NetApp has announced general availability of its OnTap Storage for VMware Cloud on AWS. According to NetApp, this will help customers build 20-50% savings in TCO By being able to scale Cloud storage independently of the calculation.
The offering is Amazon FSx for NetApp Ontap (FSxN) is certified and supported as a supplemental datastore for VMware Cloud on AWS. NetApp says it is the first third-party storage system for such workloads on AWS.
The step is its manifestation netapp And VMware’s concept of multicloud operations, where customers are able to run applications in their own datacenters, but move enterprise workloads to potentially multiple clouds.
FSxN is NetApp OnTap storage in the AWS cloud, including SSDs and file access via SMB and NFS protocols as well as blocks iSCSI.
FSxN was for VMware Cloud Private preview in early 2022, then public preview before this GA launch.
For other hyperscaler clouds, it is currently in public preview with Microsoft Azure and private preview with Google Cloud Platform.
Phil BrothertonNetApp’s vice-president of solutions and alliances was asked when these would typically be available.
“I can’t tell you,” she said. “It’s up to Microsoft and Google, as Amazon and VMware decided, because support starts with them.”
Brotherton explained how the offering will help customers achieve a lower TCO for their VMware cloud deployments. “That’s because it’s possible to scale the amount of storage,” he said.
“The source is architecture. Previously, when you scaled storage and compute, it was at the same rate. When you separate compute and storage to scale independently, you can save on storage, but it varies depending on how heavy the storage load is.”
But how many NetApp customers are seeing multicloud work? While the concept may conjure up customer applications working seamlessly between multiple on-site and cloud locations, most customers deploy a cloud main as one site, with others used for testing.
How much can customers use something like FSxN for VMware across three hyperscalers?
“It can work out of three,” Brotherton said. “But there is still friction. Customers want the flexibility to choose which cloud, but most customers extend their datacenter to a cloud. Which one they choose varies, and they will often test two at a time during prototyping. VMware estimates that 70% of its customers use other clouds.”
What frictions does Brotherton talk about in working with multicloud?
“Networking and Cost management, initially,” he said. “You can set up jobs across different hyperscalers – and people do because of availability. But in a hyperscaler, cost efficiency is hard and it’s not profitable, and that’s how most people make their decisions: Is it straightforward? Is it affordable?
VMware has offered a cloud version of its vSphere virtualization in three major public clouds for several years. These are VMware Cloud on AWS, Azure VMware Solutions and Google Cloud VMware Engine. Where it includes VMware vSAN storage, it is not independently scalable.