NetApp has announced improved ransomware protection, hybrid cloud storage in a single subscription, unified management in a single user interface, and closer collaboration with VMware to help transition workloads to the cloud.
The idea is to provide a single NetApp storage experience to the on-premises and public cloud worlds and the latest announcements help bring this closer.
Ronen Schwartz, SVP for Cloud Volumes Service at NetApp, said in a statement: “With NetApp’s simplified management and consumption experience, organizations can enjoy improved security, manageability, speed of operations, and cost savings.”
There’s an array of separate new features in this hybrid multi-cloud announcement starting with ONTAP. Version 9.11.1 of NetApp’s AFF and FAS storage array OS adds enhanced ransomware detection and expanded recovery from ransomware attacks.
In June last year Cloud Manager was announced by NetApp with a central console for accessing hybrid cloud services:
- Cloud Volumes – ONTAP Cloud Volumes in AWS, Azure and GCP
- Cloud Backup as-a-service for on-premises and in-cloud ONTAP data, with StorageGRID supported both as a source and a target
- Cloud Data Sense for data discovery, classification and governance in NetApp’s hybrid cloud
- Cloud Insights to visualise and optimise hybrid cloud deployments
- Cloud Tiering to move cold data to lower-cost storage, including on-premises StorageGRID
- Astra, which supports on-premises and in-cloud Kubernetes-orchestrated container workloads.
Cloud Manager can now manage Keystone services, track software licenses, monitor infrastructure health and provide proactive recommendations to optimize costs and data protection with automated actions.
Keystone is NetApp’s storage-as-a-service (STaaS) subscription billing option. It gets added STaaS for hybrid cloud, a single hybrid cloud subscription covering Cloud Volumes ONTAP and Cloud Backup. Customers have the ability to dynamically move capacity and supporting licenses across clouds and can reallocate on-premises spend to cloud spend on a quarterly basis. There is a Keystone Advisor in AIQ to size conversion of existing systems to the Keystone service.
Cloud Backup and Cloud Data Sense also get better anti-ransomware features. Cloud Insights now has autonomous ransomware protection integration and NetApp’s Professional Services has a Ransomware Protection and Recovery service. A NetApp graphic details new anti-ransomware features;
NetApp has been certified by VMware for use as an external supplemental NFS datastore with VMware Cloud Services, across AWS, Azure and Google Cloud. Such a datastore can be used for data-intensive workloads running in a single cloud or across multi-cloud environments. NetApp says it’s the only vendor certified. It says it can deliver the same levels of enterprise-class data management that joint NetApp/VMware customers have been used to on-premises to workloads running in any of the major public clouds.
The NetApp supplemental VMware Cloud Services datastore facility is in private preview for AWS, Azure and GCP. Keystone hybrid STaaS early access is now available. A Ronen Schwartz blog provides background context.
