As Kubernetes adoption grows exponentially with businesses digital transformation, so does the need for tools for storage and protection in this environment.

In response to these businesses demands, Dell EMC announced the Container Storage Modules, or CSM, which aims to improve features such as observability, resilience and replication. The six open-source modules are plug-ins designed to ease storage management with Kubernetes, going beyond basic Container Storage Interface functionality, according to Itzik Reich (pictured, right), vice president, technologists, ISG at Dell.

“We have customers that are telling us ‘I need far more than just the ability to provision a volume for my Kubernetes environments — I need this to be protected, I need this volume to be replicated, I need this volume to be protected into a backup device, all of those things that CSI doesn’t know to do today,” he said. “So … we’re not going to reinvent the wheel that is CSI … we’re going to extend CSI with open-source tools.”

Reich and Nivas Iyer (pictured, left), senior principal product manager at Dell Technologies Inc., spoke with Lisa Martin, host of theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s livestreaming studio, during KubeCon + CloudNativeCon NA. They discussed the evolution of Kubernetes, new customer needs and how Dell is addressing them. (* Disclosure below.)

Data protection faces new challenges

The growing demand for data protection is inextricably linked to the recent upward trend in cyberattacks. The acceleration of digital transformation brought about by the COVID-19 pandemic has increased the attack surface, creating more opportunities for criminals.

The challenges that Kubernetes add on top of traditional application is that it is split across multiple smaller metadata aspects, according to Iyer.

“The application itself will have labels, they’ll have secrets, there are conflict maps, they’ll have custom resource definitions; they have all these additional metadata that make up the entire application, not just the data,” he explained. “So, you need to have all of that captured in context in a cloud native fashion if you’re trying to protect that.”

While Dell does not work directly on the cyberattack prevention side, it does help with the “cure,” where data protection is an important aspect.

“There is always ability for some attacks to sneak in, and that’s where data protection is providing that cure. So, in case something does happen and you have a ransomware attack, i have a cybersecurity wall or I have data stored in a secure fashion in a panic room, if you will,” Iyer concluded.

Watch the complete video interview below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s coverage of KubeCon + CloudNativeCon NA. (* Disclosure: Dell Technologies Inc. sponsored this segment of theCUBE. Neither Dell nor other sponsors have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

Photo: Nivas Iyer and Itzik Reich