Case Study: CSX migrates VMs to Kubernetes with Portworx and OpenShift

CSX migrates 400+ applications to Kubernetes with Portworx

CSX, a critical North American rail operator, faced the challenge of moving away from vendor lock-in in their virtualization landscape while maintaining absolute resilience for their Tier 0 safety systems like Positive Train Control. They sought to migrate their virtual machines to Kubernetes using their existing Red Hat OpenShift platform, but needed a highly resilient and performant storage solution for a hybrid environment. Partnering with Portworx, they conducted a rigorous proof of concept to find the right storage layer.

The solution involved using Portworx as the storage platform for OpenShift Virtualization. After benchmarking against several alternatives, Portworx was selected for its superior speed and resilience. This allowed CSX to successfully migrate their VMs to Kubernetes, establishing a modern platform that paves the way for moving 400+ applications, including their most critical workloads, to containers. The implementation kept operations lean by leveraging existing OpenShift expertise and provided the performance foundation required for their rail operations.

CSX