hamburger icon close icon

Solving File Services Challenges with Native Cloud File Services – Part 3 (Protection, Security, and Performance)

Welcome to the conclusion of our 3-part blog series, examining the major challenges of file services and the solutions that NetApp® Cloud Volumes Service offers. In part 1, we discussed compatibility and continuity. And in part 2, we looked at migration and synchronization between on-premises and cloud environments.
In part 3, we’ll look at three major concerns for cloud file services: data protection, security, and performance.

Protection


File shares require companies to comply with industry-specific data security, data protection, and disaster recovery regulations. NetApp Snapshot™ is the key technology to meet this requirement. Because file shares are a critical part of a business’ operation, these Snapshot copies must be automated to meet stringent RPO, RTO, and backup requirements.

For data protection, there is no solution that better supports a file service than NetApp ONTAP® Snapshot copies. These copies enable Cloud Volumes Service to provide companies with point-in-time backups that can be created instantly and automatically, ensuring maintenance of important data protection benchmarks. This Snapshot technology is also the backbone of the cloning feature that Cloud Volumes Service uses. These instant, non-disruptive data clones can serve a number of purposes, including building test environments and replicating different storage systems.

Security


With shared storage, data security is a major concern. It’s important to make sure that access to the file system is in the user’s control at all times. Ensuring data security at all levels is crucial to preventing losses before they happen.

As a customer, you control your content:
  • You determine where your content will be stored and the geographic region of that volume.
  • All data at rest is encrypted and you can choose to encrypt data in flight.
  • You manage access control to your content by using protocol-specific capabilities such as white listing IP addresses, use of AD or LDAP, and cloud concepts such as VPC and IAM.
  • The data flow is secured by isolating data paths using various technologies on the network layer and the storage layer.
  • NetApp uses dedicated network connections and it does not transit the internet.
  • The data is encrypted at rest, and optionally in flight.


Performance


File services are extremely dependent on the level of performance of the storage environment in use. Some workloads may require a high-level SLA to maintain peak operability and IOPS levels.

Cloud Volumes Service and Azure NetApp Files are built to deliver high performance. The services offer users the ability to spin up 100TB of storage in under 10 seconds. And this performance spans all the biggest clouds: Azure, AWS, and Google Cloud. How? Cloud Volumes Service and Azure NetApp Files are based on NetApp technology, delivering advanced data services and integration directly into both platform and compute services.

Cloud Volumes Service offers three service levels, Standard, Premium, and Extreme, that can be changed on demand. You are guaranteed to find the right performance fit for your workload and adjust as the nature of your application changes. Performance for each Cloud Volume scales with the amount of allocated capacity, so performance is not limited as your dataset size grows. You can also increase or decrease the allocated capacity on the fly as well, without having to worry about adding or deleting underlying nodes.

Experience Cloud Volumes Service and Azure NetApp Files


Cloud Volumes Service and Azure NetApp Files provide rich features that help you to better manage your data with consistently high performance. Register now to access cloud-native file services on the cloud platform of your choice: Azure, AWS, or Google Cloud. Get started and learn how easy it is to manage, protect, and restore your file data.
David Boland, NetApp I Jared Reimer, Cascadeo

NetApp I Jared Reimer, Cascadeo

-