Simplyblock adds built-in DR to OpenShift Virtualization storage

Simplyblock has shipped synchronous replication, failover and S3 backup as native features of its OpenShift storage platform, removing the need for a separately licensed

By The Datatech Times Editorial Team AI level 2 of 5
AI level 2 of 5: drafted by our AI editorial assistant from the company's announcement; fact-checked, edited and signed off by Mark Walker, Editorial Director. What the levels mean
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Simplyblock has updated its software-defined storage platform for Red Hat OpenShift Virtualization and OpenShift Container Platform to include a full suite of business continuity and disaster recovery capabilities as standard. The Teltow, Germany-based vendor says the move eliminates the need for enterprises to license a separate DR product alongside their storage platform, a cost structure that it describes as one of the most significant obstacles to VMware-to-OpenShift migrations.

The announcement targets enterprises that have built their resilience strategies around VMware's integrated toolchain. Features such as vSAN, vMotion and Site Recovery Manager have, until now, had no direct equivalent at the storage layer within Kubernetes-based virtualisation environments, leaving organisations to assemble point products or pay premium add-on fees on every worker node at both a primary and a recovery site.

What ships in the platform

Simplyblock's updated platform includes four distinct data-protection mechanisms. Synchronous metro replication uses distributed erasure coding in a stretch-cluster configuration, providing zero recovery point objective for sites in close proximity. Asynchronous replication between clusters offers RPOs as low as one minute, with delta-based incremental transfers, automated fail-back and application-consistent recovery across related volumes. A live forward replication capability allows running volumes to be moved between clusters without disruption, broadly equivalent in intent to VMware's vMotion. Finally, off-site protection is available through backup and restore to any S3-compatible object store, independent of the primary storage environment.

Simplyblock says the platform operates at the storage layer through a Kubernetes CSI driver, and is designed to underpin broader cluster-level DR workflows managed via OpenShift's multi-cluster tooling rather than replace them.

Rob Pankow, chief executive of Simplyblock, said the company's aim was to give customers "replication, recovery and off-site protection without them having to assemble a separate collection of products or purchase a separately licensed DR layer."

Marc Staimer, CEO of Dragon Slayer Consulting, which provided an independent comment in the release, argued that the lack of integrated business continuity has been a structural barrier to enterprise adoption of OpenShift Virtualization as a VMware replacement.

Market context

The VMware displacement opportunity has grown considerably since Broadcom's 2023 acquisition of VMware prompted a wave of licensing changes that increased costs for many enterprise customers. OpenShift Virtualization, built on the KubeVirt project, is one of several destinations being evaluated alongside Nutanix AHV, Microsoft Azure Stack HCI and a number of open-source alternatives. The ability to match the integrated resilience capabilities of vSAN and Site Recovery Manager has consistently been cited by infrastructure architects as a prerequisite for production workload migration rather than a nice-to-have.

Software-defined storage vendors competing in the Kubernetes space include Portworx (owned by Pure Storage), Longhorn (a CNCF project maintained by SUSE), Rook-Ceph and StorageOS. Most offer some form of replication or snapshot capability, but the degree to which synchronous metro replication and automated fail-back are shipped as native, unlicensed features varies considerably across the field. Simplyblock's positioning on price transparency, bundling DR at no extra licence cost, is a direct challenge to the add-on model that characterises several incumbent offerings.

Regulatory and standards read-across

For regulated industries, specifically financial services, healthcare and critical national infrastructure, storage-layer RPO and RTO guarantees are increasingly scrutinised under frameworks including DORA in the EU, which mandates demonstrable recovery capability for financial entities by January 2025. Organisations running workloads subject to DORA or equivalent national frameworks will need to validate that any new storage platform can produce the audit evidence required, including replication-lag monitoring and documented failover test results. Simplyblock has not published third-party certification or audit-ready reporting tooling in this release, which is a gap that enterprise buyers in regulated sectors are likely to probe.

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