Simplify access to file system data

We're excited to introduce a new way to work with your data: Amazon S3 Access Points for Amazon FSx for NetApp ONTAP. This capability lets you access your FSx for ONTAP file system data using familiar S3 APIs, opening up your files to AI, machine learning, serverless compute, and analytics services that rely on S3. Now you can maximize the value of your file data without wrestling with complex data pipelines. Your FSx for ONTAP data now works seamlessly with over 50 AWS services, including Amazon SageMaker, Amazon Bedrock, AWS Glue, Amazon Athena, and Amazon Redshift. Using the S3 Access Point can also allow you to connect FSx for ONTAP data to third-party platforms like Snowflake and Databricks.

The new Amazon S3 Access Points for FSx for ONTAP revolutionizes how organizations leverage their existing file data for AI/ML and analytics services without the overhead of managing data copies or having to re-architect storage solutions. Introducing direct S3 access is changing how organizations can approach transformation across a diverse set of industries.

Healthcare providers are accelerating patient care by securely analyzing electronic medical records through Amazon Athena and AWS Glue, all while maintaining strict compliance requirements. Financial institutions are strengthening their risk management by training fraud detection models using Amazon SageMaker and Bedrock, directly accessing their existing file datasets without costly migrations.

Similarly, automotive manufacturers are revolutionizing their maintenance operations by connecting telemetry files directly to QuickSight and AI services, enabling predictive analytics that prevent costly breakdowns. EDA companies are dramatically shortening product development cycles by creating AI-driven design workflows that tap directly into their on-premises file data.

Media and gaming organizations can also streamline their operations through real-time log analytics powered by OpenSearch, gaining instant insights that improve both performance and user experience. These examples demonstrate how eliminating the barrier between traditional file storage and cloud services is enabling organizations to unlock the full potential of their data without disrupting their existing infrastructure.

Before the S3 Access Points connectivity was available, connecting NFS/SMB file data to S3-based services was impossible. Instead, customers had to copy their data from FSx for ONTAP to an S3 bucket, convert the format, and potentially refactor their application . These steps introduced excessive delays, costs, operational complexity and risks for implementing AI/ML and analytics workflows in business-critical workloads.

By attaching S3 Access Points to FSx for ONTAP, files stored in these volumes can be accessed by any AWS services as if they were in an S3 bucket without moving data from FSx for ONTAP. Setting up an access point takes just a few steps: you give it a name, choose whether it's for Unix or Windows files, and set who can access it. Once created, the access point has a unique alias that AWS services can use to find your files. For example, if you want a model within Amazon Bedrock to answer questions using your company documents, you simply give it this new alias to where your files are stored, and it can instantly start reading your files to provide intelligent responses without requiring the file to be copied or moved.

FSx for ONTAP continues to maintain the same high-performance characteristics for both data ingestion and long-term retention. With SnapMirror, you can replicate data from an on-premises ONTAP instance to FSx for ONTAP, connecting data across hybrid deployments. Your cloud applications can then use S3 to connect with data that originated on-premises, augmenting cloud-based applications with data relevant to each organization.

S3 Access Points for Amazon FSx for NetApp ONTAP represents a significant advancement in unified data access on AWS. By accessing data directly with Amazon S3 APIs, you reduce the overhead of data movement to or from the FSx for ONTAP storage service. This capability enhances your data accessibility and consistency while optimizing costs and improving operational efficiencies.

Getting started is straightforward. You can create S3 Access Points through the AWS Console with just a few clicks, and your existing FSx for ONTAP data becomes immediately accessible to S3-compatible services and applications. There's no need to migrate data, refactor applications, or build complex integration layers. Your journey to unified data access begins today.