AWS, NetApp team up for a cloud-native file system

Amazon Web Services and NetApp have teamed up to tie NetApp’s on-prem storage and its proprietary OS for storage-disk arrays to AWS’s managed file-storage service, FSx.

Called Amazon FSx for NetApp ONTAP, the service provides things like capacity scaling, maintenance, and updates so on-prem staff doesn’t have to. Performance management with automatic tiering between local storage and fully elastic AWS storage is provided by AWS as well.

This is not a new area for AWS, which offers two similar services for Windows File Server and the Lustre HPC file-storage system. FSx for Windows File Server is a native Windows file system that offers Windows file storage in the cloud, while FSx for Lustre offers scalable, high-performance storage for HPC applications.

FSx for NetApp ONTAP benefits NetApp by providing its customers with the option to use Amazon’s file-storage environment as readily as if it were local storage. The service provides AWS developers with ONTAP features without needing to learn how to deploy and manage ONTAP systems.

Sincer it supports the full set of ONTAP features and APIs, NetApp users can add the AWS portion of their infrastructure to their NetApp Cloud Insights dashboard and use NetApp Cloud Manager to orchestrate their data and cloud services. Users of NetApp’s cloud automation and optimization service—Spot by NetApp—can use Spot to continually optimize their cloud storage and compute resource to meet application needs for virtual machines and containers.

Amazon FSx for NetApp ONTAP is available now in 21 Amazon regions.