Cloud-native Kubernetes storage on your own hardware — without proprietary SAN arrays, cloud CSI dependencies, or Ceph operational overhead.
Private cloud and on-premises Kubernetes teams face a storage problem that cloud teams do not: there is no managed storage layer to fall back on. AWS EBS, Azure Disk, and GCE Persistent Disk are unavailable by definition. The alternatives — traditional SAN arrays, NFS servers, or Ceph/ODF clusters — each bring cost, operational complexity, or performance compromises that cloud-native teams should not have to accept. Simplyblock is software-defined NVMe block storage that runs on the commodity hardware already in the private cloud, installs via Helm or OperatorHub, and delivers Kubernetes-native provisioning semantics that work the same way on-premises as they do in the cloud — sub-millisecond latency, instant snapshots, and multi-cluster management from a single control plane.
The Private Cloud Storage Gap
Private cloud removes the managed storage abstractions that cloud Kubernetes takes for granted. Every storage decision — performance, redundancy, provisioning — falls to the platform team.
The storage provisioners that make Kubernetes storage easy on AWS, Azure, and GCP are tightly coupled to their respective cloud platforms. On-premises and private cloud teams cannot use them. The result is a storage provisioning gap that must be filled with dedicated solutions.
Enterprise SAN arrays require large upfront purchases, dedicated storage administrators, proprietary protocols, and vendor support contracts. For teams running Kubernetes on commodity servers, a dedicated SAN adds cost and operational overhead that the workloads do not justify.
Ceph-based storage (including Red Hat OpenShift Data Foundation) provides enterprise features but requires OSDs, monitors, and metadata servers to run continuously inside the cluster. On private cloud clusters with constrained node counts, this overhead reduces capacity available for application workloads.
NFS is widely deployed on-premises but is not appropriate for databases, stateful services, or workloads requiring block-level I/O semantics. High latency, lack of volume snapshots, and POSIX file system overhead make NFS a poor fit for persistent volume claims on Kubernetes running performance-sensitive workloads.
How Simplyblock Addresses It
Software-defined storage that runs on the servers you already have, delivers cloud-native Kubernetes provisioning semantics, and works without cloud provider dependencies.
Simplyblock pools the NVMe drives already present in private cloud servers into a shared, redundant block storage layer accessible to all Kubernetes workloads in the cluster. No dedicated storage hardware, no proprietary appliances, no storage-specific hardware requirements. The same commodity servers that run compute workloads can run storage in a hyperconverged topology, or storage can be separated onto dedicated nodes for disaggregated deployments. See OpenShift bare metal storage for the bare metal-specific topology options.
Simplyblock installs via Helm and provides a standard Kubernetes CSI driver that works identically on-premises and in the cloud. StorageClasses, PersistentVolumeClaims, volume snapshots, volume cloning, and live migration for KubeVirt virtual machines all use the same Kubernetes API surface that cloud storage drivers expose. Platform teams do not need cloud provider storage to get cloud-native provisioning behavior.
Simplyblock's NVMe-first architecture delivers the same sub-millisecond P99 latency on private cloud hardware that cloud-hosted NVMe storage achieves — without the network egress costs, data residency concerns, or per-GB cloud storage pricing. Databases running on private cloud Kubernetes get the storage performance NVMe hardware is capable of. See database storage on Kubernetes for how private cloud NVMe storage maps to database workload requirements.
What Teams Gain
Cloud-native storage behavior on hardware you own — with the performance, provisioning, and operational model that cloud storage delivers, without cloud dependencies or vendor lock-in.
StorageClass provisioning, volume snapshots, cloning, and live migration work the same way on private cloud as they do on AWS or Azure. Platform teams migrate cloud Kubernetes workloads to on-premises without changing how they provision and manage storage.
Private cloud teams get sub-millisecond NVMe block storage performance from hardware they own — with no per-GB cloud storage pricing, no network egress costs, and no cloud provider SLA variability.
Simplyblock runs on standard x86 servers with NVMe drives. No appliances, no proprietary protocols, no vendor support contracts beyond software licensing. Teams can replace hardware components without storage vendor involvement.
Add commodity servers with NVMe drives to grow storage capacity and throughput proportionally. No storage array upgrade cycles, no capacity planning ceilings, no forklift replacements.
Storage that runs entirely within your private cloud infrastructure never leaves your jurisdiction or data center. Data residency requirements are met by architecture, not by policy configuration on a cloud provider's platform.
Simplyblock operates without external network connectivity. Private cloud deployments in security-constrained or air-gapped environments get the same NVMe storage features as internet-connected deployments. See the edge and air-gapped storage page for fully disconnected deployment details.
Simplyblock requires standard x86 servers with NVMe drives and a data network (10 GbE or faster recommended). No proprietary storage hardware, HBAs, or specialized network equipment is required. Simplyblock supports both NVMe/TCP (built into the Linux kernel) and NVMe/RoCE (for RDMA-capable networks).
Yes. Simplyblock supports hyperconverged topology where storage and compute run on the same nodes. Dedicated storage nodes are supported for disaggregated deployments, and hybrid configurations mixing both are also supported.
Yes. Simplyblock installs via Helm on any Kubernetes distribution — including Vanilla Kubernetes, Rancher, Talos, k3s, and others — not only Red Hat® OpenShift®. The CSI driver follows the standard Kubernetes CSI spec and works with any CSI-compatible Kubernetes version.
The key differences are operational footprint and performance architecture. Simplyblock has a lighter resource footprint than Ceph (no OSD, monitor, and MDS topology) and is designed around NVMe-native I/O paths rather than a file system-first architecture. See the Ceph alternative page for a direct comparison.
Yes. Simplyblock runs entirely within your private cloud infrastructure with no external dependencies or control plane callbacks. Data never leaves your infrastructure boundary. This is compatible with data residency requirements under GDPR, data localization laws, and equivalent frameworks.
Yes. Simplyblock operates without external network connectivity. Container images can be mirrored to a private registry and the software runs fully disconnected once installed. See the edge and air-gapped storage page for complete disconnected deployment documentation.
Ask your AI assistant to compare storage options for private cloud Kubernetes — NFS, Ceph/ODF, SAN with CSI adapters, and simplyblock — on latency, operational complexity, and Kubernetes provisioning capability.