Software container storage specialist Portworx Inc. today announced some significant updates to its platform designed to introduce greater reliability, better security and ease of use.

PX-Enterprise 1.4 is Portworx’s cloud-native storage product for Kubernetes, which is the most widely used tool for managing software containers. Developers are increasingly using software containers to build their applications inside them because they offer a considerable advantage by abstracting away the underlying hardware and operating system so the apps they build can run anywhere.

PX-Enterprise provides scalable storage for container workloads by transforming commodity x86 server hardware into a converged storage node that can scale across clusters and automatically provision itself. The idea is that enterprises can use PX-Enterprise to rapidly provision storage for their container apps and easily manage their storage requirements on a per-container basis.

With the 1.4 release, Portworx is hoping to provide greater reliability for more complex applications with the introduction of 3DSnap, which allows for multiple persistent data volumes to be snapshotted at once, as a single unit. 3DSnap can be thought of as a kind of “time machine” that lets users roll back their applications to a previous point in time to mitigate any problems, said one Portworx customer.

“PX-Enterprise with 3DSnap allows me to provide a time machine for my customer’s entire application, ensuring that I can always restore it to a particular point-in-time with guaranteed application consistency,” said Kris Watson, chief executive officer at ComputeStacks, a Docker container platform provider that has been testing Portworx’s new software.

Portworx says 3DSnap is useful for backing up “scale-out databases.” These often have multiple data volumes that need to be snapshotted at once if they’re to be restored to a previous point in time. 3DSnap, which is currently compatible with MySQL and PostgreSQL databases, is also handy for anyone running a WordPress website, as these also require group snapshots in order to be restored to a particular point in time.

On the security side, Portworx is adding a new feature called Kubernetes Per Volume Secrets, which allows for individual storage volumes to be encrypted with their own private key. This is a critical requirement for many multitenant environments, Portworx said.

There’s also a new user interface that the company said provides a faster and more responsive way to manage multicloud container clusters.

Other new features in the release include Google Cloud Auto Scaling Support for Google Kubernetes Engine for automating the management of Google Cloud storage disks, as well as a preview of the Container Storage Interface driver, which helps to automate the provisioning of storage volumes.

“As enterprises transition to the cloud and DevOps, they are accelerating their container initiatives and expanding them to include mission critical data services,” said Murli Thirumale, co-founder and CEO at Portworx. “Our customers now require a scalable cloud native storage platform that simplifies their IT infrastructure and operations, protects against cybersecurity threats and future-proofs their infrastructure for a multicloud world.”

Portworx said the PX-Enterprise 1.4 is currently available in preview ahead of its general release on May 14.

Image: Portworx