Efficiently Manage Amazon Cloud NAS (AWS EFS & FSx) with Komprise

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NAS in the cloud is seeing rapid adoption as enterprise IT organizations are increasingly moving their SMB and NFS workloads to AWS managed file services. These fully managed NAS offerings reduce your administration overhead while optimizing your cloud spend to save the most and at the same time, help your organization make money from file and object data. Komprise supports data migration and data tiering to all AWS NAS offerings, making it easier to right-place your data in the optimal storage class.

smart-file-data-migration-aws-thumb-768x958Planning for AWS Cloud NAS Migrations

As you consider migrating your NAS workload to AWS cloud NAS ask yourself these questions:
  • How will I get my data to the cloud with minimal disruption while ensuring data integrity?
  • How can I place data on performance and archive tiers to optimize cloud costs?
  • How do I know which data sets make the most sense to move to AWS and is there data I need to delete or retain for legal and other reasons before doing a migration?
  • How can I leverage AWS services to drive value from my data with cloud analytics and AI/ML?
This is where unstructured data management that goes beyond point migrations and storage-level tiering is crucial:
  • Analytics: Tear down storage silos by analyzing your current file workloads on any NAS platform and then migrate granular data sets to the optimal AWS storage class;
  • Flexible Policies: Tear down team silos by empowering data owners to work with storage infrastructure teams to create policies;
  • Simplicity: Blend AWS managed file services into your current infrastructure without introducing complexity;
  • Leverage file and S3, Glacier classes: Continually optimize your data placement in the cloud as data ages and access patterns change, to take advantage of lower cost or higher performance storage;
  • Reliable Automation: Get a systematic way to make data available for AWS analytics and AI/ML workflows.

Komprise Intelligent Data Management gives you analytics to understand your data and its performance characteristics. With this knowledge you can create granular data management policies for Komprise to migrate, tier and move data from any NAS device to the optimal AWS storage class or from high performance SSD storage to cost-effective S3 object storage.

Komprise Support for AWS Managed File Services

AWS has multiple cloud NAS offerings, each with its own features, characteristics, and price structure:

  • Amazon FSx for NetApp ONTAP: Feature-rich enterprise NFS and SMB file storage
  • Amazon FSx for OpenZFS: Best for current users of ZFS file system or other Linux-based file servers (NFS)
  • Amazon FSx for Windows File Server: Fully managed Windows File server (SMB)
  • Amazon Elastic File System (EFS): Supports the Network File System version 4

For more information on these offerings, consult this AWS article.

Komprise Elastic Data Migration for AWS

migrationisvpartner-150x150Komprise’s proven data migration technology has received AWS Migration and Modernization Competency Certification. The crucial difference compared with other migration point tools is the performance and advanced analysis provided by the Komprise Global File Index. Komprise gives you the visibility into your data to understand its requirements and the ability to place your data on the right storage class: Hot data on high performance managed file services in AWS and cold data on lower cost Amazon S3 object storage such as Glacier Instant Retrieval and Amazon S3 Infrequent Access.

Optimize AWS spending and user experience with transparent tiering

As a savvy storage architect you just read the last sentence and asked, how do I put cold files on Amazon S3 and not disrupt my NAS applications? Glad you asked! Komprise’s patented Transparent Move Technology (TMT) uses industry standard symlinks* with Komprise Dynamic Links to non-disruptively maintain access to tiered files for users and applications. In other words, users access their files from the same place as before.

Each storage class on AWS has distinct pricing and there are ample differences. The high-performance SSD tiers are measurably more expensive than archive class such as Amazon S3 Glacier Instant Retrieval. The flexibility to use the optimal storage for each data set and to leverage S3 classes like Amazon S3 Glacier Instant Retrieval can save you up to 70% on your storage costs.

Make your data work harder with AWS analytics

After moving data, employees may want to use AWS analytics and artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) on the data. Komprise TMT enables file-object duality – meaning that while your file is available on the original NAS device it’s also accessible via the Amazon S3 API without going through Komprise, which is a key requirement for many AWS services.

The transition from on-premises to the cloud is an opportunity to up level your capabilities from storage admin to cloud data architect. An agile stance in the cloud puts you in control of costs and lets you collaborate with your line of business teams. You can move file workloads transparently to the cloud to support AI, machine learning and cloud analytics initiatives.

Komprise is an AWS Advanced Technology partner. Learn more about Komprise for AWS.

* Symlinks: As of February 2022, Amazon FSx for Windows File Server does not support symbolic links required for Komprise Transparent Tiering.

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