Red Hat

AI. Cloud. ML. LLMs. AR/VR. Blockchain. What do they have in common?

They’re all powered by massive datasets—measured in petabytes—and they’re reshaping how organizations connect, innovate, and compete. Disruptive technologies are no longer the exception—they’re the rule. Yet, even in this era of microservices and edge computing, monolithic systems still play a role. The challenge? Navigating this fragmented, fast-evolving landscape with confidence.

Red Hat and NetApp: collaborating for the future

Red Hat, the world’s leading provider of open-source solutions, offers dozens of products spanning AI, cloud computing, automation, and data services. Foundational to its success is edge-to-core continuity, powered in part by NetApp’s high-performance storage fabric. Together, Red Hat and NetApp are shaping the future of data infrastructure: hybrid, open, and intelligent.

In the 2010s, containerization revolutionized cloud computing. Docker simplified it, Kubernetes scaled it, and Red Hat OpenShift made it enterprise-ready. Launched in 2012 under Matt Hicks’ leadership, Red Hat OpenShift enabled organizations to build and scale applications more seamlessly across on-premises, public clouds, and hybrid cloud environments.

The power of this architecture is best seen in action. Take Netflix, for example:

• Seamless streaming: Docker containers deployed at scale allow Netflix to stream content to over 200 million subscribers in 190 countries.
• Smarter pipelines: Netflix uses microservices to keep its video processing pipeline current, enabling features like accurate encoding and richer metadata for interactive storytelling.

This same containerized, microservices-driven approach underpins Red Hat OpenShift. By adopting Docker and Kubernetes early on, Red Hat OpenShift became a platform for organizations to unlock the full potential of cloud-native solutions.

NetApp joined the container revolution in 2016 with NetApp^® Trident™, an open-source storage orchestrator for Kubernetes. Together, Red Hat and NetApp have remained at the forefront of cloud-native innovation, providing the tools and infrastructure businesses need to scale applications, automate workflows, and deliver exceptional user experiences.

AI’s real-world value lies in inference—when trained models generate actionable insights. Yet, 70% of AI investment by most organizations never leaves the lab.

Red Hat and NetApp are changing that.

Red Hat recently implemented the NetApp AFF A90 storage system to help streamline AI model training and OpenShift-based applications. With up to 40M IOPS, 1TB/s throughput, and 99.9999% availability, NetApp’s infrastructure supports Red Hat’s most demanding AI workloads.

NetApp Trident provisions persistent storage for Red Hat’s containerized AI Inference Server, enabling faster, cost-effective model deployments. As a senior engineer at Red Hat puts it: “Together, Red Hat and NetApp turn data into insights, and insights into action—wherever that data lives.”

Red Hat OpenShift also integrates with Amazon FSx for NetApp ONTAP for scalable, fully managed shared storage. Nestled within an AWS-native experience, users gain access to popular NetApp ONTAP^® features like Snapshot^™ copies, FlexClone^® volumes, and replication with SnapMirror^®. The NetApp Trident driver further simplifies Kubernetes processes across multiple containers, ensuring seamless scalability and performance.

The microservices architecture we rely on today is only possible through containerization, which breaks down applications into smaller, independent services. This approach improves agility, resilience, and scalability while avoiding vendor lock-in.

For one manufacturer, integrating traditional platforms with AI-powered processes was critical to their future strategy. Red Hat and NetApp engineers collaborated to design three viable solutions, ultimately delivering a seamless AI integration without months of downtime. The result? A customer experience so unified that it’s hard to tell where Red Hat ends and NetApp begins.

As cloud-native solutions expand to the edge, AI integration will be essential across the stack. Red Hat and NetApp’s hybrid infrastructure provides the foundation for this future, enabling businesses to scale AI models, automate workflows, and unlock the full potential of their data.

With open-source innovation and intelligent infrastructure, Red Hat and NetApp are ready to show the world what’s possible.