Migrate to NetApp CVO and ANF 27 times faster with Komprise

Enterprises are moving to a cloud-first strategy, which means their core file-based applications now need to run in the cloud. NetApp is addressing this need by enabling customers to run the performant NetApp file system in the cloud with CVO (Cloud Volumes ONTAP) and ANF (Azure NetApp Files).

Forbes predicts 83% of enterprise workloads will be in the cloud by 2020, and more interestingly, only 27% of workloads will be on-premises by 2020. This would spell a 10% drop in absolute terms in just one year – as the same number for 2019 is at 37%.

The Difference Between CVO and ANF

CVO is a virtual instance of NetApp ONTAP running in a public cloud like AWS or Google Cloud – it is as if you are converting a physical to a virtual NetApp instance, and then you have to deploy the instance, manage the volume, pay for the cloud compute, etc. The benefits of CVO are that all the capabilities of ONTAP are available. ANF on the other hand is a managed service where NetApp hardware is sitting in Azure – but not all the ONTAP capabilities like SnapMirror and FlexClones are available.

CVO and Azure NetApp Files Cost Savings

CVO and ANF both have OpEx costs based on the level of storage and compute you use – you may see costs of $1,000/TB/month depending on the performance level you choose. NetApp has built-in storage efficiencies such as dedupe and tiering that are factored into these costs – but significant additional savings are possible with intelligent data management and transparent archiving.

Komprise provides analytics-driven data management capabilities so you can understand your on-premises data, migrate and replicate just the right data to CVO and ANF, and cut 70% of ongoing costs with in-place transparent archiving in the cloud.

Replicate and Migrate Just the Right Data to CVO and ANF with Komprise

Analyze and Plan Before Incurring Cloud Costs

Komprise enables you to analyze your multi-vendor NAS footprint across any NFS and SMB storage – across your data centers and clouds. You can analyze a mixed environment that has some NetApp, EMC Isilon, Windows File Servers, and any other NFS or SMB storage. Understand your data and its usage, and plan exactly what data you want to migrate to the cloud – both to NetApp CVO on AWS, Azure, and Google or ANF. Once you know what you want to move, you can choose to either migrate the data or replicate the data via Komprise into CVO or ANF. With the right approach to cloud migration analysis and planning, Komprise customers are able to cut down migration costs and time, and ensure that critical data they need in the cloud is moved over first.

Migrate to CVO and ANF at 27x Faster

Once you know what to migrate, Komprise Elastic Data Migration efficiently manages the cloud data migration. Simply setup the migration from any NFS or SMB to NetApp CVO and ANF – all you need to do is select any NFS or SMB source, select whether you want to migrate the entire share or specific directories, and your CVO or ANF target. That’s it – Komprise then migrates all the files to the cloud with fast performance using its patented elastic architecture and with reliability. Read our white paper on how Komprise Elastic Data Migration achieves more than 27x better performance compared to tools like rsync.

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Komprise and Azure NetApp Files Architecture

Manage Data Lifecycle

Since CVO and ANF both have an OPEX model, it is crucial to actively manage the environment and tier at the file level when you no longer need the performance of cloud file storage. But how you tier/archive data impacts how much you can save. NetApp offers block-level tiering with fabric pooling inside ONTAP where cold blocks are moved to a lower tier like S3 and when they are used again, they get moved back up to the hot tier. While this approach is useful to tier snapshots from the file storage tier down to object, it is not optimal to archive cold data since it is a proprietary approach that does not preserve backup and DR savings.

Read the post: What you need to know before jumping into the cloud tiering pool

Instead, by using file-level tiering, you can maximize your cloud storage and backup savings. Komprise archives the entire cold file based on your policy to a lower tier of your choice and performs ongoing lifecycle management of the data. The benefits of this approach include:

  • Maximize not only storage but also backup savings: Since the entire file is archived, backup software simply backs up the link and not the full file. This maximizes your savings beyond just storage.
  • Eliminate unnecessary retrievals and rehydration: Komprise uses standard protocol constructs to enable in-place access of archived files, and since these are standard solutions, any 3rd party access to the data does not require cold files to be brought back or rehydrated to the higher tier.
  • No silo’ed management of different cloud storage and CVO/ANF: CVO and ANF tiering has to be configured per instance and this can become difficult as your volume of data grows. Komprise provides you a comprehensive way to set policies and manage data across ANF, CVO, and cloud native solutions like EFS, FSX, S3, Azure Files, and third party NAS solutions in the cloud and on-premises.
  • Maximize ongoing savings throughout the data lifecycle: Komprise provides a full data lifecycle management solution so you can define how data continues to be archived throughout its lifecycle (E.g. after 3 months of being inactive move from CVO to S3 IA, then after 6 months move from S3 IA to Glacier, after 1 year from Glacier to Deep Glacier, etc). This ensures you continue to save on cold data throughout its lifecycle.
  • Native data access from S3 and object tiers: Komprise moves the files in native format so you can not only access the moved data as files, but also directly as objects – this enables you to create cloud native applications without being tied to a file format.
  • Non-proprietary solution with no lock-in:Komprise uses open standards to read and write data, ensuring data is always stored in a format native to the storage service, thereby ensuring there is no data lock-in. This allows you to manage your data independent of the storage devices or data management services they use.

In our recent announcement, Karl Rautenstrauch, Principal Program Manager for Azure Storage at Microsoft put it this way:

Data portability and lifecycle management is increasingly important to customers, and solutions like Microsoft Azure with Komprise offer the options they demand.

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