Navigating storage options with OpenShift Virtualization for VMware admins
Storage plays an incredibly important role in your organization’s infrastructure. Where you plan to host resources can change with your needs. In this section you will learn how to access common storage features in Red Hat OpenShift, and what each of the Red Hat OpenShift Virtualization storage menu options mean for VMware vSphere admins.
What will you learn?
- How OpenShift menu and features map to ones you may know from VMware
What do you need before starting?
- VMware vSphere 8.0 or higher (as referenced in this path)
- Red Hat OpenShift 4.18 (as referenced in this path)
Feature mapping chart
| Feature | VMware | OpenShift |
| Where VM Disks are stored | Datastore | PersistentVolumeClaim/PersistentVolume |
| Policy based storage management | vVols, Storage Policy Based Management (SPBM) | Storage Classes |
| Non-Disruptive VM storage migration | Storage vMotion | Storage live migration |
| Storage availability | vSAN (vVols), NFS, SAN (Fiber Channel or iSCSi), Raw Device Mapping | PersistentVolume (PV) and PersistentVolumeClaim (PVC) paradigms to manage storage for VMs. Container Storage Interface (CSI) paradigm to allow for seamless integration with various storage backends or Software Defined Storage solutions. |
| Accessing legacy storage arrays | Compatible with all major storage vendors | All major storage vendors have a CSI compliant driver |
| Storage accelerated cloning | Yes, via VAAI | Yes, via CSI driver |
| Disk resizing | Yes | Yes |
| Disk/VM snapshots | Yes | Yes |
Menu mapping chart
This section addresses what OpenShift Virtualization storage menu selection items mean from a VMware vSphere perspective. As noted in previous resources, OpenShift is conceptually different in select areas from VMware to achieve the same or similar items. In the instances that there is no VMware equivalent option, they will be marked as “N/A”.
| OpenShift Virtualization menu | VMware comparable | Explanation |
| Storage - Data Foundation (requires OpenShift Data Foundation storage and its console plugin) | vSAN or Local Raided disk set up as a VMFS filesystem | Entry point to in the web console to manage OpenShift Data Foundation storage |
| Storage - Object Storage (requires OpenShift Data Foundation storage and its console plugin) | N/A | Configure and manage Object storage, including policies, buckets, claims or replication |
| Storage - PersistentVolumes | List of vVols or VMDKs | Manage and troubleshoot statically or dynamically provisioned file and block based persistent volumes (PVs). Each persistent volume represents a single storage volume that is blacked by one of the existing storage providers |
| Storage - PersistentVolumesClaims | N/A | Manage and troubleshoot storage requests, their binding to persistent volumes and their allocation to workloads (containers and VMs). PVCs also define characteristics of how PVs are bounded and their lifecycle |
| Storage - StorageClasses | Storage Policies | Manage the classes of storage providers integrated in your cluster. Each storage class is a profile that maps dynamic storage requests to a storage provider and defines provisioning properties determined by the cluster administrators |
| Storage - VolumeSnapshot | Virtual Machine Storage Snapshot | Manage and troubleshoot volume snapshot and restore requests |
| Storage - VolumeSnapshotClasses | N/A | Manage the classes of snapshot providers integrated in your cluster. Each snapshot class is a profile that maps snapshot requests to a snapshot provider and defines snapshot configuration properties determined by the cluster administrators. |
| Storage - VolumeSnapshotContents | N/A | Manage and troubleshoot existing volumes snapshots. Each snapshot is backed by an integrated snapshot provider. It is similar to a Persistent Volume |
Now that you have a baseline of some OpenShift storage features and their comparables to VMware vSphere, next is a dive into network features.
