If you have spent considerable time on assessing, planning, testing and finally migrating your data to the cloud, you now need to think about how to manage your data in a proper and efficient way. However, with the growing availability of a diverse set of cloud services, including compute, storage, big data analytics, database services and much more, you will most likely need a heterogeneous environment that can leverage these capabilities. But how should you cope with the disparity in storage and data management in the cloud?
Well, that’s exactly where NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP comes in. By making use of native cloud compute and storage resources, it provides a virtual NetApp appliance that works in AWS, Azure and Google Cloud. By supporting all these cloud environments, customers can choose whichever ecosystem best meets their needs. This opens up a world of new possibilities for both cloud-only and hybrid cloud architectures.
Cloud Volumes ONTAP in a nutshell
NetApp uses the NetApp Data Fabric Cloud Sync Service to ensure that datasets are rapidly moved to and from the cloud and convert datasets in the format needed. This is completely in line with NetApp's philosophy of setting organizations in the driver seat of their own data by trulysupporting data mobility.
Cloud Volumes ONTAP has the same look and feel as the on-premise version and by using the same Write Anywhere File Layout (WAFL) as ONTAP data management software, it enables a seamless integration. This opens up the door to a lot of handy features and functionality.
Also, deployment of Cloud Volumes ONTAP is made simple and convenient. By using On Command Cloud Manager — available in the App Store — you get a web-based UI to manage both Cloud Volumes ONTAP and on-premise resources. This gives you a hybrid, multi-cloud single-pane view into the instances deployed across environments, thereby providing better control over your production environments.
Reap the benefits: use cases
The enterprise-class features of Cloud Volumes ONTAP make it the storage solution of choice for many use cases in a hybrid environment. Let’s explore some of these use cases:
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Enterprise workload hosting: to run your workloads uninterruptedly, securely and efficiently. The storage layer provided by Cloud Volumes ONTAP can be connected to the cloud platform compute instances via iSCSI or attached via file-based NAS protocols. This ensures an integrated experience for customers who want to host (some of) their workloads. For existing NetApp storage users, Cloud Volumes ONTAP can help to overcome the learning curve for support staff, since they can use familiar tool sets. Furthermore, storage optimization features can help to reduce your storage footprint and results in lower cloud OPEX.
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Disaster recovery: to be able to recover from a site-wide failure. Deploying Cloud Volumes ONTAP can dramatically simplify the solution implementation Cloud resources, which means that physical infrastructure does not need to be procured, installed and then managed directly, thereby eliminating a large part of the effort required to set up a disaster recovery site in the first place. SnapMirror technology can then be used for data replication. Using Cloud Volumes ONTAP, you can also test your disaster recovery strategy by using FlexClone to easily clone, test and then delete the affected environments without affecting production environments.
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DevOps: to clone any volume instantly. Software developers frequently require test copies of production data and databases to support their development effort. In most cases, the source data is very large and the copies need to be writable and recreated quickly. These requirements make traditional methods for replicating data for DevOps and dev/test inefficient and costly. However, ONTAP FlexClone can use a copy-on-write mechanism to only allocate and write blocks when data actually changes in the clone. In this way, the NetApp solution becomes very efficient.
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Cloud-based file services: to get file access, share, protect and manage in any geography and scale. Facilitating file services in the cloud with integrated Snapshot capability for backup and recovery is not something for which the cloud is known. That said, Cloud Volumes ONTAP is known for that very thing, and since Cloud Volumes ONTAP is just ONTAP in the cloud, you’re able to take advantage of all the expansive file services capabilities offered.
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SaaS app development: to scale up development, reduce costs while staying fast and agile. With Cloud Volumes ONTAP you can leverage a number of powerful storage efficiencies such as data deduplication, data compression, thin provisioning and data tiering of cold data to more inexpensive object storage formats to make sure that your storage spending is always in line with your storage use.
- Analytics: to analyze massive data amounts. Big data analytics examines massive amounts of data to uncover hidden patterns, correlations, and other insights. Cloud Volumes ONTAP allows for consolidation and synchronization of data scattered across many different sources, reducing dependency on legacy systems for data processing, ensuring data security at all levels, reducing costs by better data storage management and receiving on-premise results while processing the data in the cloud.
Simac implements NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP for your Cloud data
Cloud Volumes ONTAP provides a comprehensive hybrid storage management solution by combining the capabilities of on-premises storage and Azure Storage. Simac recommends Cloud Volumes ONTAP for all enterprises looking for a truly hybrid storage solution. If you’re ready to bridge the gap between the cloud and on-premises storage solutions, our experts are ready to support and guide you during this process. Contact them now.
