NetApp ONTAP arrays can now be plugged into an AWS Outpost system to provide external block storage in datacenters and edge locations.
An AWS Outpost is a fully managed Amazon converged infrastructure on-premises server or rack system running the AWS cloud software infrastructure. It can have external storage connected and supplying block-level data to EC2 instances, file-level data for SMB and NFS, and object-level data for applications using S3 access. An Outposts rack is integrated with the AWS cloud to provide hybrid IT. NetApp’s ONTAP arrays can supply unified file and block data storage or, in a SAN-only version, block level storage, and, when integrated with Outposts, extends hybrid IT to include on-premises external storage arrays.
Jonsi Stefansson, SVP and CTO at NetApp, stated: “Whether customers are looking to use hybrid cloud infrastructure to increase resiliency or improve compliance, leveraging NetApp storage in AWS Outposts can help customers run applications securely and efficiently at the edge.”
Customers with Outpost servers or racks can now use the AWS Management Console to attach block data volumes backed by NetApp on-premises enterprise storage arrays to Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) instances. Such instances could be enterprise applications and database workloads running on Outposts.
Users get native Outposts and intrinsic NetApp benefits, such as SnapMirror and Snapshots data protection. Outposts supports local snapshots for Amazon Elastic Block Store (EBS) volumes and Amazon Machine Image (AMI) data to be stored locally, helping users comply with data residency and local backup requirements. This is handled through the AWS Management Console, AWS Command Line Interface (CLI), and AWS SDKs. They can also take snapshots of EBS volumes on Outposts, which are stored in S3 in the associated AWS parent region.
Users also get AWS resiliency and storage access features such as AWS Local Zones deployments using Cloud Volumes ONTAP, and the cloud when using services such as Amazon FSx for NetApp ONTAP.
Existing AWS Outposts external storage suppliers include Cloudian (object storage), Infinidat (block storage), Pure Storage (FlashArray block and FlashBlade file+object), and Qumulo (file).
NetApp is enhancing its Spot Ocean offering for containers and Kubernetes with automated infrastructure optimization capabilities. There is a “new fast-response auto-scaler” that ensures clusters have the infrastructure to meet workload requirements, a dynamic commitment utilization process that uses available resources before provisioning on-demand or preemptive instances, and a new dashboard that provides more visibility and insights into cost optimization efforts and infrastructure efficiency.
