DevOps engineers running OpenShift know the platform well. They know how to build on it, scale on it, and operate it under pressure. What they often hit unexpectedly is the question of backup and recovery, especially once OpenShift Virtualization enters the picture.
Most of the tooling that exists today wasn’t built with Kubernetes in mind. It was built for something else and extended toward it. That gap shows up in real ways: in how recovery works, in how pricing scales, and in how much operational overhead teams end up carrying just to keep things protected.
This is the problem space that Paweł Staniec, Head of Technology and Alliances for the EMEA region at CloudCasa, walks through in the latest episode of Partner Power 5, the Red Hat partner podcast.
The Virtualization Shift Is Creating a New Set of Requirements
OpenShift Virtualization is changing how teams think about their workload estate. Virtual machines are moving onto the same platform as containers. That consolidation makes operational sense, but it creates a protection challenge that’s genuinely different from either traditional VM backup or pure Kubernetes backup.
You’re no longer dealing with one workload type in one environment. You’re dealing with VMs, containers, and stateful applications, potentially spread across on-prem and managed cloud environments like ROSA, ARO, or OpenShift Dedicated. Recovery needs to be granular enough to handle all of it, and consistent enough that engineers aren’t learning a different workflow for every scenario.
File-level restore, namespace-level restore, cross-cluster migration: for teams running production workloads, these aren’t advanced features. They’re baseline expectations.
Built for Kubernetes, Certified for OpenShift
CloudCasa is Red Hat certified, which matters beyond the badge. Certification means the integration has been validated against OpenShift’s specific architecture, including storage, RBAC, and multi-tenancy. Role-based access control and multi-tenancy support are built in. Recovery operations follow a consistent model whether you’re restoring a single file or an entire cluster.
CloudCasa is available as both SaaS and self-hosted, so teams can choose the deployment model that fits their security posture. That flexibility matters particularly in regulated industries or air-gapped environments where SaaS isn’t an option.
Pricing That Reflects How Kubernetes Actually Scales
Node-based pricing is straightforward to model and budget. It doesn’t penalize teams for storing more data or running more workloads per cluster. Traditional backup licensing models made sense when VM counts were the primary variable. In a Kubernetes environment where workload density shifts quickly, those models tend to produce cost surprises.
What the Episode Covers
Paweł goes deeper on the specific scenarios where a Kubernetes-native approach changes the recovery experience, how teams use CloudCasa to support workload migration during modernization, and what the Red Hat certification process actually validated.
If you’re evaluating data protection options for OpenShift, or already running something and finding gaps, the conversation is practical and grounded. Find it now on the Partner Power 5 feed.
