Every organization recognizes the importance of migrating and modernizing workloads in the multi-cloud era. Every day, scores of organizations move enterprise-class workloads from on-prem to run in public cloud, even if not all of them decide to go cloud-native yet. But as essential as it is, cloud migration has its fair share of risks and complications. At the Tech Field Day Extra at VMware Explore US 2022 event in San Francisco, NetApp presented VMware Cloud on AWS integration with Amazon FSx for NetApp ONTAP, a new supplemental data store option for VMware Cloud on AWS users.
The Cost Conundrum
With multi-cloud on rapid rise, organizations are quick to seize the benefits of public cloud by migrating the low-hanging fruits like emails, small apps and tools to the cloud. But re-platforming enterprise-grade applications, and multiple of them is another matter. Successful migration of legacy applications and business-critical workloads is more than just a weekend project. The complexity surrounding it is overwhelming, and so is the cost.
In the cloud, capacity is bundled with compute – scaling one requires scaling the other, and it’s not fair pricing if customers have to pay for two things when they need only one. So, a common ask among customers moving storage-heavy workloads to public cloud is flexible scalability. Customers want to be able to scale storage independent of IOPS in the cloud so that they have better control over cost.
A VMware and NetApp Partnership
It is based on these demands that Amazon FSx for NetApp ONTAP integration with VMware Cloud on AWS was born. VMware and NetApp collaborated on a project the goal of which was to supplement the cloud storage of VMware Cloud on AWS with an external datastore.
VMware’s requirements were clear right from the beginning, and FSx for ONTAP was the right answer for those very reasons. They wanted a mature product and Amazon FSx for ONTAP hit the mark, it being the enhanced version of NetApp’s storage platform ONTAP. The second thing that made it favorable than other file systems is that it fixes the problem of cost which VMware was seeing in its cloud customers spot-on . Many of ONTAP’s core features like data compression, compaction, deduplication, thin provisioning and cloud tiering provided the answer to the cost problem.
The Amazon FSx for NetApp ONTAP integration with VMware Cloud on AWS is a fully elastic supplemental network file system (NFS) datastore that is feature rich with ONTAP’s management capabilities. Jointly engineered, the integration is a fully managed service that accelerates app migration to cloud and provides users finer control on cloud costs with disaggregated storage.
VMware Cloud on AWS Integration with Amazon FSx for NetApp ONTAP
At the Tech Field Day Extra at VMware Explore US 2022 event, the NetApp team demonstrated the new integration. The presentation focused on the complexity surrounding lifting and shifting workloads from on-premises and into the cloud. Keith Norbie, Head of WW Partner Solutions & Sales Acceleration at NetApp gave a short introduction followed by Director of VMware Alliance at NetApp, Jason Kotsaftis, who talked briefly about the very recent announcement of the partnership between the houses of VMware and NetApp. Niyaz Mohamed and Mark Vaughn took the floor in turn talking in depth about the VMware Cloud on AWS integration with Amazon FSx for NetApp ONTAP – it’s architecture and offered a demo.
After testing it out with customers with an initial public access, on 7th of Sept, Amazon Web Services and VMware jointly announced the general availability of Amazon FSx for NetApp ONTAP for VMware Cloud on AWS.
As an external NFS datastore, it is a high-performance storage with up to 2GB/sec throughput. The datastore accommodates flexible capacity scaling for growing workloads – no need to buy unnecessary compute or infrastructure anymore. Built on NetApp’s ONTAP FSx that supports a wide spectrum of workloads, the integration extends that support to VMware workloads including mission-critical apps, data analytics and VDI.
VMware Cloud on AWS integration with Amazon FSx for NetApp ONTAP has high availability with 99.99% SLA. The integration comes with ONTAP’s inherent data management capabilities including space-efficient snapshots, cloning and “forever” replication.
Data protection is built into the feature and depending on what your requirements are, Amazon FSx for NetApp ONTAP has several options to choose from. As with the original Amazon FSx for NetApp ONTAP, backups can restore whole datastores in VMware Cloud on AWS.
Wrapping Up
We are still in the early days of cloud migration maturity. Companies taking steps towards moving workloads to multi-cloud environments could use all the help they can get to make the transition a little easier and organized. A solution such as the VMware Cloud on AWS integration with Amazon FSx for NetApp ONTAP will not only come handy in meeting unplanned storage needs, but doing so in a cost-effective manner. To be able to incrementally add capacity based on the demands of the workloads without having to buy more hosts is surely going to encourage more organizations to take their first steps towards cloud migration.
For more on VMware Cloud on AWS integration with Amazon FSx for NetApp ONTAP, be sure to check out the full presentation by NetApp from the recent Tech Field Day Extra at VMware Explore US 2022 event.
