Based on the session announcement posted to r/netapp by a CloudStack Collaboration Conference organiser, with the agenda at cloudstackcollab.org. Everything below is either stated in that post or clearly labelled as background.
CloudStack KVM events 2026-10-14The session
Rajiv Jain, principal engineer at NetApp, will present “ONTAP Storage Plugin Support” at the CloudStack Collaboration Conference in Edinburgh, exploring the integration between NetApp ONTAP and Apache CloudStack in KVM environments. According to the organiser’s post, the session introduces the plugin and discusses its development plans.
That framing matters: this is a plugin announcement-and-roadmap talk from a NetApp engineer, not a product launch. Anyone evaluating it for a production private cloud should treat everything below as planned until NetApp says otherwise.
What is on the roadmap
The post names three areas of planned work:
- Provisioning workflows tailored to individual primary storage pools — planned support for greater control over how storage resources are allocated and managed within each pool.
- Local VM snapshots — planned support, plus an overview of how the capability fits into the integration.
- CloudStack volume snapshots — planned support for volume snapshot operations driven through CloudStack.
No versions, dates or GA milestones are stated, so there is nothing here to pin a migration plan on yet. The useful part of the session is the direction and the chance to argue requirements directly with the presenter.
Why per-pool provisioning is the interesting item
In CloudStack, primary storage pools are what VM disks are provisioned into; a plugin that can target pools individually would let an operator express storage intent per pool rather than push one blob of capacity at the hypervisor layer. On the ONTAP side the equivalent distinction already exists: aggregates are the physical storage pool that owns raw space, and volumes are created inside them. If you are sizing that mapping today, the raw-vs-usable arithmetic in our aggregate capacity guide is the part that decides whether a pool actually fits — snapshots and reserve generally do not bend the way people assume.
Snapshots at two levels — do not conflate them
“Local VM snapshots” and “CloudStack volume snapshots” are two different promises, and the post keeps them separate. Worth keeping in mind when the plugin arrives: an ONTAP snapshot is a metadata operation, but it still consumes volume space and is governed by your snapshot policy and reserve (5% by default). Our Snapshot Management reference covers the policy, reserve and autodelete behaviour you would be relying on underneath any CloudStack-level snapshot call.
Already running KVM?
A KVM-based CloudStack deployment with ONTAP behind it is not a new idea for NetApp: ONTAP Select has long shipped as ONTAP software on supported ESXi or KVM servers, aimed at edge, ROBO and software-defined use. The difference here is a storage plugin for CloudStack-managed KVM hosts, not ONTAP running as a guest. See the ONTAP Select & virtual appliance reference for where the software-defined variant fits and where it does not.
Practical details
CloudStack Collaboration Conference, Edinburgh: 18 November is a hackathon; 19–20 November is technical sessions, workshops and live labs. Venue is the John McIntyre Conference Centre. Alongside the ONTAP plugin talk there are sessions on VMware-to-KVM migration, backup and disaster recovery, and a hands-on KVM workshop — the migration and DR tracks are the ones most likely to overlap with a NetApp estate. The agenda and registration are on cloudstackcollab.org.
If you work with ONTAP and are weighing CloudStack/KVM as a private-cloud or VMware alternative, this is a requirements conversation as much as a talk — the roadmap items above are exactly the kind of thing that gets shaped by whoever shows up with production constraints.
Sources: r/netapp — “NetApp ONTAP integration with CloudStack/KVM: technical session in Edinburgh, 19 November” (14 October 2026); CloudStack Collaboration Conference agenda. Background on aggregates, snapshots and ONTAP Select from this site’s ONTAP reference.