Bridging Storage and VM Operations with Portworx Dynamic Plugin for Red Hat OpenShift

As Red Hat OpenShift environments continue to evolve toward unified platforms for both containers and virtual machines (VMs), the operational boundary between storage admins and virtualization admins is disappearing. Portworx Dynamic Plugin 2.2.0 for Red Hat OpenShift represents a meaningful step in that convergence, bringing storage observability and control directly into the OpenShift console.

This release introduces an enhanced user experience and deeper integrations in the Portworx Cluster Dashboard and the Portworx tab within the VM page in the OpenShift web console. Together, these capabilities streamline Day-2 operations, engage admins and reduce the cognitive overhead of managing stateful workloads across hybrid platforms.

Install the Portworx Dynamic Plugin

During installation of the Portworx operator, select “Enable” next to the Console plugin radial button. This will make sure that the Portworx operator installs the dynamic plugin. If you forgot this step during initial installation, you can go back and edit the object to enable it.

You must follow the cluster pre-requisites for the plugin to pull metrics properly. This includes enabling OpenShift Prometheus monitoring and creating a cluster-monitoring-config ConfigMap in the openshift-monitoring namespace. For information, see Configure Portworx Monitoring on OpenShift.

Portworx Cluster Dashboard: Unified Storage Observability

The Portworx Cluster Dashboard provides a consolidated, real-time view of storage health, volume usage, consumption, storage pool observability, overall storage cluster performance and more directly within the OpenShift console.

At a high level, the dashboard enables users to:

• Instantly assess cluster health and component status
• Drill down from cluster → node → pool → volume → consumer
• Visualize time-series performance and usage metrics
• View storage-specific alerts and warnings
• Identify bottlenecks and capacity constraints
• Execute operational commands without leaving the UI

From Metrics to Action

One of the most impactful improvements is the ability to move seamlessly from observability to action. Instead of switching to CLI tools or external dashboards, users can:

• Expand or resize volumes

• Inspect volume configuration

• Apply I/O limits to prevent noisy neighbors

• Access pxctl directly from the OpenShift interface

This reduces the operational gap between detection and remediation,a critical factor in production environments where time-to-resolution matters.

Capacity Planning in Context

The dashboard also improves capacity planning and monitoring by providing visibility across:

• Nodes
• Storage pools
• Volumes
• Projects / namespaces

This contextual awareness is key. Rather than viewing storage as a flat pool, admins can understand how consumption maps to applications and teams, enabling more accurate forecasting and governance.

The plugin leverages the OpenShift monitoring stack, allowing it to query metrics from Thanos Querier from sources such as Prometheus and related services directly within the console. This enables responsive, real-time visibility into storage performance without requiring external tooling.

For storage admins, this means faster navigation and more reliable observability, even in high-scale environments.

Demo

Portworx Tab on VirtualMachine Page: Storage-Aware VM Operations

While the Cluster Dashboard enhances storage-centric workflows, the Portworx tab on the KubeVirt VirtualMachine page brings storage visibility directly into individual VM operations.

When the plugin is enabled, a dedicated Portworx tab appears within each VirtualMachine resource, allowing users to:

• View PVCs and disks attached to the VM
• Inspect storage characteristics and backing volumes
• Perform management operations on VM storage resources
• Exercise volume operations based on the needs of the application.

Bridging the VM Storage Gap

This feature fundamentally changes how VM admins interact with storage within OpenShift and for many may reflect a click-ops based interface more like what they were used to on other platforms before running their virtual machines before moving to OpenShift.

In a Kubernetes architecture, previously, a VM admin encountering a disk issue would need to do the following from the CLI:

• Identify the PVC backing the disk
• Switch to a storage interface
• Locate the volume in Portworx
• Diagnose or escalate

Now, that entire workflow is embedded directly within the VM context in the UI.

Demo

Why This Matters for Modern Platform Teams

Portworx OpenShift Dynamic Plugin 2.2.0 is not just a UI enhancement,it’s a shift toward platform-level convergence and familiar operating models for Storage and VM admins.

For storage admins, it means:

• Centralized observability within the platform they already support
• Faster troubleshooting with contextual insights
• Reduced reliance on separate tooling

For VM admins, it means:

• Direct access to storage intelligence within the VM workflow
• Improved visibility into performance and capacity constraints
• Greater autonomy in managing storage-backed workloads

For platform teams, it means:

• Improved collaboration silos between infrastructure domains
• Faster incident resolution
• A more cohesive operational experience

Final Thoughts

As organizations increasingly run mixed workloads containers alongside VMs, operational boundaries must evolve. Portworx OpenShift Dynamic Plugin 2.2.0 addresses this need by embedding storage visibility and control directly into the Red Hat OpenShift user interface experience, rather than forcing VM Admins to use the CLI which will ultimately feel more inline and familiar to many.

The combination of a powerful Cluster Dashboard and VM-level storage visibility creates a shared language between teams. This is where storage stops being “someone else’s problem” and becomes a first-class part of the application platform.