Amazon FSx for NetApp ONTAP brings data access and management capabilities to AWS cloud

Amazon Web Services (AWS) announced the general availability of Amazon FSx for NetApp ONTAP, a new storage service that allows customers to launch and run complete, fully managed NetApp ONTAP file systems in the cloud for the first time. ONTAP is NetApp’s file system technology that has traditionally powered on-premises network-attached storage (NAS) and provides a widely adopted set of data access and management capabilities.

Amazon FSx for NetApp ONTAP enables customers to launch, run, and scale fully managed NetApp ONTAP file storage on AWS with just a few clicks—giving customers the ability to migrate their applications that rely on NAS appliances to AWS without having to modify their applications, tools, processes, or workflows.

Amazon FSx for NetApp ONTAP now makes it possible for customers to deploy and manage their applications and data using the NAS workflows they already know and use today, and enjoy the agility, scalability, and security of AWS—along with seamless integration with other AWS services. There are no upfront commitments or costs to use Amazon FSx for NetApp ONTAP, and customers only pay for the resources used.

Organizations of all sizes are migrating their on-premises applications to the cloud to increase agility, accelerate innovation, improve security, and reduce costs. Many of those applications store the data they rely on in a NAS appliance, providing multiple compute resources and multiple users with access to shared data. Today, many organizations store and manage their application data on premises using NAS appliances powered by ONTAP, which provide storage and data management features that make it easy to manage applications and workloads.

For example, application administrators depend on ONTAP to provide high-performance storage with features that make it easy to support their applications like multi-protocol access to network file shares, point-in-time snapshots for data protection, and data replication and cloning for redundancy. Storage administrators typically manage NetApp ONTAP deployments for multiple users and groups, and rely on standardized tools, workflows, and processes for managing file storage that are built around ONTAP’s administrative capabilities and application programming interfaces (APIs).

Before, if customers wanted to migrate their applications to the cloud, they would need to forgo the NAS data management capabilities they are familiar with, and in many cases, re-architect their applications, tools, and workflows, which required customers to expend time and effort to realize the agility, scalability, and security of the cloud.

Amazon FSx for NetApp ONTAP now allows customers to launch, run, and scale fully managed NetApp ONTAP file storage on AWS with just a few clicks—giving customers the ability to migrate their on-premises applications that rely on NetApp or other NAS appliances to AWS without having to modify their applications or how they manage their data. Amazon FSx for NetApp ONTAP offers high-performance file storage that supports ONTAP’s familiar capabilities and features, including multi-protocol access to network file shares, point-in-time snapshots, SnapMirror (for data replication), and FlexClone (for data cloning).

Amazon FSx for NetApp ONTAP also fully supports ONTAP’s storage efficiency features (deduplication, compression, compaction, and thin provisioning) so customers can take advantage of their on-premises capabilities in the cloud. In addition to using the Amazon FSx API, customers can also manage Amazon FSx for NetApp ONTAP using ONTAP administrative APIs, allowing customers to continue deploying and managing storage using their existing tools, workflows, and processes.

Amazon FSx for NetApp ONTAP provides high availability and durability by automatically replicating data across multiple Availability Zones, and it supports data replication and backups across AWS Regions for even higher resiliency. With Amazon FSx for NetApp ONTAP, customers can now take full advantage of NetApp ONTAP as a fully managed service in the cloud for the first time and enjoy familiar AWS APIs, tools, and seamless integration with other AWS services for a unified application experience.

“In collaborating with NetApp to deliver Amazon FSx for NetApp ONTAP, we’re giving customers the only complete cloud service that is built on ONTAP and provides its most popular features and capabilities,” said Wayne Duso, Vice President of File, Edge, and Data Services at AWS. “Amazon FSx for NetApp ONTAP now makes it even easier for customers to migrate applications and run them on AWS using the same familiar file storage workflows and data management capabilities they use today on premises.”

“NetApp is a cloud-led software company that specializes in helping our customers get the most out of their data. ONTAP and its data management capabilities are integral for so many mission-critical workloads,” said Anthony Lye, Executive Vice President and General Manager, Public Cloud Services, NetApp. “With Amazon FSx for NetApp ONTAP, we’ve brought NetApp’s trusted file storage and data management capabilities to the AWS Cloud. By providing a fully managed service that’s supported, run, and sold by AWS, we’re making it simple for customers to leverage the power of ONTAP for virtually any application.”

Amazon FSx for NetApp ONTAP joins Amazon FSx for Windows File Server and Amazon FSx for Lustre as the newest file system offered by Amazon FSx—a suite of file storage services that makes it easy and cost effective to launch and run popular file systems that are fully managed by AWS. Customers can get started using Amazon FSx for NetApp ONTAP in minutes by creating a file system using the AWS Management Console, the AWS Command Line Interface (AWS CLI), the Amazon FSx API, or NetApp’s Cloud Manager.

Once a file system is created, customers can access their data from Linux, macOS, or Windows clients by mounting their file systems using either the Network File System (NFS), Service Message Block (SMB), or Internet Small Computer Systems Interface (iSCSI) protocols. Customers can also configure any additional NetApp ONTAP features using the NetApp ONTAP REST API or CLI. As a fully managed service, Amazon FSx for NetApp ONTAP manages provisioning file servers and storage volumes, replicating data, installing file server software updates and patches, and managing high-availability features.

Amazon FSx for NetApp ONTAP is available in US East (Ohio), US East (N. Virginia), US West (Oregon), Africa (Cape Town), Asia Pacific (Hong Kong), Asia Pacific (Mumbai), Asia Pacific (Seoul), Asia Pacific (Singapore), Asia Pacific (Sydney), Asia Pacific (Tokyo), Canada (Central), Europe (Frankfurt), Europe (Ireland), Europe (London), Europe (Milan), Europe (Paris), Europe (Stockholm), Middle East (Bahrain), South America (São Paulo), AWS GovCloud (US-East), and AWS GovCloud (US-West).

CDW is a leading multi-brand provider of information technology solutions to business, government, education and healthcare customers in the United States, the United Kingdom, and Canada. “Many of our customers are looking to the cloud to provide a reliable and cost-effective environment for the disaster recovery and backup of their existing on-premises NetApp ONTAP data and business-critical applications,” said Tom DeCoster, Vice President, Hybrid Infrastructure at CDW.

“By fully supporting NetApp ONTAP APIs and features like SnapMirror and SnapVault, Amazon FSx for NetApp ONTAP enables NetApp customers to seamlessly replicate their data from on premises to the AWS cloud, enhancing their ability to protect and recover data and applications without the need to alter their application code or management automation.”

FactSet’s analytics, data, and flexible technology help financial industry leaders drive productivity and performance and make better investment decisions. “Our legacy data centers leverage traditional storage solutions that support the high availability and scalability of our applications,” said Demetry Zilberg, CTO at FactSet.

“As we continue pivoting to the cloud with Amazon FSX for NetApp ONTAP, we are excited by the opportunity to benefit from combining the familiar constructs offered by enterprise storage solutions with the elasticity and simplicity of AWS’s native services. We believe this approach will reduce our execution risk as we migrate applications that depend on our current architecture.”

Rescale is a technology company that builds cloud software and services that enable organizations of every size to deliver the engineering and scientific breakthroughs that enrich humanity. “At Rescale—a widely adopted platform for modern, cloud HPC—we manage and provide intelligent automation for the most demanding computational workloads,” said Joris Poort, Founder and CEO of Rescale.

“We see Amazon FSx for NetApp ONTAP as a huge step forward to deliver the best of cloud infrastructure for demanding HPC workloads. On-premises HPC workloads can seamlessly burst to the cloud using ONTAP’s efficient data movement and caching tools without requiring any changes to the underlying application logic.”

Logz.io is a leading cloud observability platform that enables engineers to use the best open source tools in the market without the complexity of operating, managing, and scaling them. “As a cloud-native company, we rely on a variety of AWS services to drive efficiency and cost savings in our product development,” said Tomer Levy, CEO at Logz.io.

“We expect that Amazon FSx for NetApp ONTAP will streamline our application development process by letting us automatically provision new storage in minutes, instantly clone our application’s configuration and resources using NetApp FlexClone, and easily monitor performance and availability of our storage using the same AWS APIs that currently manage our production application.”

Sysdig delivers solutions to secure and operate containers, so customers can confidently run cloud-native workloads in production. “Kubernetes and containerized microservices are becoming a common way to deploy business critical apps in the cloud,” said Suresh Vasudevan, CEO of Sysdig.

“Our Secure DevOps platform brings a wealth of security and monitoring capabilities to Kubernetes containers for customers running cloud-native applications. We are excited about using Amazon FSx for NetApp ONTAP as a shared data layer within our offering, enabling us to more quickly deliver new capabilities to customers.”