Optimize your VMware migration to AWS with Amazon FSx for NetApp ONTAP: Technology Overview

Learn how FSx for ONTAP can provide high-performance, low-latency and cost-efficient storage for VMware workloads that are migrated to EC2 on AWS.

Migration of VMware workloads from on-premises datacenters to AWS requires deploying EC2 instances for the applications and the OS, as well as storage for the data. By using FSx for ONTAP as your storage infrastructure, you can meet the necessary requirements for performance, availability, protection and cost efficiency. Another advantage is the ability to analyze and assess your VMware configurations and get a detailed migration plan by using BlueXP workload factory, which also uncovers additional cost saving opportunities.

FSx for ONTAP is designed to deliver consistent high performance for the most demanding VMware workloads. Consistent sub-millisecond latencies for solid state drive (SSD) storage and NVMe caching allows even lower latencies when accessing the most frequently read data.

FSx for ONTAP is highly available and durable across AWS Availability Zones (AZs) and is designed to provide continuous data availability for high-performance applications running on EC2 instances. It is powered by two servers in separate AZs, each with its own storage and automatically replicates the data between them to protect against component failure.

FSx for ONTAP supports rapid restoration of data from an earlier point in time using NetApp’s lightweight, instantaneous Snapshots.

FSx for ONTAP provides replication between AWS regions with its SnapMirror technology, for disaster recovery purposes. SnapMirror, provides a Recovery Point Objective (RPO) as low as 5 minutes, and a Recovery Time Objective (RTO) of single-digit minutes.

FSx for ONTAP automatically takes highly durable, cost-efficient periodic backups of every volume in the service.

FSx for ONTAP utilizes network bandwidth for storage, achieving the same performance with fewer EC2 cores and significantly saving on costs.

FSx for ONTAP utilizes ONTAP’s storage efficiency and cost-savings technologies, including compression and deduplication, to reduce storage consumption and costs.