Semion Mazor: Hi, everyone, thank you for joining us today. We just let a couple of more moments to let everybody join, and we will kick off our session. Semion Mazor: Meanwhile you can prepare your coffee or tea, or whatever you drink. Semion Mazor: and if you have a hat you're also welcome to bring it over. Semion Mazor: even though we can't see you. Tigh Holmstrom: I like that. Mention coffee, water, tea, or drink of choice. It's 5 o'clock somewhere, right. Semion Mazor: Yeah, totally, and group them is always a good opportunity to drink something. Tigh Holmstrom: That's right. Semion Mazor: Alright! Let's give another couple of seconds to see if anybody else wanted to join, and still waiting for them to allow him to join. Semion Mazor: Alright. Semion Mazor: So Hi, everyone welcome and thank you for joining us today for this group, Demo, on how you can optimize and automate your database operation with Blue Xpe workload factory for Aws. My name is Samuel Mazur. I'm a product enablement specialist at Netapp, as you can see from my hat. I'm focused on Fs. 6. For ontap or Amazon, fs, 6 for netapp ontap in particular, focused on Semion Mazor: the database workload. Today we meet also Ty Holmstrom. Hi, Ty, how are you. Tigh Holmstrom: Hey, Simeon, I'm good, and I'm wearing a hat because I focus on Texas. Semion Mazor: Just kidding. Tigh Holmstrom: Based in Texas for those of you who don't know me, a product solutions architect, same team as Simeon. I focus on Fsx for ontap for our game developers, but also our Isvs and folks who are building software as a service and platforms and applications in aws. And this is a very pertinent conversation, because we're going to be talking about databases and how workload factory can help you there. So really excited about it. Thanks for having me. Semion Mazor: Well, thank you for being with us today, and also with us, is Trevor Thompson, a product solution architect who is here to address any questions you have. So if you have any, please write us to the Q. And a. Panel, and Trevor will address any of your questions, and we will also have time at the end to address. If anything left open. Semion Mazor: This session is live, and it's also being recorded and will be sent over the email for those who have registered to this session. We are planning on around 45 min for total of the session. We'll start with a short recap of Amazon Fsx for netapp ontap. In the context of databases. Semion Mazor: a short introduction of blue Xp workload factory again with focus for databases, and most of the time will be dedicated to a hands-on demo, in which time will showcase the different capabilities of blue Xp workload factory, and, as we said at the end, we will have a time for questions Semion Mazor: before we go to the 1st slide. I would like to kick off the 1st poll we have for today, and ask you, how much if do you use Fsx front up already? And there is a couple of options? Do you already use it Semion Mazor: for your databases? Do you plan to use it, or you just not use it at all so far, and we will explain you in a moment why you should. But maybe there are already some of you that Semion Mazor: that's already understood. The benefits. See, they're coming into picture, and you are also welcome to share your experience over the chat if you are using it. All right. So we see that most of you not using it, at least not yet around 64%. Some of them plan already plan to use, and some of them so in around more than 20% plan to use and 14% already using it. So it's great to see Semion Mazor: and great to see it and those numbers. Semion Mazor: And this is great because we are going to show you why you should use if you're not using it, and if you do use, we'll show you how you can optimize your operation, simplify them and automate them. Semion Mazor: So just to recap, to make sure we all align on what is F. 6 for ontap? And what are the benefits for databases? Semion Mazor: Amazon fsx for netap on top is one of the native storage services that adores, offers delivering the enterprise-grade scale and capabilities of Netapp on top as a fully managed service. Semion Mazor: particularly for databases, fsx montop can optimize your self-managed deployments. It starts with high performance that it provides Semion Mazor: to deliver low latency through high throughput, high iops and intelligent caching. Semion Mazor: Then it provides powerful protection to meet the strictest rto recovery time, objective and Rpo. Recovery point objective requirements through application or snapshot, advanced disaster, recovery and robust backup capabilities. Semion Mazor: Then it also provide the ability to create new copies of your databases with thin cloning technology which you may be familiar with as flexclone, which allows you to instantly refresh dev test environments at minimal cost and create new environments very quickly. Semion Mazor: And last, but definitely, not least, cost optimization. Fsex point up Semion Mazor: can reduce costs by up to 50% of the total cost of formulary to few databases by allowing you to use fewer Ec 2 cores saving on database licenses and employing storage efficiency technology. Semion Mazor: Now, there is much more to discuss about the benefits of Fsx ontap for databases. And actually, Ty and I already did it couple of months back. So if you want to learn more about the benefits, how you can achieve them. Also some architectures and couple of useful tips, we'll share the link to this, the recording of this webinar at the end of this session. Semion Mazor: Now, databases fsx ontap is growing rapidly, and databases is one of the primary workloads it supports. And there's 1 important aspect that you need to consider when we talk about databases Semion Mazor: which is implementing best practices. Semion Mazor: What you see on your screen, on yours on the slide now is the best practices for deploying Microsoft, SQL. On Ec. 2 with Fsx on top. Semion Mazor: and, as you can see, there's a lot to know. It applies for the database layer, the compute layer, and of course the storage layer. Semion Mazor: So all this knowledge first, st you have it now on the slide, but generally it can be found on vendor, documentation or enterprise driver knowledge, and it also involves manual work. Semion Mazor: So Semion Mazor: we want to make your life a bit easier, and therefore we have a service called Bluexpo Water Factory for aws! That will help you to do that. But before I introduce that, I would like to have another poll and ask you Semion Mazor: if you haven't heard about water factory before. Semion Mazor: So there's 3 options. Yes, I heard about it, and I already use it. I'm aware of it, but haven't used it yet, or I'm not familiar with it at all. Semion Mazor: In any case, I think you have a good option now to either learn about the new capabilities that was released lately. We will introduce them and highlight them, or just to let you know what's out there because we will cover the entire capabilities of workloads factory for databases. All right. So we say that less than half of you almost half are not familiar with it, and Semion Mazor: the other half are aware, but not using it. So most of our audience today still not using it. And this is great because you are at the right place to learn about it. Semion Mazor: Thank you for answering the poll. Semion Mazor: So Blux, peer workload factory is a free of charge optimization and automation service that uses industry best practices to design setup and operate queue workloads. Using Amazon Fsx parent upontap Semion Mazor: with workloads factory. You can achieve the right workload configuration or your initial attempt and optimize existing deployments saving on time and accelerating time to value Semion Mazor: specifically Semion Mazor: for databases. Workload factor allows you to explore database savings by identifying existing aws deployment or A, and by entering manually your parameters and workload factor will present you how much you can save on this deployment by utilizing Fs 6 format will show all I'm going to say now, just in 2 min. Semion Mazor: Also, workforce factor will automate best practices by creating end-to-end database deployment automatically and incorporating aws Semion Mazor: Microsoft and on top best practices. Semion Mazor: And this is done through Ui, or through auto-generated infrastructure, as they called snippets. Semion Mazor: Now, recently, actually, this week, we have released support for posters, SQL deployment. So now you can deploy both Microsoft, SQL. And Postgresql databases through workload factory implementing automatically, the best practice for them Semion Mazor: and do it on the entire stack of the workload, including compute storage that the database itself, the networking relevant all automatically. Semion Mazor: Then workloads factory, allow you to operate and optimize your workload, providing visual inventory to gain full visibility into your deployment and streamline operation by receiving automatic optimization recommendation Semion Mazor: and the new feature here is called continuous optimization. And we will highlight that and show you how you can automatically find the compare your environments to the best practices and see what is your current status, and also to implement the best practices and optimize your environment, get ready to scale or just to see your status and optimize your environment. Semion Mazor: And the last thing we're going to show today is how you can test. Drive your databases utilizing sandboxes which are using the Fsx for ontop clones to create isolated database environment which is separate from your production environment for testing diagnostic training and database refreshes. Semion Mazor: So now that we have all the background Semion Mazor: for what you are going to see. I think it's a good time to move to the actual hands-on demo. Semion Mazor: So, Ty, if I would like to use? What would factor just to explore it. Where do I start with like? What is the place that I should go to first? st Tigh Holmstrom: Yeah, absolutely. So to start, you're gonna open a blank browser. Tigh Holmstrom: That's always where we start. Right? We're gonna hit the Google or whatever your browser of choices, and then we're gonna go to console.workloads.netapp.com, as you can see as I'm typing here. Tigh Holmstrom: and once we go there Tigh Holmstrom: you will see that you will get a page for a login, but chances are based on our polling. Tigh Holmstrom: You probably haven't signed up yet. Here's the cool part. You can actually go to theURL that we provided, and you can go ahead and do a sign. Up with me. Your choice. No big deal if you don't, but if you do, you can follow along. You're not committing to anything again. It's free of charge, and it's not aware of any aws account. So you're really not giving it anything to be honest. Tigh Holmstrom: That sign up is real simple. You just fill out a little bit of information. I promise we're not asking for, like, you know, your social security number, your belt size or your height, or don't worry about that. Just basic info. Make sure you get your email address right? I've seen some folks enter a wrong email address before and then not be able to get access or something like that. So get that right, and then you'll just get logged in at that point. So of course. Tigh Holmstrom: I'm at Netapp. So I definitely already have an account. I'm not going to sign up again. Tigh Holmstrom: and I'm going to go ahead and log in. Now. Tigh Holmstrom: We mentioned that workload factory is free of charge, and I. Wanna, I wanna make sure that's very clear, like, we're not charging you anything to use this platform. Tigh Holmstrom: You can log in use it right away. In addition to that, it's not connected to aws. It doesn't know your accounts, not aware that you have one. It is 0 permission, or at the start or 0 trust. If you want to call it that in either case ithas no permissions to do anything essentially, or see anything Tigh Holmstrom: on top of that. We're not deploying any type of connector or additional compute instance, or anything like that, to run workload factory. So it's well architected, easy to use. It's lightweight, low impact on your account. All good stuff. Tigh Holmstrom: When you 1st log in knowing all those details, you're gonna get this screen again. It's not connected to aws at all. But Tigh Holmstrom: you will have access to workload factory to at least kind of navigate around and do a few things, and we'll talk about those things here in just a second. Tigh Holmstrom: I want to set our context here, though, on the homepage. You're going to see these tiles. This 1st tile storage is kind of a general tile for you to use. If you so choose to deploy Fsx for ontap, we automate that make it quite a bit easier. In addition to that, you can also run these cost calculators to compare Fsx for ontap Tigh Holmstrom: against some of these other storage services, and this assumes that you have no access to aws. So. Tigh Holmstrom: or at least workload factory has no access to aws, which means you can run the calculator. You'll just need to manually input your own inputs for that particular workload to make sure that you can do some type of assumed comparison and cost. So a pretty cool feature there. Some of these other ones. Tigh Holmstrom: you will see immediately. We have one for artificial intelligence right now. It's focused on deploying and managing rag infrastructure to support rag workloads. We've got a builder's context. This is really about accelerating software development and software builds at the very beginning. If you use perforce, helix core. This is a great one for you. Tigh Holmstrom: In addition to those 2 got another one for vmware migrations to aws. So this is going to help you assess and plan for those migrations and give you some really unique perspectives on that particular workload. Finally, well, I'll say before I get to the Tigh Holmstrom: the one that we're focusing on today. We've got others that are coming soon for sap and kubernetes, which is going to have some potential tie-ins to the builders. Context. But we're going to talk about databases. This is the one we really want to get into to really start. Now, let's assume. Okay, you just signed up. You don't have any connectivity between workload factory and aws, how do we get that? So we have this thing called credentials. Tigh Holmstrom: You're gonna click the cog up here click credentials. Tigh Holmstrom: And I already have one created for this particular demo that I am going to use for us. But this will be blank for you. Okay, so that's really just kind of proving that it's not connected or do anything you've got to add credentials to make this thing see your actual aws account what's going on in it. Tigh Holmstrom: and you have a couple of options upfront. You can manually add your credentials, or you could pull in a cloudformation script to make that a little bit easier. I'm in a demo mode, so I can't do that. We'll stick to manually, which is good anyways, because you can see some detail here Tigh Holmstrom: down below that you have a context on each individual workload. These are selectors that you can set individually, independently. So if you don't need credentialing for any particular workload context, you can keep that off justto keep it as limited as possible. Tigh Holmstrom: And we have 2 particular permissions context, that is automate, which is essentially your edit permissions that'll also include, read or just read permissions. This is essentially our read only so it can see into your aws account. It can look for database, your database estate and the workloads associated with that, and just read what's going on within that. Tigh Holmstrom: or you could give it automate permissions, which is the advanced functionality that allows workload factory to do things inside of your estate? Tigh Holmstrom: Now, the big question is, you know what happens if I grant credentials or not? If I grant credentials clearly, I just talked about that, it can read, or it can fully automate some type of operations within your account for the specified workload. If I don't grant credentials at all. Again, I can only use that pricing calculator, but Tigh Holmstrom: I can also do something in addition to that, aside from just kind of analyzing cost. Tigh Holmstrom: And that's by way of something on the right here. It's called codebox, as you can see. If I make these changes. Codebox is changing anything I do in the Ui is going to show up in codebox, and then I can actually download Tigh Holmstrom: or export Tigh Holmstrom: these code snippets and leverage them insome other type of automation external to workload factory. We give you that this is also useful for just transparency. Kind of use this as kind of a Tigh Holmstrom: I'll say a receipt or proof of compliance, if you will, to show what configurations are actually taking place. When I make changes in the Ui. Tigh Holmstrom: so it's a super useful tool. You'll see this throughout workload factory as we go forward. Tigh Holmstrom: So feel free to pay attention to that, as I'm making those changes. But yeah. So let's assume we've created our credentials. You follow the steps. Pretty easy, self explanatory, and you'd hit, add. Tigh Holmstrom: and once you hit add, you'll come back to this credential screen here. Tigh Holmstrom: and your credentials will be added. Tigh Holmstrom: and at this point again I have automate permissions for myself in this particular demo. Semion Mazor: Cool. So we're seeing how we can easily sign up. Semion Mazor: Get into this free of charge service. There's no need for any connector, and you can control the permission that you have, and there's 3 levels, no permission at all which you can utilize the cost calculators or copy the snippets that the cardboard generates to use it inexisting infrastructure as a code. Semion Mazor: or read only that workload factory can detect existing environment and use that information to give you value as we will show or to automate and let workload Factory act on your behalf inside your environment. Semion Mazor: All right. So. Semion Mazor: assuming I'm a partner or customer. The 1st thing that probably will be interesting for me to explore this workload and explore physics on top is cost. Semion Mazor: So let's see what water factor provide us in this context of cost, management, and cost calculations. Tigh Holmstrom: Yeah, you know, it's funny talk to so many customers. And it Tigh Holmstrom: it depends on. You know your current state. If you have a lot of infrastructure on Prem, and you're thinking about the cloud. Maybe you have a lot of things in the cloud, and you're kind of like in either case. Well, the cloud super expensive it certainly can be, if you just like. Tigh Holmstrom: you know, throw stuff up in the cloud, and you don't monitor, track it, manage it. None of that. It could get very expensive, right? So one of the 1st things we run into is the pricing the cost concerns. It's not always the funnest conversation. But it's certainly an important one, right? And workload factory is really good at taking a look at that. So we're gonna go ahead. And from our homepage. Since databases is what we're talking Tigh Holmstrom: about today, we're going to explore savings. Being one of the 1st things we really think about. You have 2 options. We can explore savings for workloads that are on ebs, workloads that are on Fsx for windows. We'll go ahead and click ebs. It's the most common one. Tigh Holmstrom: And once I click that workload factory is going to populate with information and data that it is basically collected by looking at your aws account, and what database estate is out there. So I'm instantly, since I selected workloads on ebs volumes. Tigh Holmstrom: I can immediately see the database hosts that are tied to ebs. And I've got one with always on availability group one that's standalone with the number of instances tied to it. Tigh Holmstrom: And what I can actually do here is, I can select one of these hosts, and I can explore savings. What it's gonna do is take that config. It's going to populate that configuration for that particular host here on the left, and you'll get an immediate analysis on the right of what's going on in terms of current cost with ebs versus what the same workload might look like on Fsx for ontap. Tigh Holmstrom: And immediately you can see a drastic cost difference. And you might be saying, Wow, that's you know, super biased. Tigh Holmstrom: it's not. And I'm saying it's not because within workload factory we're really trying to provide Tigh Holmstrom: as extreme a level of transparency as we can. So we're gonna give you a full breakdown of how we're analyzing this cost. And this would also include considerations around compute considerations around the SQL license. Are you enterprise? Are you standard andenterprise? Licensing is interesting. There's a lot of features that are associated with enterprise licensing. Okay? So we're not just saying you should go all the way to Fci standard Tigh Holmstrom: alone, just because hey shared storage will save you money. There are reasons why you might use enterprise licensing. So we're gonna take some of those factors into account like dB level enterprise features. We're gonna think about the resource Governor, are you using that are using python extensions, for instance, etc, things associated with that enterprise license. If you are, we're gonna take that into account. So Tigh Holmstrom: that actually shows up here, and in even further detail, you can view the calculations, and it gets really extensive. So if you've signed up, feel free to go check that out andmake configuration builds. You can go see those calculations that we're actually using. It's a reallycool feature. Semion Mazor: It's important to mention that there's 2 options either providing credential. Get your existing environment like you just said they did, or just do it manually without seeing the existing environment and just manually inputting the parameters and see the results. And Semion Mazor: if Fsx front wouldn't be more like can save you cost. It will show that as well like, if you have deployment that ebs or Fsx from window is more like more cost. Optimized for this specific deployment, it will show that, as well. Tigh Holmstrom: Yeah, absolutely. And that's kind of the thing like you.see, that big cost difference in licensing as an example, that's 1 of the big value propositions around using shared storage forlet's say, SQL. Databases. You can. You can use that to reduce your licensing cost. Tigh Holmstrom: The big question is, should you? Tigh Holmstrom: So we're trying to provide some clarity on that andthat manual entry to let's say you don't have any anything listed here. You could click one of these, and you could go ahead and build a manual config here and do that cost comparison as mentioned. So it's a reallycool feature. We use it all the time ourselves, quite honestly helps us. So it'spretty sweet. Semion Mazor: Cool. So we covered the export savings tab and the cost calculation. The Tco calculator. Let's move to more practical assuming, I understand, the benefits of physics on top, and I understand how much it can save for me. Semion Mazor: Now, what can we do with water factor for the actual management and optimization of things? Tigh Holmstrom: Yeah, absolutely. So let's say, I was in one of these SQL. Server databases. And that's funny. Tigh Holmstrom: let's say I liked what I saw. One thing I forgot to mention is, you could either save this configuration if you're read only. Tigh Holmstrom: But if you're if you you've had, if you've given full automate permissions to the credentials. You can actually create this whole workload right here. That includes a SQL. Server database that includes all the networking compute fsx for ontap, it'll go deploy that. Tigh Holmstrom: So let's say you'vedone that. Tigh Holmstrom: What you'll actually be able to do at that point is go to the dashboard and see Tigh Holmstrom: what we call excuse me, managed instances. Tigh Holmstrom: Managed. Instance, is essentially a workload that Tigh Holmstrom: is being managed by workload factory on Fsx for ontap. Tigh Holmstrom: Okay? So we'll be able to see all of those in this particular dashboard if it's on Fsx for ontap. Tigh Holmstrom: And in this dashboard pretty self explanatory. Just go through it real. Briefly, you'll be able to see the savings that you're actually reaping the benefit of by using Fsx for ontap and also, quite frankly, workload factory, because we'll get into the optimization piece later, in addition to just a heads up display on your estimated monthly cost. What does your total monthly cost look like Tigh Holmstrom: running these workloads on Fsx for ontap and aws on top of that. Tigh Holmstrom: How is your protection situation? Do you have hosts protected appropriately, do you not? We'll actually show that here in the protection panel. Tigh Holmstrom: and in addition to that, any sandboxes deployed with these workloads. Tigh Holmstrom: and last and certainly not least, if there are particular jobs running within workload factory Tigh Holmstrom: that you've had workload factory commit inside of your aws account. You'll actually be able to have a quick heads up here, andwhat's going on with those jobs? We'll get to that in detail. A little more little bit more later, too. Semion Mazor: All right. So dashboard pretty much straightforward, the dashboard of my workload and across my account. Semion Mazor: Now, if I want to deploy like, I want to actually have a new database to deploy it and implement automatically all the best practices. So let's dive into that and see our options. And Semion Mazor: we have something new here. So let's highlight that as well. Tigh Holmstrom: Do we do? Yeah. So you saw one option. You've seen a couple of options to deploy actually on the homepage. You had that storage deployment. Basic just simply deploy Fsx for ontap. That's just there to make that easy in case you don't want to go back to the console at aws. Now, you've also seen in the price calculator a way to deploy based on that particular config. Let's assume you just know I'm gonna deploy something. I don't have a config for it yet, so I need to build that out. We have that option here in the dashboard Tigh Holmstrom: under deploy database, host. So you click that. And, as mentioned, we now have Postgresql support. That's pretty sweet. Tigh Holmstrom: I'm gonna stick to the SQL. Server discussion right now, just because it's just a little bit easier tou utilize for our conversation. Since I've already talked about it, we'll stick to that Tigh Holmstrom: if I go and deploy that you get immediately a ui change to a wizard. There's also a chat bot that you could use, and you could just chat in your configs in the Wizard. You've got 2 options, a quick create, advanced create. We're doing a demo. I'll stick to quick create. And this is really cool because I can start seeing where code box becomes really powerful right? And since we already mentioned it, I'm going to go ahead and do some config changes, and you can see me Tigh Holmstrom: change those configs within the actual rest Api code box code snippets on the right. So I'm going to deploy out in us East one Tigh Holmstrom: select Vpc. One. And you saw code box just change on the right. There. You just populated that. Tigh Holmstrom: Now I'm going to go ahead and select my availability zones their subnets insiders, that's all getting populated. Tigh Holmstrom: I'm going to give it some credentials. Tigh Holmstrom: Dashlane really wants to put its own in. That's pretty funny. Tigh Holmstrom: I'm going to give it a domain name here, quick usernames. Tigh Holmstrom: I am not gonna actually deploy this. That would be bad, because then I wouldn't remember this password. Tigh Holmstrom: I'm gonna go ahead and say that it's gonna create a new Fsx front tab we can actually select Tigh Holmstrom: and already deployed on tap as well Tigh Holmstrom: if needed. If we've maybe already done that manually ourselves, orby another means of automation. Tigh Holmstrom: I'm gonna give it some password here. Tigh Holmstrom: You know what? We'll leave it 1024, Tigh Holmstrom: we can go ahead and view our config. Tigh Holmstrom: And this is really cool at the very bottom, based on that configuration. It's going to give us an immediate estimated cost on what we're doing. So that's really neat. If you have read only permissions. This is a really useful feature, because I actually just built out a full deployment for SQL. Server, database host, including the file system and all the other configs that's going to support it. Read only I can still do this. I can actually then export this Tigh Holmstrom: as code snippets via codebox, either by that rest Api basics, or via that aws cli terraform cloudformation. We have it all now available within codebox, and I can then go download this Tigh Holmstrom: that's super useful. Even if you have read only permissions. We use this all the time ourselves, even in like lab deployments and stuff. So Tigh Holmstrom: very cool feature. If I have full automate permissions, and I can actually create this and execute that now. Semion Mazor: Cool. So lets us Semion Mazor: to deploy end-to-end databases on all the layer database compute storage, also create snippets to use it outside of workload factoring Semion Mazor: infrastructure as a con of our choice. Semion Mazor: and the most interesting part of thatit implements all the best practices, not only the configuration that we choose through this wizard, but all the other things that we need otherwise to go and learn and find the different resources. Semion Mazor: Water structure would already do that on automatic with all the different parameters, all the different configuration out there, and we'll deploy the database so Semion Mazor: very cool, very nice. Semion Mazor: Let's move on to assuming I already have my environment. So how can I manage it? What?actually provide me on the day 2 operations. Tigh Holmstrom: Yeah, absolutely. So we already see that we have some host deployed here, some managed instances, some Fsx for ontap instances here that workload factory can see and manage. So let's go ahead and take a look at the full inventory. Tigh Holmstrom: You've only seen like chunks of inventory. Really, this is where you could actually view your whole inventory, your whole estate. Tigh Holmstrom: and this will include both Fsx. For ontap managed instances. Fsx. For ontap deployments or other deployments that might be leveraging ebs or Fsx for windows, for example, and in particular, I know that I can explore savings here. That kind of immediately tells me this is probably a workload that's not Tigh Holmstrom: managed and is on ebs. And sure enough, as you can see, that is the case here. So we're looking at that we already talked about the explore savings section. But I can actually get a little more granular per workload here. So if I just click explore savings, it will actually load this particular config and then run that analysis for that particular workload. So that's another way you can actually get to it. Tigh Holmstrom: We've already gone through the explore savings piece. So I'll skip that functionality. Tigh Holmstrom: There's something new in workload factory that Simeon actually brought into the conversation. And that was all about optimization. We actually did a previous webinar, and that feature didn't exist. And so we were able to talk about Tigh Holmstrom: really nothing other than we're working on it. It's coming. Well, guess what it'sfinally here, it's pretty sweet, and we're going to jump in and talk about what it actually does. So if I go and actually select an Fsx for ontap Tigh Holmstrom: SQL. Server host deployed workload. I can actually go down to the instances underneath that particular host. Tigh Holmstrom: and I can see that there's 3 little Tigh Holmstrom: or I'll just call it a button 3 little dots there. If I click that, I can then go to another menu context menu where it gives me an optimized functionality. So I'm gonna click that. Tigh Holmstrom: And I'm going to get a new page that loads. Tigh Holmstrom: And this is pretty sweet. Tigh Holmstrom: The reason why we pulled this in is the consideration around day 2 operations and the idea of config drift. Tigh Holmstrom: When you have a really large estate, that large estate can be difficult to have any type of observability into it. Tigh Holmstrom: It's just difficult to manage at its own right at its scale. And if you're doing pocs or any type of like testing on new databases, it's hard to bring those into that scale and know the impacts and implications on those databases coming from. Maybe a lab to actual production that can be difficult can be complex. It can be hard to see what's actually going on Tigh Holmstrom: inside of the whole estate. So we brought the idea of optimization into the picture with workload factory. Now, practically, what are we doing here? There's some challenges that you're concerned with within that scale. Some of those challenges are centered around performance, degradation. I've got concerns around availability. Any type of like protection gaps thatI might be concerned with in terms of bringing this new workload into the scale of the estate itself. Tigh Holmstrom: just trying to comply with best practices, can get really difficult at times you can have many conflicting best practices. Even so, what we're trying to do is align a lot of these best practices with your scale and make this a lot easier in terms of being able to observe and manage that scale in your day. One day 2 operations. Now. Tigh Holmstrom: how are we doing that? We're doing that for? 2 different primary scenarios. One is new deployments. As I mentioned, we just deployed something, another is existing, managed deployments that are managed by Workley factory and Fsx for ontap. Tigh Holmstrom: And what we're looking at is we're going to go into the environment. We're gonna assess those workloads. We're gonna identify different types of improvement opportunities androom for optimizations for those particular instances. We're looking at comparing those best practices as I talked about. Tigh Holmstrom: And we're actually going to break that down into an optimization score. So based on what workload factory sees and what's going on in terms of your configuration for storage and compute at the moment right here, broken down on the right. Tigh Holmstrom: We're going to assign a score to that. Tigh Holmstrom: Now, what does that really mean. Well, if you scroll down a little bit, you can actually see somedetail on this score. So Tigh Holmstrom: based on what we've analyzed, I can expand that recommendation and see the detail on. Why, we're actually recommending a change. What we're recommending, what's the criticality? And this is really useful in things. For even like planning, for instance. In addition to that, itcan give you some cost perspectives as well in the logic and the reasoning underneath some of these recommendations. Tigh Holmstrom: Okay, so it'sa really useful feature. And on top of that, what you can do is before you even do anything with workload factory. You can export this as a Pdf Tigh Holmstrom: and get a readable perspective Tigh Holmstrom: on what we can actually go and optimize. This is something you can kind of hand over to your stakeholders like codebox being a kind of a receipt or a proof of compliance. This is another way. You can actually communicate what change needs to happen inside of your actual estate. It's a really clear feature. I love it. Recommend it highly. Tigh Holmstrom: Now let's say you like what you see. Okay? Tigh Holmstrom: And we want to go and actually commit some of these optimizations. What I can do with workload factory is I can actually go and commit that optimization and have workload factory assuming you have Tigh Holmstrom: automate permissions and workload factory will go in and commit this optimization. If I actually click this Tigh Holmstrom: it will give me just a quick synopsis on what's going on, what the recommendation is, what action is going to be taken. Tigh Holmstrom: and then I can actually go and commit that action. We'll do that for storage. As you see, we've got a number of different storage optimizations here that we're recommending, and we can do that for the compute layer as well. This one is already optimized. So I'm not going to make any change here, but there are other recommendations, and it gets pretty detailed. In addition to that, it assigns different tags just for an easier way to find Tigh Holmstrom: these particular optimizations. And that will matter when it comes to the job monitoring portion. Tigh Holmstrom: Again, really cool feature. We're really excited about this optimization because it's just showing you that we're improving workload factory consistently. And we're listening to our customers. This is a big feature that was requested. It's great that we can deploy and see things. But what else can you do? This is where Tigh Holmstrom: the magic. Semion Mazor: This is great enhancement, as we see some of the people already using Fsx ontop, and some of them not so provide the ability to deploy new databases, utilizing fsx ontop. But for those that already use fsx ontap for the database, this is a great feature to make sure Semion Mazor: the existing deployment is aligned with best practices, and first, st it provides the visibility for that, and also the way to easily implement and optimize those environments. Semion Mazor: And, as we said vocals factory always evolves. So you saw here a couple of example on what it can optimize, and additional will be added every month, so keep to stay tuned tosee the new. We will have more layers that will be optimized and another ways to optimize your environment. So Semion Mazor: this is reallygreat for that. And I think it's a good time to do you want to run the actual optimization? Semion Mazor: Yeah. Tigh Holmstrom: I'll run it, andI don't know if you saw it, but it was actually showing you some of thesavings. You will reap the benefit of if you do make the optimization change. Tigh Holmstrom: In this case. The compute instances that were offered showed me a percentage of savings that I'll gain. I selected the best one I saw and went ahead and committed that optimization. Tigh Holmstrom: And as you can see, the compute right sizing optimized successfully. Tigh Holmstrom: that that's giving you a quick heads up display on the optimization status. Tigh Holmstrom: and we'll be able to see that job monitor here in a second, so that'll be pretty cool to get to. Semion Mazor: Cool. So let's see the next tab of sandboxes, and how we can create clones for our databases. Tigh Holmstrom: Yeah, exactly. Now, 1st question is, what do we mean by sandboxes? I mean, it's kind of an old Tigh Holmstrom: name. I'm probably not going to explain anything new to you. But the idea is essentially being able to create test environments for whatever context and use case you want to use that dev test environment for. So we're trying to make that easier when it comes to self-managed databases in workload factory with Fsx for ontap. Tigh Holmstrom: Now, why do I mention Fsx for ontap sandboxing isn't really Tigh Holmstrom: specific to us. It's just specific todatabases. But in Fsx runtep we have. There's some uniqueness to it. With our cloning capabilities. Tigh Holmstrom: also cloning. Not a new feature. What makes us different, though, is the fact that our Clones are thin provision. So they'rethin at deployment, which means I'm not doing a full copy to make a clone. Tigh Holmstrom: Okay? Which can take time. I mean, ifyou're you've got a 200 GB volume that can take quite a few hours to actually do a full copy of Tigh Holmstrom: depending on traffic and stress on the network. In addition to that, that's a full duplicate. So you're paying for that duplicate. That's a hundred percent increase essentially on the volume you just copied. So we want to prevent that. Tigh Holmstrom: So because our clones are literally just pointers tosnapshots for a specified volume, we're not making a full copy, which means we'redoing that instantaneously. There's no data copy at all. So it happens near instantaneously for you. So it's an acceleration in the cloud. It's also a cost saver which is pretty sweet to see. That wasn't always the case for on-prem, because disk is cheap. Nobody really cared. Now it matters right. We're talking about cost concerns. Tigh Holmstrom: So all that said, we're trying tomake the utilization of that feature within Fsx for ontap a lot easier. And then, in addition to that, provide some type of governance and management around those clones and observability into how you're using them. What are you consuming with those clones? Right? So we'll show you some storage savings because Tigh Holmstrom: you leveraging those clones. As to other means, we'll show you how many sandboxes are created. The lifespan of those sandboxes. How old are they if they're over 30 days. Maybe you want to create an automation that removes those because you don't need them. Tigh Holmstrom: So we want to give you some observability there, and you can tag those instances as well to kind of organize what they are, where they are and at what point in their lifespan Tigh Holmstrom: they are. Tigh Holmstrom: and that's not all. What you can actually do is take one of those clones, for instance. We'll use this 1st one for retail banking, as you can see it's tag to be an identifier for development. I can actually re baseline or leverage the clone for a refresh which we see cloning used often. We see it used for basic dev tests as well. And in many cases I've seen a lot of customers resurrect backups to do this type of testing, and that can be time consuming can be costly. Tigh Holmstrom: The cloning capabilities here just make it far easier to use far, cheaper, far faster, too. Tigh Holmstrom: You can actually connect this clone into your choice of Ci CD tools, you can split it off to be used as a full volume. At that point it would be in essence a copy. But you might leverage that in some production environment, for some reason we have the capability to do that. You can check its integrity, delete it a lot of great functionality here in the sandbox environment. It's 1 of my favorite features because I focus on game devs andapp dev. So Tigh Holmstrom: we see it utilized a lot for those purposes. Semion Mazor: Yeah, think learning can be a game, real game changer. We see customers that's reducing 50% of the cost just by this feature, regardless of using less CC tools and reducing the cost of database, licensing just by that and also shortening the development cycle because they create the copies and refresh their environments much,quicker instead of hours, as I said, just in minutes. Semion Mazor: even if it's large scale. So Semion Mazor: water factor provide the ability to actually utilize that Semion Mazor: instead. Otherwise you would need snap center or do it manually through cli. So workloads factory provide the option to use that through the through this Ui, and also when you create new database through workloads factory, you also use codebox. So you can automate that through infrastructure as a code as well. Semion Mazor: So yeah. Also great capability here. And last tab that left is Job monitoring. Let's just quickly show what we have here. Tigh Holmstrom: Yeah, super quick. Pretty self explanatory. Nothing.game changing here too much. You can see where I actually committed that optimization here Tigh Holmstrom: on the right. I wanted to do that. So we could actually see some utilization. Since it's demo environment, nothing's happening really but you can actually get a heads up here and see what's going on. And I can get into the details of those particular jobs. I think right now, we're not populating that in this particular demo. But there is detail associated with these optimizations and then based on that optimization, it allows you to go off Tigh Holmstrom: back to. Let's say it wasn't an optimization. But you created a deployment. That job that deploy job will show here. You could select that, and there would be a link here to show you where you could actually optimize that particular deployment if maybe you missed a particular best practices config which you shouldn't if you deployed through workload factory. But let's say it was a manual deployment Tigh Holmstrom: workload factory sees it. Tigh Holmstrom: It'll you know, we could actually do something within that particular file system. That job will show up here, and then you can click, optimize, and it will show you where you can go and optimize. So we're just trying to make it easier to get to where you need to go for these particular workloads and what you do with them, and how you manage them, and what you can see. Tigh Holmstrom: I'm really excited about workload factory. It's growing into a powerhouse of a toolkit thatjust touches on so many valuebenefits for people. Semion Mazor: Yeah, it is really exciting. Let'ssummarize what we have seen so far. Tigh Holmstrom: Sounds good. Semion Mazor: So. Semion Mazor: as we said, workload factory allows you to optimize and automate your workflows on Amazon Fs explained upon top. And particularly, we show today how you can use the Tco calculators, how you can automate deployment, whether for Microsoft sequel or the with the new release for a post SQL as well. Semion Mazor: So how you can optimize your operation, either by gaining full visibility through the dashboard and more detailed in the inventory, and then to optimize existing deployment with the new added continuous optimization feature. And then also how you can create sandboxes utilizing the same cloning on Fsx on top. Semion Mazor: Now this is the time to have our last poll for today, and we would like to ask you which of the features you just saw. Semion Mazor: you find the most valuable, whether it's the Tco calculators, the automated deployment. Semion Mazor: the continuous optimization or the sandboxes. Actually. Semion Mazor: every one of them has a value. You are not limited to use either of them. But we're very curious to see out of what we show since the beginning of the webinar what you find is the most valuable. There. Semion Mazor: Let me see. Tigh Holmstrom: Hey? Before you announce it, Simeon, let me see if I can guess it. After you get all the polls in. I want to see if I can nail it. Tigh Holmstrom: I think I know what it is. Semion Mazor: Actually, I'm kind of surprised that the results are still getting in. But I'm kind of surprised. We see the cost calculator leading now. But let's give it a couple of more seconds to see. Semion Mazor: Yeah, so we have 50% of you thinking that the cost calculator is the most valuable feature. And then 38% that automated deployment and 30%, the cost optimization. To me, it's a surprise and. Tigh Holmstrom: It is. Yeah. Semion Mazor: Nice. Yeah, always. Yeah, cool. So Semion Mazor: as a next step, we would like you just to try. Well, welcome you to try water factory. As I said, free of charge, very easy to sign up. console.waffles.netapp.com, and so you can go there right now and try it. If you would like us to help you doing that, you can schedule a call with us, and a specialist will help you and answer any question you have around Waffles Factory or about Fsex in general. Semion Mazor: Also, here's the link for the previous webinar we mentioned at the beginning of this session. Semion Mazor: which is sorry for that which is the full explanation about the benefits and the capabilities of Fsx. For on top for your databases. And there's also another group demo for the entire flow on, how to deploy Fsx on top, how to manage, how to also manage all the aspects of data protection through Snap Center, and also a demo for code factory. And there's also useful Github workshop. Semion Mazor: and that you're welcome to use as well. Semion Mazor: This is what we had for you for today, and if you have any questions, so this is a great time to Semion Mazor: send it over and Semion Mazor: andwe'll be glad to address. You're welcome to raise hand, and we'll let you open the mic, or just send them over the chat or over the Q. And a. Semion Mazor: And in many cases there's a bit of a common question that's coming up around if Semion Mazor: workload factory or Fsx can work for Rds, and the answer that currently Fsx on top and workload factory because it manages workload on Fsx on top supporting self-managed databases. So what we see can apply to any kind of database for Fsx on top Semion Mazor: for workforce factory, particularly currently for Msql and Post-resql. And we're talking about self-managed databases. Semion Mazor: Trevor, are there any other questions that Semion Mazor: you would like to highlight and open to our audience would like to mention. Trevor Thompson: I don't have any right now. I think you guys did a great job highlighting the tool. Trevor Thompson: It's great to see all those great new features. Tigh Holmstrom: I have a comment for the audience. If you sign up, you Tigh Holmstrom: get the pleasure of getting an email from one of us like Trevor or myself. This is not an automated email. Wehand deliver these ourselves through our email addresses. So if you do receive one, please correspond with us. We. Tigh Holmstrom: We feel a little lonely if we don't get a response. So would love to hear from you. If you sign up and you get an email from us. Tigh Holmstrom: and your feedback. We really care about your feedback. It matters. We are customer focused. Tigh Holmstrom: We're an Amazon product at the end of the day, and they we start with the customer first.st So the same applies to workload factory. That's why we well architect for aws, so please send your feedback like, if something's lacking, you want to see more of something. Tigh Holmstrom: We can get that on our fee process and see if we can actually make some change happen there. So it really matters. Semion Mazor: There's on the right bottom side the Semion Mazor: the I forgot the name that you can send like a chat with also with support. Semion Mazor: Yeah, theintercom. Yeah, that's the name intercom to send. Like to chat with one of Semion Mazor: for our team. So you've also welcome to do that. Semion Mazor: Alright. I think it's time to thank you all for being with us today. Thank you very much, Ty. Thank you, Trevor, for handing thequestions. Semion Mazor: And again. You're welcome just to try workload factory and see the benefits of Fsex on top for databases. We'll see you on the next webinar, and you're welcome to reach out as well. Tigh Holmstrom: Thank you all very much.