How NetApp IT leverages Amazon FSx for NetApp ONTAP

As organizations accelerate their cloud adoption, they seek solutions that enhance efficiency, scalability, and data protection. At NetApp IT, we share the same journey as our customers—evaluating, deploying, and refining cloud solutions to optimize performance and reduce operational complexity. One of our most impactful innovations has been leveraging Amazon FSx for NetApp ONTAP, a fully managed service that simplifies storage while delivering enterprise-grade performance and resiliency.

Our cloud journey began in 2019 with NetApp Private Storage (NPS), where NetApp controllers were deployed in a colocation facility and connected to AWS compute. While effective, this approach required extensive management, including manual storage provisioning, networking, and lifecycle operations.

In 2021, we transitioned workloads to Cloud Volumes ONTAP (CVO), deploying it in AWS and Azure. This move reduced CapEx, introduced a cloud consumption model, and leveraged ONTAP’s powerful data management capabilities. With SnapMirror, migrations became seamless, and CVO’s flexible deployment options—including single-node and multi-AZ configurations—enhanced resilience.

Despite these benefits, CVO still requires licensing, software updates, and administrative oversight. The launch of Amazon FSx for NetApp ONTAP in 2022 was a game-changer, providing a fully managed service while retaining the full feature set of ONTAP.

Our decision to adopt FSx for ONTAP was driven by its ability to provide enterprise storage capabilities with minimal overhead and to make data management between on-premises and cloud-based workloads seamless.

Key Benefits:

• Fully managed service – Automates hardware management, software patching, and lifecycle updates, freeing IT resources for innovation.
• High availability and resiliency – Multi-AZ deployment ensures built-in redundancy, automatic failover, and data durability.
• Faster provisioning – Storage requests that took months with NPS and days with CVO are now fulfilled within an hour.
• Seamless ONTAP integration – Supports multi-protocol access (NFS, iSCSI, SMB), deduplication, compression, and ransomware protection.
• Advanced data protection – We use ONTAP snapshots with SnapLock for tamper-proof backups and AWS Backup for disaster recovery.
• Scalability and cost efficiency – Thin provisioning, deduplication, and automatic data tiering to Amazon S3 optimize storage costs while maintaining performance.
• Integration with AWS services – FSx for ONTAP integrates with Amazon ECS, EKS, and VMware Cloud, enabling a hybrid cloud approach.

At NetApp IT, we operate a hybrid cloud environment, balancing workloads across on-premises storage, CVO, and FSx for ONTAP. Our deployment model includes:

• Multi-AZ FSx for Production – Ensures high availability and failover protection.
• EC2 instances with FSx for ONTAP – Supports Linux and Windows workloads using NFS and iSCSI.
• NetApp Console and Data Infrastructure Insights for management – Enables centralized monitoring, alerting, and automation via ServiceNow.

Our automated workflows dynamically provision storage, optimizing costs by leveraging FSx for ONTAP’s S3-based tiering for cold data while maintaining SSD performance for active workloads. Console

At NetApp IT, we use FSx for ONTAP to support a wide range of workloads across environments:

• Enterprise applications – Supports core business apps that require high performance and availability.
• File services – Hosts shared file systems for Linux and Windows environments with multi-protocol access and built-in data protection.
• Backup and disaster recovery – SnapMirror replication provides a resilient DR target for on-prem systems, while SnapLock ensures data immutability for compliance.
• Analytics and reporting – Supports data-intensive analytics jobs, with SSD performance for hot data and automatic S3 tiering for cold data.

These workloads benefit from FSx for ONTAP’s performance, integrated protection, and ability to scale—all within a hybrid cloud environment.

FSx for ONTAP has been transformational for NetApp IT, offering performance, flexibility, and ease of management. Its intuitive deployment options simplify provisioning, while SSD-backed storage ensures low latency.

A significant advantage is the elimination of manual administrative tasks. Automated ONTAP upgrades, integrated security, and AI-driven tiering reduce complexity, allowing teams to focus on innovation. Additionally, intelligent tiering moves inactive data to cost-effective storage, reducing SSD consumption and total cost.

FSx for ONTAP seamlessly integrates into our hybrid cloud strategy, connecting on-premises and cloud-native services. This synergy enhances agility, resilience, and scalability, ensuring our infrastructure is ready for the future.

As we continue our cloud journey, FSx for ONTAP remains a cornerstone of our storage strategy, bringing together the simplicity of the cloud with the enterprise capabilities of ONTAP.

Explore more about Amazon FSx for NetApp ONTAP