NetApp is “all in” on the public cloud and much like they built better UNIX and Windows File Servers back in the 90s they are now building services that add huge value to Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud Platform (GCP). They recognised a long time ago that most organisations are looking for a mixture of on-premises infrastructure and multiple public clouds, with the ability to easily move data between them – let’s take a look at how their solutions can help:

AFF/FAS cloud integrated on-premises storage

Lowers costs, eliminates cloud lock-in and optimises storage health with the following key cloud integrations:

• FabricPool automatically tiers cold data to low cost cloud storage
• SnapMirror Cloud creates space-efficient backups using cloud object storage
• SnapMirror to Cloud Volumes ONTAP enables hybrid cloud data mobility and DR
• FlexCache cloud bursting enables fast, local read access of on-premises data
• Active IQ digital advisor makes it easy to achieve optimal storage health

Cloud Volumes ONTAP

Brings the advanced data services of AFF/FAS to AWS, Azure and GCP to provide the following benefits:

• Reduced storage costs as a result of
  • Compression and de-duplication
  • Tiering to object storage
  • Snapshots and clones
• High Availability within and across zones
• Efficient snapshots and clones for backup and parallel processing
• Support for multiple protocols (SMB, NFS and iSCSI)
• Integrated backup to object storage (requires Cloud Backup Service)
• Multi cloud replication to another virtual or physical ONTAP instance using SnapMirror to
  • Simplify and speed-up data migrations
  • Facilitate disaster recovery
  • Eliminate cloud lock-in

Cloud Tiering Service

Reduces costs by utilising the FabricPool feature of ONTAP to automatically tier inactive data on physical AFF/FAS arrays to cloud or on-premises object storage.

Cloud Compliance

Identifies and categories personal and sensitive data using advanced AI algorithms, provides a data privacy status dashboard, produces compliance reports for GDPR, PCI, HIPPA and CCPA, and provides the ability to search for a specific users files in response to a data subject access request. Cloud Compliance is included free of charge with Cloud Volumes ONTAP.

Cloud Insights

Monitors a multi cloud infrastructure, including servers, storage, switches, hypervisors, VMs and applications. It helps to control costs by identifying waste, improves availability by identifying the root cause of problems and identifies insider security threats, such as ransomware, using advanced machine learning algorithms to automatically detect unusual file activity.

SaaS Backup

Provides the level of protection and granular recovery that organisations have always experienced with their on-premises applications. SaaS Backup is available for Office 365 (Exchange, SharePoint, Groups, Teams and OneDrive for Business) and Salesforce.

Cloud Sync

Continuously synchronises NFS and SMB files to/from S3 object storage residing on private and public clouds.

Global File Cache

Improves collaboration by enabling high performance global file sharing, with real-time distributed file locking, using centralised on-premises or cloud based ONTAP shares and an advanced cache located close to each group of users.

Virtual Desktop Service

Provides a more cost effective virtual desktop solution than VMware and Citrix whilst delivering the security, user experience and choice of clouds that organisations need – key highlights include:

• SaaS service for the rapid deployment of secure Windows remote desktops
• Supports Windows Virtual Desktops in Azure, and RDS on Azure, GCP, AWS, vSphere and Hyper-V
• Supports the mixing of desktop types (WVD, RDS and VDI) and clouds (public and private)
• Supports Windows, Mac, Android and iOS clients
• Manages user data and profiles, policies and application provisioning
• Continuously optimises performance and cloud costs