NetApp recently announced enhancements to their Azure NetApp Files (ANF) offering, introducing a new Flexible service level along with new capabilities to provide greater control over storage resources.
Flexible Service Level
The new ANF Flexible Service Level breaks the traditional connection between throughput and capacity, introducing several new capabilities for resource allocation:
- Every Flexible capacity pool includes a baseline throughput of 128 MiB/second regardless of pool quota.
- Ability to independently scale throughput in increments of 1 MiB/second without increasing storage capacity.
- Minimum throughput requirement of 128 MiB/second for any Flexible capacity pool.
- Dynamic scaling capabilities allow throughput adjustments based on workload demands.
- Full compatibility with core ANF features including snapshots, backups, restores, and replication.
Application Volume Groups
NetApp introduced new deployment templates for enterprise applications that simplify the process of provisioning storage for Oracle and SAP HANA workloads.
These Application Volume Groups address challenges in enterprise storage management through several features:
- Single-step deployment workflow for all volumes required by Oracle and SAP HANA databases.
- Automatic placement of volumes in the same availability zone as VMs to minimize latency.
- Optimized performance configurations aligned with vendor best practices.
- Simplified management interface for coordinating multiple interdependent volumes.
Cool Access with Snapshot Only Policy
Cool Access offers data tiering for snapshots, allowing organizations to implement cost-effective data protection strategies. The new capability adds to ANF’s data management options with several features:
- Capability to store only snapshots in low-cost storage tiers.
- Maintenance of high-performance storage for active data.
- Cost reduction for snapshot storage without compromising restore times.
- Tiered data management aligned with access patterns.
Impact to IT Practitioners
The new capabilities provide several operational aspects that address common challenges in cloud storage management:
- Precision Resource Allocation: IT teams can now match throughput to application requirements without capacity overprovisioning.
- Dynamic Workload Management: Performance can be adjusted during peak processing periods and scaled back when demands decrease.
- Simplified Enterprise Application Deployment: Application Volume Groups reduce the complexity of deploying and managing mission-critical applications.
- Reduced Management Overhead: Coordinated volume management decreases administrative burden for complex applications.
Analysis
With these changes, NetApp addresses the inefficiency of bundled resources with a consumption-based model. This approach reduces overprovisioning while maintaining performance levels, addressing enterprise concerns around cost optimization and application-specific storage requirements.
The disaggregated pricing model provides optimization opportunities across multiple use cases, from high-throughput databases to cost-effective disaster recovery systems. For enterprise customers, these changes provide a feasible path to bringing performance-sensitive workloads to the public cloud while potentially reducing TCO.
NetApp has long had one of the strongest enterprise storage stories for the public cloud. While the number of enhancements in this update may seem small, it’s exactly what enterprise cloud customers require, and it’s the type of innovation that fuels NetApp’s continuing relevance and growth in the hybrid-cloud market.
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