SnapMirror Cloud ONTAP 9.9 and higher

[sanbre]

Hi,

we want to get rid of a altavault solution that's the target for snapmirror replications from a FAS2750.

Now, there's a cloud connect option to a bucket in ONTAP 9.9.X GUI and higher but will it work?

Can i do SnapMirrors to a StorageGRID bucket ONTAP native?  The manual is not very clear about it, is there a maximum bucketsize and so on..... Do i need optional licenses and are they free?

Thanks in advance!

[Cecile · Accepted solution]

Hi @sanbre - Cloud Backup Service is the natural replace for AltaVault and functions to orchestrate the SnapMirror Cloud APIs that will direct your ONTAP to perform the backup and restore operations. Cloud Backup Service is the only additional license required if you already have SnapMirror on the FAS2750 volumes.  We offer a month of unlimited backups for free to test CBS in your environment.  Supported destinations do include StorageGRID as well as object storage in AWS S3, Azure Blob, and GCP.  The general requirements for your environment are below, with doc link as well:

• Your on-premises cluster is running ONTAP 9.7p5 and above 
•  The cluster has a SnapMirror license — it is included as part of the PREM or Data Protection bundle  

• The cluster must have the required network connections to StorageGRID and to the Connector.

• You have a Connector installed on your premises.

  • Networking for the Connector enables an outbound HTTPS connection to the ONTAP cluster and to StorageGRID.

• You have purchased and activated a Cloud Backup BYOL license from NetApp.

• Your StorageGRID has version 10.3 or later with access keys that have S3 permissions.

• https://docs.netapp.com/us-en/occm/task_backup_onprem_private_cloud.html

With regards to limitations, your connectivity and bandwidth are likely the biggest contributing factors to that but we can get you more detailed information if you would like for me to connect you with your NetApp account team?  I am double checking on my end for more detailed info and will check back after the weekend to see if further clarification needed.  Or perhaps someone else will chime in here before I return...

[Tudor]

Good overview of Cloud Manager above. Let me clarify a few points about SnapMirror Cloud. SM-C provides replication of snapshots from ONTAP to S3-compliant object storage. SM-C technology is a series of APIs and requires an orchestration app. Several 3rd party backup apps provide support for SM-C to provide orchestration of backup workflows, and System Manager 9.9.1+ also orchestrates on-prem ONTAP to StorageGRID and ONTAP S3 endpoints – but does not support public S3 targets. SM-C is not free and does require an ONTAP end user license for workflows to StorageGRID / ONTAP S3. NetApp’s Cloud Manager utilizes SM-C technology, but is sold as a Cloud Backup service and does not require SM-C end user license. Also there are some other differences between SM-C and AltaVault:

AltaVault receives NFS, SMBv3 and NDMP data transfers then translates backup data into S3 objects and replicates to many S3-compliant endpoints. SM-C replicates ONTAP snapshots (not native file data) and converts into S3 objects. Backups using SM-C will use a different data format than AltaVault.

HTH