NetApp Insight 2022 Digital Recap and Highlights

Announcing NetApp BlueXP

BlueXP is NetApp's SaaS platform (formerly called Cloud Manager) that gives customers visibility across their entire data plane, whether in the cloud or on-premises.

• A unified web-based control plane to manage environments on-premises and in the cloud.
• Helps you deploy, discover, manage, and optimize data and infrastructure with the simplicity of SaaS.
• Combines visibility and manageability of storage instances with data services like data protection, governance and compliance, mobility, and resource monitoring and optimization.
• Enables multicloud operations from one source, eliminating fragmented and redundant toolsets, frameworks, lexicons, and competencies.

How can you leverage WWT?

WWT now offers BlueXP running in our own environment with access available to customers via our WWT Platform – NetApp BlueXP Lab. Along with direct access, we have a NetApp Cloud Data Management workshop that will enable you to activate and deploy BlueXP in your environment. Please reach out to your local WWT account team or simply request the workshop from the link above.

New ONTAP Release 9.12.1

The newly released ONTAP 9.12.1 is available for download as an RC (release candidate). Please keep in mind the RC version of any ONTAP software is still in development and will be moved out of RC to GA (general availability) within a short period of time. Below you will find a list of the features WWT's experts find important:

• Tamperproof Snapshot support – Adds indelibility to the already immutable snapshot copies, meaning your data is protected from compromised administrator credentials or rogue user attacks. Plus, this enables rapid recovery in the event of data damage by providing an immutable recovery point on the data source.
• Improved ONTAP hardening – These enhancements add a layer of coverage to your data security posture. This includes tamperproof auditing and logging, auditing all admin actions, multi-factor authentication for SSH access, and ONTAP System Manager security templates to ensure security.
• FlexGroup support with SnapLock for SnapVault – A FlexGroup Snapshot can now be replicated onto a SnapLock volume for an indelible copy of FlexGroup data.
• Increased volume limits – The cluster volume limit has been increased from 15,000 to 30,000.
• NVMe-oF – An increased cluster supports up to 12 nodes.
• File/object multiprotocol access – Provides file/object duality to the same data, eliminating the need for duplicate data across S3 and file protocols.
• FlexGroup to SnapMirror Cloud – SnapMirror FlexGroup unstructured data to services such as Cloud Backup service.

How can you leverage WWT?

Our teams participate in the early adopter program (EAP) for ONTAP. We take pre-released versions for a test drive before they've been publicly released. We have many combinations of NetApp hardware and software available for functional/performance testing, POCs, labs, and demos.

Commitment to Sustainability

The Insight announcement was targeted to customers with information on how they can achieve carbon reduction goals with NetApp tools and resources. The specific items WWT's experts value are below:

• NetApp BlueXP – Offers a unified experience to manage your entire environment, which includes power-consumption reporting dashboards to help make decisions specific to data and carbon efficiency.
• NetApp Cloud Insights – A new feature has been added that enables you to report specifically on power usage and temperature readings for any ONTAP storage system.
• Lifecycle Assessment (LCA) – A carbon footprint report leveraging the Product Attribute Impact Algorithm (PAIA) methodology. NetApp was the first storage provider to join the PAIA, sponsored by MIT. The PAIA allows NetApp to produce streamlined assessments for all the products that align with leading standards.
• NetApp's 4:1 Storage Efficiency Guarantee – Specific to NetApp's SAN portfolio, the 4:1 Storage Efficiency Guarantee aligns with storing more data on less hardware, in turn reducing energy usage and emissions. This currently covers the following systems: all AFF A-series, AFF C190, and FAS500f.

The items above highlight a few of the announcements while building on the entire NetApp portfolio of products and services that enable customers to build out their hybrid, multicloud environments.

How can you leverage WWT?

Environmental, social, and governance (ESG) initiatives are important to NetApp and to WWT. Being ESG aware does not have to negatively affect your bottom line. In fact, we've seen customers increase their agility and productivity while making their businesses more valuable. See our ESG page here to find helpful content and links to articles, case studies, and more.

Automation for CloudOps

The term CloudOps is based on cloud operations, or a holistic approach to building, deploying, and running applications at speed. CloudOps includes a few basic pillars:

• FinOps – Financial operations, specifically around cost optimization and efficiency in the cloud.
• SecOps – Security operations, specifically tied to your security posture and network risks within your various cloud accounts, subscriptions, or projects.
• DevOps – Development operations, focused on how quickly you can develop and deliver applications and services with velocity.

To cover the entire CloudOps landscape, the Spot by NetApp platform has incorporated several pieces of its portfolio to tackle the items below, from application services to operations automation and infrastructure optimization.

If you consider the items outlined above areas that you are attempting to cover, there is a product in the Spot portfolio to help. The newly announced additions to the Spot by NetApp portfolio now have you covered.

How can you leverage WWT?

WWT is your trusted advisor for any of the Spot by NetApp portfolio. Not only are we NetApp's largest partner, but we also are an active consumer of the Spot by NetApp portfolio. We have hands-on experience and documented best practices as you look to leverage Spot inside your public cloud environments. Please reach out to your regional WWT account team to learn more.

Storage-as-a-Service Announcements

At Insight, FlexPod-as-a-Service is added to their Keystone STaaS offerings. This brings cloud-like consumption to the FlexPod converged infrastructure family. FlexPod-as-a-Service combines Cisco X-Series servers, Cisco network infrastructure, and NetApp storage. The entire stack is managed with Cisco Intersight, SaaS-based management, and an automation platform. FlexPod-as-a-Service provides the following benefits:

• CI/CD workflow – The ability to easily integrate your CI/CD workflows into Intersight for dynamic infrastructure.
• Flexible terms – Terms start as low as 50TiB per site.
• Pay for performance – With the SLA-based service tiers, you pay for the performance you use.
• Pay-as-you-grow – There is an inherent ability to predict billing for committed capacity.
• Focus on business outcomes – This allows you to spend your time on your core business offerings, without worrying about upfront costs.
• Broad application support – Currently the following workloads are supported: SAP, SQL, Oracle, VDI, healthcare, and AI/ML/DL.
• Latest technology – The service supports end-to-end NVMe, including NVMe/TCP.
• Cloud ease of use – The ability to easily consume compute and/or storage whether hybrid or multicloud.
• Integrated – The Keystone Flex Subscription is now integrated into the BlueXP Digital Wallet for monitoring and managing STaaS subscriptions.
• Availability – FlexPod-as-a-Service is currently available in the following countries:
  • Australia
  • Canada
  • Germany
  • Netherlands
  • United Kingdom
  • United States

How can you leverage WWT?

You can find more information about Keystone here. We have a STaaS workshop to help you dig through the myriad of STaaS offerings available. You can access the workshop info here.

Cyber Resilient Security Solutions

Cyber resilience is a data-centric approach to enterprise data protection and security, keeping your data available and recoverable while detecting and thwarting threats before they can do harm. Help your data gain the strength to fight off even the worst ransomware infections—without being down for the count while your IT recovers from the attack.

What is cyber resilience vs. cybersecurity?

Cybersecurity is generally focused on perimeter protection against cyber threats. Cyber resilience combines data protection and security by taking an inside-out approach to keeping data safe.

Is data security different from data privacy?

Yes, data security relates to how to keep your data safe and secure: defending against internal, external, malicious, and accidental threats. Solutions like user access control, monitoring for anomalies, and integration for recovery all strengthen data security. Data privacy, on the other hand, focuses on how data is collected, used, and stored—often in compliance with specific laws, for example, GDPR and CCPA.

The key pieces that are supported through every component of the NetApp environments are Identify, Protect, Detect, Respond, and Recover. Let WWT show you how this is done within the entire NetApp portfolio, utilizing that data-centric approach. 

How can you leverage WWT?

WWT is your trusted advisor for any of NetApp's Cyber Resilience portfolio. WWT can showcase all NetApp's products around Cyber Resilience in our ATC. This includes showing customers how immutable snapshots work and how you can vault data using SnapVault/SnapLock along with integrating products like Cloud Data Sense and Cloud Insights/Cloud Secure that detect and mitigate cyber-attacks.  Please reach out to your regional WWT account team to learn more.

Stateful Application Management with Astra Control

Astra is a Kubernetes storage and data services portfolio designed for delivering application protection, disaster recovery, mobility, governance, and compliance for any Kubernetes workload.

When we talk about Astra, it is important to note that you must first have Trident. Astra Trident is the CSI driver specific for persistent data connectivity for your Kubernetes workloads. The assumption is that if you are running Kubernetes, backed by NetApp storage offerings, today, then you already have Astra Trident installed. 

Astra Control builds on Trident in two platforms, either a fully managed service that you access via web UI managed by NetApp or a self-managed service where the Astra Control software is installed inside your premises to manage your OnPrem Kubernetes deployments.

Here are the features that were announced:

• Kubernetes applications:
  • Support apps with multiple namespaces
  • Support for stateful Windows applications
  • Expand protection recipes for popular cloud-native applications
• Application data services:
  • Support restores to a different namespace
  • Support resource filters
  • Support resource transforms and app-specific actions outside the containers
• Kubernetes platforms:
  • Red Hat OpenShift on AWS
  • Azure Red Hat OpenShift
  • Azure Kubernetes service on premises
• Kubernetes persistent storage:
  • Azure Premium SSDv2
  • Azure Ultra Disk
  • Amazon RDS
  • Google Cloud SQL
  • Support for VMware CNS for 3rd party CSI provider OnPrem
• Data services integration:
  • SnapMirror Synchronous replication support
  • SnapMirror SVM-DR support
  • NetApp MetroCluster replication support between sites
  • SnapMirror Cloud for efficient backups and catalog
• Enterprise platform features:
  • External OIDC providers
  • Custom role-based access controls (RBAC)
  • Pod security admission
  • Support for private EKS clusters

The list above shows NetApp's commitment to Astra Control long-term, plus with the help from WWT and our application services teams we can drive to a stateful application solution that best fits your needs.

How can you leverage WWT?

Currently, WWT has a working environment of Astra Control Service (a fully-managed platform). We can now demo and show the value of Astra on demand. Please utilize your local WWT account team to schedule a technical session specific to Astra Control.