Enterprise organizations have been storing enterprise file‑based data for decades. Amazon Web Services (AWS) has introduced a range of AI and analytics services that unlock new ways to extract insights, automate decisions, and build differentiated applications. There is value in making on-premises file data available to these services, in terms of unlocking deeper insights. However, implementing this effectively requires a more nuanced approach. When line of business (LOB) teams ask their storage colleagues to use existing file datasets, they often aren't aware that these services use Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3) as their underlying storage infrastructure, and that the file data will need to be copied to this storage. This introduces new governance challenges, and responsibility for addressing those requirements lands squarely with the storage team, who need to turn a simple request to “use the data” into a solution that’s secure, auditable, and defensible over time. In this post, we look at a “governance‑first” approach that gives application and analytics teams a compliant path for allowing Amazon S3‑based services to consume file data without the added governance hassle, while keeping auditability and control front and center. ... View more

Overview The NetApp Cyber Resilience Suite delivers comprehensive recovery assurance against any disruption—whether caused by human error, infrastructure failure, or cyberattack. Built on three complementary pillars—Backup & Recovery, Ransomware Resilience, and Disaster Recovery—the suite empowers enterprises to safeguard their most critical data with confidence. In this blog, we spotlight NetApp Backup & Recovery, the next evolution in NetApp’s data protection journey. Expanding beyond SnapCenter, it supports a broader range of workloads and modern deployment models. Designed for unified, scalable, and future‑ready protection, it secures mission‑critical environments including NAS volumes, Kubernetes, OpenShift, VMware, Hyper‑V, KVM, Microsoft SQL Server, and Oracle databases. With active innovation, simplified workflows, built‑in 3‑2‑1 backup compliance, and enhanced cyber resilience, NetApp Backup & Recovery helps enterprises move beyond the limitations of legacy frameworks. It enables organizations to embrace a next‑generation data protection strategy with confidence. Let’s explore the latest features that were released this month for VMware protection.   Seamless Integration with the New ASA Platform The introduction of support for NetApp’s All SAN Array (ASA) platform marks a significant milestone in VMware data protection. ASA is celebrated for its high-performance capabilities, making it the go-to choice for enterprises managing demanding SAN workloads. With NetApp’s Backup and Recovery suite now fully compatible with ASA, organizations can: Effortlessly back up VMware datastores and virtual machines (VMs) across the ASA platform. Restore entire VMs or individual virtual disks with precision. Recover specific files or folders, saving time and storage space by avoiding full VM restores. This integration ensures that enterprises leveraging ASA can enjoy unparalleled efficiency and flexibility in protecting their VMware environments.   Automating Protection with Tag-Based Policies Managing thousands of VMs across an enterprise can quickly become overwhelming, especially when it comes to ensuring consistent protection. NetApp’s tag-based protection simplifies this challenge by introducing automation into data protection strategies. Administrators can now create policies that automatically apply protection rules based on predefined VM tags. Why this matters: Scale: Protect hundreds of VMs and datastores with a single tag selection instead of managing individual resources. Dynamic coverage: Newly tagged VMs/datastores are automatically discovered and included in future backups without editing protection groups. Reduced operational error: Eliminates manual per-VM/per-datastore selection, lowering the chance of missed or incorrectly protected resources. Familiar model: Reuses existing vSphere tag taxonomy that admins already maintain and understand. Centralized visibility: A dedicated Tags inventory tab surfaces protection status, associated policies, and protection groups per tag. Tag-based protection is a game-changer for enterprises looking to reduce complexity and improve operational agility.   Granular File/ Folder Recovery for Linux & Windows Systems Granular file and folder recovery in VMware allows you to restore individual files, directories, or folders (depending on the OS) directly from VM / datastore backups without recovering the entire virtual machine. Key Benefits: Quick & efficient Data Retrieval: Restore specific files or folders without a full VM recovery, significantly saving storage space by leveraging FlexClone technology for live mount. Minimized Downtime: Retrieve critical data in minutes, ensuring business continuity. Flexibility with Restore to Alternate location/ Storage Disaster recovery is all about flexibility, and NetApp backup and recovery’s new restore-to-alternate-storage feature delivers just that. This capability allows organizations to restore VMs to different vCenter, ESX Host, and storage systems, providing greater control and adaptability during recovery scenarios. Key Advantages: Disaster Recovery Preparedness: Restore backups to alternate storage systems in case of primary and secondary storage failure or data center disruptions. Testing and Validation: Use alternate location for testing purposes without impacting production environments. This feature empowers organizations to build resilient disaster recovery strategies that can adapt to unexpected challenges.   Support for Amazon Elastic VMware service Customers running VMware workloads on Amazon EVS backed by FSxN datastores can now protect both their VMs and datastores with NetApp Backup & Recovery. This ensures enterprise‑grade backup, recovery, and cyber resilience for hybrid cloud VMware environments. Key Benefits Unified Protection: Backup both VMs and datastores presented via FSxN. Cloud‑Native Integration: Seamless with AWS EVS and FSxN, leveraging NetApp’s native snapshot and SnapMirror technologies. Granular Recovery: Restore entire VMs or drill down to files/folders inside VM backups. Cyber Resilience: Immutable snapshots and 3‑2‑1 backup strategy protect against ransomware. Operational Simplicity: Same workflows as on‑premises VMware, extended to AWS EVS.   Conclusion: Elevate Your VMware Protection Strategy Data is the backbone of business success, and protecting VMware environments is no longer optional. Yet as enterprises expand their virtualized workloads, VMware licensing costs continue to climb. Every additional core, socket, or VM protected without optimization drives up expenses. NetApp Backup & Recovery helps organizations break this cycle by reducing total cost of ownership. With built‑in technologies — Snapshot, SnapMirror, FlexClone, and SnapDiff — combined with granular VM recovery and seamless hybrid cloud integration, customers eliminate VM sprawl, cut storage overhead, and avoid costly licensing tiers. The outcome: faster recovery, lower infrastructure spend, and a smarter, more efficient way to safeguard VMware workloads without inflating licensing costs.   Next Steps For tailored solutions that fit your business needs, connect with your NetApp representative. You can also explore on your own with a 30‑day free trial — offering unlimited capacity and full capabilities — by visiting the NetApp console URL at console.netapp.com and navigating to Protection → Backup and Recovery. For any assistance, reach us at [email protected]. In addition, we are running an exclusive campaign for existing SnapCenter customers, offering comprehensive transition support and special discounts when moving to NetApp Backup & Recovery. Register here to avail this benefit NetApp Cyber Resilience & Data Protection Program - Register your interest now!! – Fill out the form ... View more

NetApp Trident Protect introduces powerful enhancements for safeguarding virtual machines (VMs) running on OpenShift Virtualization or KubeVirt. These updates enable seamless backup and restore operations, offering two flexible methods to define VM protection: by namespace or by targeting specific VMs using the new includedVirtualMachines field. With dynamic protection based on label selectors, users can easily adapt protection policies as VMs are added or modified.   The latest features also support selective VM restores, allowing granular recovery of individual VMs from backups or snapshots, minimizing downtime and resource usage. Practical examples demonstrate protection setup, snapshot creation, and dynamic VM management using both CLI commands and YAML manifests.   These advancements solidify Trident Protect as a robust, efficient solution for managing virtual environments. For users seeking advanced capabilities like incremental backups, change block tracking, and a graphical interface, NetApp Backup and Restore for Kubernetes offers an even more comprehensive solution. Sign up for a free trial today via the NetApp Console! ... View more

Storage assessments are often overlooked in cloud migration planning, despite their significant impact on performance, cost, and operational efficiency. Discover why a data-driven storage assessment should be a foundational step in your AWS migration strategy and how Amazon FSx for NetApp ONTAP can support your modernization journey. ... View more

Modern virtualization strategies are evolving rapidly. As organizations embrace Red Hat OpenShift Virtualization as a strategic platform for running both their virtual machines (VMs) and containers, one challenge consistently rises to the top - how to migrate at scale without adding complexity, risk and extended business downtime?   That's where the combined power and native integration of NetApp Shift Toolkit, NetApp Trident CSI, and Red Hat’s migration toolkit for virtualization (MTV) come in.   Available since v2.9.4, Shift Toolkit based storage offloading for migration has already supported many successful customer migrations. In fact, together we helped a customer reduce its migration timeline for a 40TB VM from 40 hours to 30 minutes. Building on that success, the new native integration enhances the experience by bringing end-to-end migration management into the MTV console, reducing operational overhead and creating a more cohesive workflow.   Today, we're excited to announce the support of NetApp Shift Toolkit with Red Hat MTV, enabling organizations to accelerate VM migrations from their current virtualization environments to Red Hat OpenShift Virtualization with a simplified, storage-aware, and highly automated workflow. Built on proven ONTAP technology and tightly integrated with Trident CSI and Red Hat MTV workflows, this solution helps customers move faster while taking full advantage of their existing NetApp storage investments.   What makes this integration particularly compelling is that migrations can be initiated directly from the Red Hat MTV console, while seamlessly leveraging Shift Toolkit for fast disk conversions. By leveraging NetApp ONTAP FlexClone technology, the solution creates space-efficient storage clones rather than full replicated copies. This eliminates the need for additional storage capacity for migration staging, addressing a key challenge in large-scale virtualization migrations while reducing cost and operational complexity. By combining ONTAP’s storage efficiencies with NetApp Shift Toolkit’s intelligent conversion capabilities, organizations can reduce migration overhead, minimize downtime, and accelerate their move to Red Hat OpenShift Virtualization with lower cost and complexity.   Why This Matters For many organizations, the migration itself isn't the biggest challenge, it's the time spent copying the data, coordinating storage, and managing complex operational workflows. Traditional migration approaches often rely on large-scale data copies, manual intervention, and storage reconfiguration. The result is longer migration windows and increased operational overhead.   With this new integration: Red Hat MTV orchestrates migration planning, execution and VM provisioning. NetApp Trident CSI handles intelligent storage provisioning. NetApp Shift Toolkit performs rapid disk conversion and storage aware migration operations.   Together, this integration creates an end-to-end migration experience designed to reduce complexity, streamline execution, and significantly accelerate the journey to Red Hat OpenShift Virtualization   How the Architecture Works The integration introduces an elegant workflow between Red Hat MTV, NetApp Trident and the NetApp Shift Toolkit. When a migration plan is initiated: MTV creates and manages the migration workflow. Persistent volume claims (PVC) requests are generated as part of the migration process. NetApp Trident CSI receives these requests and evaluates migration specific annotations and labels. Eligible requests are handled through the NetApp Shift Toolkit Listener. The NetApp Shift Toolkit performs the required disk conversion operations and Red Hat MTV brings up the workload VMs online in Red Hat OpenShift Virtualization. The result is a highly automated migration pipeline that converts TBs of disk data, large number of VMs in parallel, all with ONTAP intelligence.   Built for Enterprise-Scale Migrations The solution has been designed specifically for organizations migrating business critical VM workloads into Red Hat OpenShift environments.   Prerequisites Before deployment, ensure the following software components are installed and operational: NetApp Trident CSI 26.06 or later  Red Hat MTV 2.12 or later Red Hat OpenShift Virtualization 4.20 or later Storage Class created and labeled specifically for Shift Toolkit usage   Deployment Overview Getting started is straightforward and follows a simple sequence of steps. Download the latest version of the Shift installer from NetApp Support Site Toolchest. The Shift installer package contains everything required to deploy the Shift operator and install Shift. Extract the package and set up a dedicated namespace for the Shift operator and create the credentials needed for secure API access. Create the Shift Namespace Deploy a dedicated namespace for Shift Toolkit services. oc create namespace shift Configure Shift Credentials Create the shift-credentials secret that will be consumed by both the NetApp Shift Toolkit service and the Shift Toolkit Listener. oc create secret generic shift-credentials -n shift --from-literal=username=admin --from-literal=password='<password>' Enable Secure Communication Deploy TLS certificates and the required CA bundle to establish secure communication between services. oc create configmap shift-toolkit-service-server-crt -n shift --from-file=server.cert=server.cer oc create configmap shift-toolkit-service-server-key -n shift --from-file=server.key=server.key This configuration allows the listener to validate the NetApp Shift Toolkit service certificate and maintain secure service to service communication. Provision Persistent Storage Create the persistent volumes required for Shift database storage and operational log storage oc apply -f deploy/filedb-pvc.yaml oc apply -f deploy/logs-pvc.yaml These volumes should utilize an appropriate storage class. Deploy the bundle Apply the deployment bundle: oc apply -f deploy/bundle.yaml The deployment bundle installs: Shift Toolkit service Shift Toolkit Listener All within the dedicated Shift namespace.   Designed for Connected and Disconnected Environments Many enterprise Red Hat OpenShift deployments operate in restricted or air-gapped environments where internet connectivity isn't available. The NetApp Shift Toolkit deployment supports these scenarios through a fully disconnected installation model. Administrators can: Import container images into the Red Hat OpenShift internal registry Use skopeo to load images from the tar files Update deployment manifests to reference the internal registry Deploy the entire solution without requiring access to external image repositories Key Benefits The combination of NetApp Shift Toolkit, NetApp Trident, and Red Hat MTV delivers tangible advantages for modernization initiatives: Faster migration execution Reduced migration downtime Automated storage provisioning through Trident CSI Secure TLS enabled service communication Support for disconnected OpenShift deployments Simplified, policy driven migration workflows Better utilization of existing NetApp ONTAP infrastructure Scalable migration operations from any storage via svmotion   Getting Started Whether you're evaluating Red Hat OpenShift Virtualization or already planning a large-scale migration from your current hypervisor, this integration provides a powerful framework for moving workloads quickly and efficiently. For complete deployment guidance, operational requirements, security configuration details, and detailed installation procedures, see Deploy NetApp Shift Toolkit Operator   With Red Hat MTV orchestrating the migration, NetApp Trident intelligently provisioning storage, and NetApp Shift Toolkit accelerating VM conversion and movement, organizations can confidently modernize their virtualization platforms while minimizing disruption and maximizing the value of their NetApp infrastructure.   ... View more