Unlock 10 advanced features of FSx for ONTAP using BlueXP workload factory
Amazon FSx for NetApp ONTAP (FSx for ONTAP) stands out as a storage solution on AWS for the enterprise-grade features and capabilities it brings to the table. As a fully managed service delivering NetApp® ONTAP® powerful storage technology, it provides a reliable, scalable, and high-performing platform that meets the diverse needs of file, block, and object storage for most demanding workloads.
For specialized tasks such as cross-region disaster recovery or configuring self-managed databases (e.g., MS SQL Server), the AWS console and API may not yet fully tap into the ONTAP extensive feature set. While these capabilities exist within ONTAP, accessing them might involve manual CLI commands or custom scripts.
That’s where BlueXP™ workload factory for AWS shines. It unleashes the full potential of ONTAP through an intuitive, unified platform, simplifying management and enhancing functionality. Below, we’ll highlight ten exclusive ways workload factory transforms your experience with FSx for ONTAP, focusing on the outcomes you care about most: reducing costs, preserving business continuity, and accelerating workloads.
These are the FSx for ONTAP management features that we’ll look at in this post:
- Unlock 10 advanced features of FSx for ONTAP using BlueXP workload factory
- What is workload factory?
- Advanced FSx for ONTAP capabilities unlocked by workload factory
- 1. Instant thin backups
- 2. Optimize storage price performance
- 3. Multiprotocol file sharing access
- 4. Effortless configuration oversight
- 5. Disaster recovery and data replications
- 6. Block storage management
- 7. Instant data clones
- 8. Deployment automation
- 9. Capacity management automation
- 10. Protect from ransomware
- This is how you simplify FSx for ONTAP storage management with workload factory
What is workload factory?
BlueXP workload factory transforms how you manage workloads on FSx for ONTAP. Whether you’re running general-purpose file shares or self-managed databases, it automates the entire lifecycle—design, configuration, and ongoing operations—using a workload-centric approach. This means your storage is tailored to your specific needs, not just a generic setup.
Workload factory offers key features to support your most critical workloads:
- Effortless best practices implementation: Workload factory eliminates the need to manually interpret and execute complex documentation. Workload factory automatically applies best practices through simple, guided workflows—making onboarding a breeze and stopping problems before they start.
- A workload-centric approach: Workload factory considers all the resources and code of your most critical workloads—including database instances, GenAI with Bedrock, VMware modernization, as well as general-purpose storage.
- Flexible security operational modes: With different levels of operational modes to support varying security requirements, workload factory offers users flexibility to start from a zero-trust mode with no permissions, and increase permissions gradually as trust grows.
- Accelerated infrastructure-as-code creation: With the Codebox feature, you get instant code snippets for any operation—eliminating tedious manual coding and turbocharging your orchestration workflows.
Want to dive deeper? Read our BlueXP workload factory for AWS: Core concepts and benefits blog.
In addition, workload factory unlocks ten advanced features that translate to smarter, more secure, and automated management of FSx for ONTAP for cloud and DevOps engineers.
Advanced FSx for ONTAP capabilities unlocked by workload factory
Workload Factory simplifies managing FSx for ONTAP by offering a unified interface that provides access to advanced ONTAP features, not available in the AWS console. Through automation built on industry best practices, it streamlines configuration and management tasks, reducing the likelihood of errors and eliminating the need for extensive ONTAP expertise.
Here are some of the FSx for ONTAP optimizing functions you can only get with workload factory:
1. Instant thin backups
NetApp Snapshot™ copies provide an advanced approach to data protection with their thin, in-place technology, which eliminates the inefficiencies of traditional methods. Unlike solutions that require copying data to object storage, incurring delays and additional capacity costs, NetApp Snapshot copies operate seamlessly. This makes them a very efficient and cost-effective choice to keep data safe without adding unnecessary overheads.
On the AWS console for FSx for ONTAP, you are provided with a default Snapshot policy. However, most companies have dedicated protection policies tailored to their unique requirements, which the default option may not fully support. Workload factory addresses this by enabling you to create custom protection policies that suit your specific needs. With workload factory, you can schedule Snapshot creation as frequently as every few minutes and retain up to approximately 1,000 backups per volume, offering the flexibility and control necessary to reach your business’s data protection goals.
2. Optimize storage price performance
Data tiering enables you to move infrequently used data from a performant SSD pool, to a low-cost capacity storage tier, but choosing the right data-tiering policy is key to optimize costs-performance. Workload factory makes it easy by guiding you with clear terms. It walks you through picking the perfect policy for your use case—whether you’re running mission critical databases, or using FSx for ONTAP for a low-cost archive target—saving you time and guesswork.
Learn how FSx for ONTAP helps to reduce costs and increase efficiency.
3. Multiprotocol file sharing access
ONTAP's multiprotocol access is a powerful capability that allows both NFS and CIFS/SMB protocols to access the same data, making it ideal for organizations with mixed Windows and Linux environments. This feature simplifies data sharing and eliminates the need for application refactoring, saving time and resources. However, it is not directly accessible through the AWS console for FSx for ONTAP. Instead, workload factory provides an easy way to enable and use this capability, enhancing data management efficiency without requiring deep technical expertise.
To enable multiprotocol access, in the volume creation wizard, configure both NFS export and CIFS share:
Learn more about multiprotocol access with FSx for ONTAP here.
4. Effortless configuration oversight
Workload factory offers a straightforward and user-friendly interface to oversee your data protection strategy. On the volume screen, within the protection column, you’ll notice clear, intuitive icons that represent essential protection methods: ONTAP Snapshot copies, replications (SnapMirror®), AWS backups, immutable files (SnapLock®), and immutable Snapshot copies (Tamperproof snapshots).
These icons provide an instant visual cue, allowing you to quickly determine if a volume aligns with the defined policy or if there’s a drift from the optimal configuration. This visual system enables you to efficiently identify and resolve issues, so your data protection stay on course.
5. Disaster recovery and data replications
Workload factory empowers you to establish robust disaster recovery (DR) and data replication strategies for FSx for ONTAP. You can create replication relationships between any ONTAP clusters—whether across Availability Zones (AZs), AWS Regions, or hybrid multi-cloud environments.
Workload factory uses NetApp SnapMirror replication technology. This process performs secure, block-level replication that preserves ACLs, transfers only compressed, incremental blocks after reduction, with end-to-end encryption, making it highly cost-effective and performant for files, objects, and blocks.
The replication configurations can be set from workload factory. You can change replication intervals, set longer backup retention periods, choose a more aggressive data-tiering policy, or throttle your connection to minimize impact. Workload factory will lead you through the process and will set smart defaults according to your specific use case, whether if it’s for migration or for data protection.
The replication relationships can be monitored from workload factory, where you can perform Break, Update, Reverse, or Delete the replication relationship operations. Test DR readiness with operations such as resync, pause, or reverse resync, keeping your strategy effective and up to date.
Below, you can see the replication management screen and drop-down menu where all this can be accomplished.
This is much easier than using commands with the ONTAP CLI, which requires ONTAP expertise. Workload factory democratizes these administrative tasks by making them available through a few clicks.
For example, if you want to create a copy in a remote location before any major application changes, it’s just a simple click to initiate a replication update from workload factory so that you have a safe copy of the data in case you want to roll back. Remote copies can be locked with immutable snapshots for creating a cyber vault for protection against ransomware attacks.
Learn how FSx for ONTAP enhances your disaster recovery capabilities here.
6. Block storage management
You can create block devices—i.e., iSCSI LUNs—directly from workload factory. FSx ONTAP block devices are unique as they can be shared across availability zones (AZ), have multi-AZ protection, have larger disks up to 128TB, and to benefit from ONTAP advanced data management capabilities such as storage efficiencies and data replication.
To create a block device, click on the “Create Volume” button. Provide a name and size for the Volume. Select the Access section and change the “File access” default to “Block Access” to create iSCSI volume.
Fill in the iSCSI configuration section; provide an Initiator group name and add the iQN host initiators that will be connecting to the storage. When you’re done, click “Create.”
7. Instant data clones
NetApp FlexClone® technology is a powerful ONTAP capability that allows you to create instant, space-efficient clones of production data without affecting performance or requiring extra storage. Unlike traditional data copying methods, which can be slow and resource-intensive, FlexClone creates writable clones in mere seconds, making it an invaluable tool for developers and database administrators who need quick access to production-like environments without compromising data safety.
However, FlexClone is not directly accessible through the AWS console for FSx for ONTAP, which could make it challenging for users unfamiliar with ONTAP to take advantage of its benefits. This is where workload factory comes in—it simplifies the process, enabling you to use FlexClone effortlessly.
Once created, the clone will appear in the volumes list with a sign indicating that it's a clone, but it is able to operate as any other volume.
Learn how thin cloning with FSx for ONTAP speeds up development and lowers costs.
Important Note: To access production data with zero impact on your live environment, run operations from the secondary file system. This keeps your production data safe while allowing you to perform testing or development tasks effectively.
8. Deployment automation
While defining your FSx for ONTAP file system configuration, workload factory creates an automation template for the deployment that is aligned with best practices for the workload. You can use the code snippet provided in Codebox to create a template for automating these types of deployments through API requests, CloudFormation, or Terraform.
Once all the configuration is reviewed, you can provide the credentials and go ahead with your deployment. The saved templates can be reused for repeatable consistent deployments and operational efficiency.
9. Capacity management automation
After deploying FSx for ONTAP, you’ll need to actively monitor the file system to avoid ever reaching full capacity, which could disrupt your operations. Without automation, this means manually checking utilization and increasing the file system size yourself—a process that takes time and could easily be missed. Fortunately, workload factory enhances day-2 operations with automated capacity management.
Workload factory will continuously monitor capacity utilization. If it hits a specified threshold, the system automatically adjusts the file system size, making it elastic and eliminating the need for timely manual intervention.
Additionally you can create volumes with autogrow for specific volumes and not just the file system as a whole.
10. Protect from ransomware
Workload factory simplifies day-2 protection management operations for FSx for ONTAP by providing streamlined access to advanced security features that protect your data, backups, and access controls.
- Protecting data with immutable files: With the SnapLock feature, workload factory lets you create immutable files that cannot be modified or deleted for a specified retention period. This maintains data integrity and helps meet compliance requirements, all made easy to configure through workload factory’s intuitive interface.
- Safeguarding backups with immutable Snapshot copies: Workload factory lets you secure your backups using immutable Snapshot copies (ONTAP Tamperproof snapshots). These immutable Snapshot copies cannot be changed or deleted, providing robust protection against tampering or deletion by ransomware attacks.
This immutability can also be applied to replication targets, so your secondary copy remains secure. Workload factory simplifies the setup and management of these tamperproof snapshots, enhancing backup reliability by creating a cyber vault for your data.
- Hardening access with NFS export policies: Workload factory allows you to restrict access to volumes through NFS export policies. For example, you can limit access to a volume to specific client IP addresses—a common security best practice that reduces the risk of unauthorized access. Unlike the AWS console, which doesn’t offer this capability, workload factory provides the tools to easily implement this critical access control.
By integrating these powerful security measures—immutable files, immutable Snapshot copies, and NFS export policies—workload factory offers a user-friendly solution to strengthen the security and protection of your FSx for ONTAP environment.
This is how you simplify FSx for ONTAP storage management with workload factory
Workload factory emerges as a valuable tool for FSx for ONTAP users seeking to streamline their storage management. It simplifies deployment and operations while making management more accessible through a workload-centric approach. With optimized configurations and enhanced operational efficiency, workload factory offers unique capabilities not found in other solutions for FSx for ONTAP deployments.
Ready to unlock the full potential of your FSx for ONTAP environment and simplify workload management?, learn more about BlueXP workload factory here or get started now.