topic AWS Outposts vs Flexpod in ONTAP Discussions

AWS Outposts vs Flexpod

Brandonl — Wed, 04 Jun 2025 10:16:44 GMT

Hi All,

One of my customers is considering replacing all of their Flexpods with AWS Outposts. They see AWS Outposts as an extension of AWS where they are doing a lot of their development. Do we have any competitive information on AWS Outposts (software stack, application support, performance, data protection) of AWS Outposts compared to Flexpod?

Thank you in advance!

Re: AWS Outposts vs Flexpod

Ontapforrum — Tue, 17 Aug 2021 13:42:17 GMT

I am not an expert on the two subjects to even suggest anything here but it's a very good question and I couldn't stop thinking about it. So I thought may be I could point to some Kbs here that I have seen on this subject.

There are a few limitations to point out wrt AWS outpost:
• Only single node Cloud Volumes ONTAP systems are supported at this time.
• The EC2 instances that you can use with Cloud Volumes ONTAP are limited to what’s available in your
Outpost
• Only General Purpose SSDs (gp2) are supported at this time.

AWS Outpost limitations in Ontap 9.1.1:
http://docs.netapp.com/us-en/cloud-volumes-ontap/pdfs/pages/reference_limitations_aws_991.pdf

AWS outpost & netapp:
https://cloud.netapp.com/blog/aws-cvo-blg-netapp-achieves-aws-outposts-ready-designation
https://docs.netapp.com/us-en/cloud-volumes-ontap/reference_limitations_991.html#unsupported-ontap-features

AWS compute, storage, database, and other services run locally on Outposts. Outposts is available as a 42U rack that can scale from 1 rack to 96 racks to create pools of compute and storage capacity. Coming in 2021, Outposts will be available in two smaller form factors, 1U and 2U rack-mountable servers for locations with limited space or capacity requirements.

https://aws.amazon.com/outposts/

I guess, when it comes to Flexpod we are talking about compute/storage/network all stacked in a pod with pre-configured capability and so will the AWS outpost-racks will try to mimic. However, I think the key important differentiator could be that the 'flexpod' at your premise is still a on-premise well known ONTAP. However, in AWS it's all about the CVO (Single or HA Pair). I am guessing, more than the performance it may be down to the high availability of CVO (HA Pair) to ensure the uptime of mission-critical applications in the AWS outpost from "data serving function" perspective.

CommVault has a good post around the data protection on AWS outpost:
Reference Architecture of AWS Outposts:
https://documentation.commvault.com/v11/essential/130468_reference_architecture_of_aws_outposts.html

Re: AWS Outposts vs Flexpod

Brandonl — Tue, 17 Aug 2021 20:16:02 GMT

So CVO wouldn't be a play in this instance. They tested CVO and it wasn't a great for the workloads. This is a hardware to hardware comparison.

Re: AWS Outposts vs Flexpod

Ontapforrum — Tue, 17 Aug 2021 21:03:37 GMT

hmm...ok. Interesting to know that. Hoping to see more first hand feedback around CVOs performance running in Outpost. Apart from that I don't think there is any useful lab information around it or use cases.

Re: AWS Outposts vs Flexpod

Brandonl — Fri, 20 Aug 2021 04:06:51 GMT

Bumping this up.. it looks like Pure may have integrations with Outpost. Do we have anything of the sort coming? Or competitive documentation against their stack?

https://blocksandfiles.com/2020/12/21/aws-shipping-trojan-horses-into-enterprise-data-centres/