Intro
As we get this year kicked off, let's revisit some of the reasons so many customers choose NetApp and VMware. We are ramping up loads of new content for the new year, but first, this blog series highlights the advantages of hybrid multicloud environments powered by NetApp and VMware. Throughout the series, we will explore these benefits with supporting resources and technical examples to help you better understand each topic.
This blog focuses on the Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) benefits gained when leveraging NetApp and VMware. Within this blog, we will provide valuable tips and tricks for lowering your TCO when using NetApp and VMware. Additionally, we will review a step-by-step walkthrough of the VMware Cloud on AWS (VMC) + Amazon FSx for NetApp ONTAP TCO calculator as an example.
The Setup
When it comes to vSphere storage models, there are numerous choices available for datastore and guest-connected storage. With such a wide range of options, it can be overwhelming deciding the suitable protocol, media type or location to satisfy your storage needs. Therefore, it is important to choose a storage vendor that provides you with the most flexibility without adding unnecessary complexity.
Additionally, choosing a storage vendor that enables independent scaling of resources, both on-premises and in the public cloud, is crucial. By scaling storage and compute independently, you optimize your environment’s size and can adapt as the business needs change.
TCO Savings
NetApp has a history of allowing you to right-size your VMware infrastructure in an optimal manner. NetApp helps customers minimize resource waste and avoid overprovisioning, which can lead to increased costs. Assessments can help determine requirements and for new environments, a forward sizing approach can be recommended.
Beyond right sizing an environment, customers experience benefits when deploying workloads on VMware and NetApp through our storage efficiencies. These efficiencies empower you to accomplish more with fewer resources, maximizing the value of your investment. NetApp has a proven track record this space, introducing groundbreaking features like Snapshot copies and FlexClone to the market. Furthermore, inline capabilities such as deduplication, compression, and compaction help squeeze the most out of your resources.
Note: Consult product documentation for supported features.
Some helpful sizing / TCO resources are as follows:
- Custom workload sizing for ONTAP systems, Cloud Volumes ONTAP and StorageGRID using Fusion
- TCO calculator for VMware Cloud on AWS and Amazon FSx for NetApp ONTAP with external NFS datastores
- TCO calculator for Azure VMware Solution with Azure NetApp Files with external NFS datastores
- TCO calculator for Google Cloud VMware Engine and Cloud Volume Service
The Example: TCO savings with VMC + Amazon FSx for NetApp ONTAP
In this walkthrough, we will calculate the impact of external NFS datastores with VMC, demonstrating TCO savings with NetApp and VMware.
The TCO estimator leverages VMware sizer APIs to initiate a POST request, transmitting the input payload to the VMC sizer. The response obtained from the sizer provides recommendations based on the provided inputs. This information is subsequently parsed, and the suggested number of hosts is used to calculate the overall total cost of ownership.
Note: In the example below, we are demonstrating a manual sizing exercise, using the default inputs.
1. Get started with your TCO exercise by navigating to the publicly available address displayed above.
2. Select the region.
3. Select the sizer input type. For this walkthrough, we will choose a manual sizing, allowing you to enter parameters that closely match your VM workload needs.
4. Enter the relevant input parameters:
- Total number of VMs
- vCPU per Physical Core
- vCPU per VM
- vRAM per VM
- Storage utilized per VM
5. Optionally, modify relevant advanced options. These could include:
- CPU utilization
- Memory utilization
- Target RAM ration
- Dedupe factor
- Compression ration
- IOPS per VM
- I/O type
- I/O size
- I/O ratio
6. Enter the Amazon FSx for NetApp ONTAP Deployment type.
Note: Most deployments leverage a Single Availability Zone.
7. Define the workload profile. The default estimate is 20% will be database and 80% will be generic VMs.
8. Enter the percentage of data on SSDs.
9. Enter the provisioned SSD IOPS based on the IOPs required.
10. Enter estimated efficiency gains from compression and deduplication.
11. Enter the throughput capacity.
12. Enter the relevant Disaster Recovery Profile details:
- Modify the percentage of data on SSD as needed. The recommendation is to keep 50% on SSD and use the Auto tiering policy.
- Modify savings from compression + deduplication as needed. The default is 65% for generic VM workload.
- Modify the SSD IOPs based on the IOPs required.
- Modify the throughput capacity as needed.
13. Enter the Transit Gateway (TGW) considerations:
- Select whether the tool will consider TGW costs. For single AZ deployments of Amazon FSx for NetApp ONTAP, VPC peering is used. In this scenario, TGW calculations are disabled.
- For Mult AZ deployments, data flows from the datastore mounted on the ESXi host within the VMC SDDC via VMware Transit Connect.
- If you need to leverage TGW, the estimator allows you to auto-calculate those costs or input manually. When TGW is enabled, the estimator considers the change rate to be 20% of the total Amazon FSx for NetApp ONTAP capacity.
14. Select whether you want the following savings options:
- Pay as you go
- 1-year reserved instance
- 3-year reserved instance
15. Click submit to complete the calculator exercise.
The calculator produces 3 easy to read tables to help you analyze your potential TCO savings.
- The first table compares the number of hosts needed to satisfy the storage requirements when using only vSAN versus using NFS datastores with Amazon FSx for NetApp ONTAP.
- The second table shows the Amazon FSx for NetApp ONTAP storage requirements to compliment the number of VMC nodes required to satisfy the compute requirements.
- In the final table, we review the TCO savings of using Amazon FSx for NetApp ONTAP to satisfy the storage capacity required.
The Wrap-up
This blog covered how TCO savings can be achieved when using VMware and NetApp. The estimators provide comprehensive guidance for the impact of workloads on storage requirements. Regardless of the platform, savings can be achieved for your NetApp VMware hybrid multicloud through independent scaling of compute and storage resources.
For more information see the NetApp solutions documentation for VMware:
