Kubernetes

Otto Nagengast - March 25, 2022
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Kubernetes is built for resilience. By deploying applications as ephemeral, replicable microservices, container orchestration provides a hedge against server crashes and downtime.

But data is a different story.

Kubernetes alone isn’t enough to protect a company’s valuable data. In the event of disaster—from fire to weather to targeted ransomware attacks—organizations stand to lose persistent data from stateful applications, not to mention metadata for the cluster itself. Enterprises adopting Kubernetes need data protection that is tailored to cloud native architectures—and works across multi-cloud or hybrid platforms.

For years, Trilio and Mirantis have worked together to provide cloud infrastructure with seamless data protection for Mirantis OpenStack platforms. Now the two companies are bringing their paired expertise to joint solutions integrating TrilioVault for Kubernetes and Kubernetes platforms from Mirantis.


This partnership provides an end-to-end uptime and security solution built on a strong history of joint solution delivery. As the cloud native ecosystem evolves, every enterprise needs to understand the risk environment for their data—and the solutions available to help them maintain continuous availability and data protection.


Kubernetes is growing—and so is the need for data security

According to the State of Cloud Native report, prepared by the Cloud Native Computing Foundation and SlashData, adoption of Kubernetes grew by 67% in 2021. Another report published by the Data on Kubernetes Community (DoKC) found that 70% of respondents reported they are now running stateful applications on Kubernetes clusters, with another 20% saying they expect to see these types of workloads deployed on the platform.

While we are accustomed to thinking of cloud native architectures as ephemeral, the rise of “stateful” applications means that data resilience and protection is becoming more and more essential. Stateful applications use persistent data stores (like a database for a web application) that may be accessed by more temporary, disposable pods that hold containers with application logic.

Those ephemeral pods can be quickly recreated, either automatically or from metadata. But the same isn’t true for the persistent volumes utilized by stateful apps. Users need a way to back up and protect their data in a host of common situations:

  • Migrating applications or microservices between clusters. As infrastructure evolves, it may grow to encompass multiple clusters—or migrate across clouds. Data protection helps to ensure that these transitions are seamless.
  • Recovering from disaster. From data center fires to human error to weather events to malicious actors, there are numerous ways disaster might strike a cluster—and even the most resilient multi-cloud cluster infrastructure could lose valuable data.
  • Protecting against ransomware attacks. According to the U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), these cyberattacks—in which hackers lock a company out of its data and demand payment to make it available again—are growing in frequency. Data protection and disaster recovery solutions mitigate this risk.

Data security challenges aren’t limited to stateful Kubernetes applications. The cluster itself depends on reams of YAML files and other configuration data that needs to be protected (and is often easier to re-instantiate in theory than in practice).


Joint expertise for world-class support

Risk mitigation is critical for enterprises, but data protection isn’t only a matter of preventing data loss or protecting data from hackers. It is another pillar supporting the goals of any cloud native strategy: achieving high uptime, availability, and flexibility. In hybrid environments, an effective data strategy makes it easy to migrate architecture between clouds, public or private, and on-prem infrastructure.


Mirantis and Trilio work together to support this strategy, each adopting an “any cloud” approach. Mirantis provides products (such as Mirantis Secure Registry) and services for any Kubernetes, no matter where it’s running, and TrilioVault for Kubernetes (TVK) is compatible with any storage solution (CSI, NFS, S3), or any cloud (Private, AWS, GCP, Azure, IBM, DigitalOcean).

TrilioVault for Kubernetes provides key features to protect cloud native application data. It protects a comprehensive swath of Kubernetes data, including:

  • Application data in persistent volumes
  • Metadata
  • Kubernetes Objects
  • Helm data
  • Operators

  • Labels
  • Namespaces

Better still, the long-term Trilio and Mirantis partnership means we can jointly support customers for quick resolution of any problems, bringing to bear world-class support teams that provide coordinated service.


Preparation for a cloud native future

As organizations transition into cloud native strategies, it’s important that they understand the specific risk environment for their infrastructure and the tailored solutions available to mitigate those risks. Otherwise, they may fall prey to overconfidence—or to spend time and money on outdated solutions.

Data protection and disaster recovery needs to be designed specifically for cloud native architectures—built on an understanding of how cloud native technologies use data and how those systems can fail. It requires experts, and the partnership between Mirantis and Trilio provides a tailored, end-to-end solution from leaders in the cloud native space.

For more details, download the Trilio and Mirantis joint solution brief.





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