Power your Kubernetes workloads with new features

Organizations of all sizes are embracing Kubernetes to power their modern applications, from AI workloads to VMs that use Red Hat OpenShift and KubeVirt. So, the need for a robust, secure, and highly scalable storage solution has never been more critical. With NetApp® Trident™ software, you get the solution that meets those needs.

This blog post covers the new features that have been introduced in NetApp Trident 25.02. It explains how Trident simplifies persistent storage deployment and management on Kubernetes while enabling you to use your organization’s existing NetApp storage systems for additional use cases.

Trident provides a complete storage and data management platform for all NetApp customers—whether they run applications on premises or in the cloud. It’s optimal for your on-premises NetApp ONTAP® based systems. And it’s optimal if you use NetApp first- and third-party cloud services, such as Amazon FSx for NetApp ONTAP, Azure NetApp Files, Google Cloud NetApp Volumes, and NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP. Trident unifies all on-premises and public cloud solutions under a single Container Storage Interface (CSI) driver.

Fibre Channel support. If you have existing Fibre Channel (FC) deployments and want to implement modern workloads—either as containers or as VMs—you can now use Trident to provision and to manage persistent storage on your FC storage backends. FC support is critical if you want to modernize your virtualization stack with Red Hat OpenShift Virtualization without having to redesign your storage architecture. You can connect your FC arrays to Trident by creating a new Trident backend config (TBC) custom resource and by setting the sanType: fcp parameter. After you have configured the backend, all the CSI features—provisioning, snapshot creation, volume expansion, and clone creation—work seamlessly on your FC-backed storage.

OpenShift Virtualization backup and restore support. Since the 24.10 release, Trident has also included an optional data protection and disaster recovery add-on called Trident protect. As you migrate and onboard VMs on OpenShift by using OpenShift Virtualization or on Kubernetes by using KubeVirt, you can rely on Trident protect as the solution to create backups and to perform restores for those VMs. Trident protect supports crash-consistent backups and restores of OpenShift Virtualization VMs, storing them in any S3-compatible object storage buckets. In earlier releases, Trident protect also provided disaster recovery with storage replication and automated failover and failback for OpenShift Virtualization VMs.

Red Hat OpenShift Certified Operator for NetApp Trident. NetApp Trident is now available as a certified operator for Red Hat OpenShift, reinforcing the fact that this open-source solution is and always has been fully validated and supported by NetApp. The new operator also includes badges for CSI and OpenShift Virtualization, highlighting the advanced storage and data management capabilities of Trident. If you’re already using the community operator, our documentation covers how to upgrade your community operator–based deployments to the new certified operator.

NetApp ASA r2 system support. With this release, Trident supports NetApp ASA r2 systems, simplifying the experience if your organization is SAN-only. You can connect your stateful applications that are running on Kubernetes to ASA r2 back ends over the iSCSI protocol. When connecting to the ASA r2 backends, Trident automatically discovers the backend type and uses the correct driver, without any additional intervention on your part.

LUKS encryption support for NVMe/TCP. Trident now delivers feature parity between iSCSI and NVMe/TCP back ends by supporting Linux Unified Key Setup (LUKS)–based encryption for your Kubernetes workloads. By using this feature, you can migrate to NVMe/TCP-based ONTAP back ends for high-performance workloads like AI model training without having to compromise on security and encryption.

iSCSI support for Red Hat OpenShift Service on AWS clusters. Trident now supports and fully automates the configuration of iSCSI prerequisites on Red Hat OpenShift Service on AWS (ROSA) clusters, eliminating the need for manual installation. If you’re a ROSA customer, as part of this Trident release, you can use the Trident node preparation feature for the iSCSI protocol. During Trident installation, this feature automatically applies the necessary configuration for applications to deploy persistent volumes by using the iSCSI protocol backed by Amazon FSx for NetApp ONTAP back ends. This feature streamlines both the initial deployment and any future scale-out events for bare-metal and virtualized ROSA clusters that are deployed either in classic or in Hosted Control Plane (HCP) mode.

Automated backend configuration for FSx for ONTAP. The Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Service (Amazon EKS) add-on for NetApp Trident now supports automated backend and storage class configuration for your Amazon FSx for NetApp ONTAP file systems. This feature eliminates any manual overhead for your organization and streamlines the initial installation and configuration. During installation, you must provide the FSx for ONTAP ID. Trident uses this ID to connect to the Amazon FSx for NetApp ONTAP file system and to configure the Trident (TridentBackendConfig) and Kubernetes (StorageClass) resources needed to deploy persistent volumes for both the NFS and the iSCSI protocols. This feature also enables you to connect additional FSx for ONTAP backends on Day 2 by simply updating your Trident custom resources. 

Faster recovery from Kubernetes node failures. Trident now provides feature parity for the force-detach functionality across all ONTAP drivers (ontap-san, ontap-san-economy, ontap-nas, and ontap-nas-economy). It automatically fails over volumes from nodes during ungraceful shutdown events and reconnects them on surviving nodes without waiting for Kubernetes timeouts. Trident also dynamically updates the ONTAP export policies to remove and to add Kubernetes worker nodes based on failure events. With this feature, only worker nodes with active application pods have access to a backend NetApp ONTAP FlexVol® volume.

Cross-namespace volume clones support. As organizations adopt KubeVirt to run VMs on Kubernetes, they need their modern virtualization stack to support golden images. These images, either as persistent volumes or volume snapshots, can serve as the source for cloning and for creating new volumes in other namespaces on the same Kubernetes cluster. With Trident, you can now build and use these golden templates to deploy VMs on demand in any namespace on the Kubernetes cluster. Behind the scenes, this approach still uses the NetApp ONTAP FlexClone® capability for rapid cloning and to benefit from ONTAP data efficiency features like compression, deduplication, and compaction.

With another feature-packed release, NetApp continues to redefine how organizations provision and manage persistent storage for containerized and virtualized applications on Kubernetes. By delivering powerful new capabilities—from FC support to advanced data protection—Trident provides a unified, robust data management experience for both your on-premises and your cloud environments. We invite you to explore the new features, to integrate them into your Kubernetes stack, and to experience how Trident streamlines your modernization journey while driving greater agility for your applications. To get started, find out more about Trident and deploy it on your own Kubernetes clusters today.