NetApp Volumes expedites the deployment of various cloud-based applications through the rapid provisioning of shared file services and offers a rich set of storage management features. Primary use cases include file services, DevOps, and databases.
File services
NetApp Volumes is a fault-tolerant, scalable storage platform for creating a cloud-based file system that you can access with standard NFS or SMB protocols. With its high performance capabilities, NetApp Volumes delivers enterprise-level network-attached storage solutions on Google Cloud that are similar to an on-premises experience, which include the following complete range of supporting features:
Read-only and read-write client access control
Connections over both NFSv3 and NFSv4.1 protocols
Active Directory (AD) integration and SMB connections
You can use file services as you migrate workloads or create new applications in Google Cloud. For example, you can use an SMB share to support individual user or group file sharing across Windows clients. You can also use SMB share to support file and profile sharing for virtual desktops. Alternatively, you can use NFS or SMB volumes to share files between your applications, or as a backup destination.
NetApp Volumes helps you migrate existing workloads to Google Cloud and provides you with a platform to develop and maintain a file storage solution in the cloud, which reduces hardware, procurement time, cooling, power use, and minimizes physical space.
Enterprise applications
You can rehost your applications which are deployed on-premises to NetApp Volumes. NetApp Volumes continues to preserve their core capabilities for file storage workflows. This includes a subset of enterprise applications that typically don't require refactoring.
By using NetApp Volumes, you can create fully managed NFS shares for Linux-based applications and SMB shares for Windows-based applications in seconds. You can scale them up or down for capacity and performance without any impact on your workflows or users.
You can preserve application service delivery life cycles with quick snapshots and copies for development, testing, and staging environments, which further accelerates production releases and minimizes lead times.
Google Cloud VMware Engine storage
Google Cloud supports VMware vSphere workloads with Google Cloud VMware Engine. Private clouds built with Google Cloud VMware Engine often need additional storage. This additional storage is used for either direct attachment to a single VM, or as datastores for multiple VMs with large storage requirements.
NetApp Volumes can be attached to a VM's guest operating system using either SMB or NFS protocols. These volumes can be used for file sharing across different applications running in either Compute Engine or Google Cloud VMware Engine. They can also be used for user and group file sharing in virtual desktop environments.
When you need large amounts of storage, you can use NetApp Volumes as datastores with Google Cloud VMware Engine hosts. NetApp Volumes as datastores can be more cost-effective than adding Google Cloud VMware Engine nodes, reducing the overall solution cost.
NetApp Volumes NFSv3 volumes let you support more storage in a cost-efficient manner and include NetApp Volumes rich set of data management features to protect your data such as snapshot copies, volume replication, and backup.
For more information, see Using NFS volume as vSphere datastore hosted by Google Cloud NetApp Volumes.
Persistent storage for stateful Google Kubernetes Engine applications
NetApp Volumes provides fast, reliable, and persistent storage for your stateful applications that run on Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE) or other self-managed Kubernetes distributions running in Google Cloud.
Most containerized enterprise applications have state and configuration data that need to be backed by persistent storage. Persistent storage allows your application state and configuration data to remain accessible through rapid container creation and destruction during various application execution sequences such as upgrades, scaling, and rollbacks. Astra Trident is a Container Storage Interface (CSI) compliant orchestrator that integrates with Kubernetes to provide:
Dynamic provisioning
Consumption
Management of persistent volumes with stateful containerized applications using NetApp Volumes
Data protection with CSI snapshots
Although it is not mandatory, Astra Trident simplifies the deployment and use of stateful applications with Kubernetes.
GKE lets you build, deploy, manage, and run containerized applications. GKE accelerates the development and deployment of highly portable applications through a declarative, self-healing, autoscaling platform. For more information, see GKE documentation on how to deploy a stateful application.
Google Cloud NetApp Volumes provides persistent storage for Kubernetes stateful applications with the following characteristics:
Persistent volumes: provides persistent storage outside the Kubernetes cluster for your Kubernetes applications requiring shared access to storage with read-write-many (RWX) access mode. You can mount persistent volumes as read-write by many nodes at once using the RWX access mode. You can also use the read-write-once (RWO), read-only-many (ROX), or the read-write-once-pod (RWOP) access modes with NetApp Volumes for applications that require those access modes.
Provisioned persistent volumes: uses dynamically and statically provisioned Kubernetes persistent volumes (PV).
Persistent volumes expansion: stateful applications use Kubernetes PVs. NetApp Volumes lets you expand an existing PV after creation.
Label storage volumes: labels storage volumes for better identification and management in multi-cluster environments.
Protect volumes: it is important to provide data protection and recovery in case of a disaster. NetApp Volumes supports customer initiated snapshots and backup schedules to protect the data in a persistent volume.
Access to persistent storage through NFSv3 and NFSv4.1: supports the volume creation and access to persistent storage for Kubernetes applications with NFSv3 and NFSv4.1 using the Astra Trident CSI driver. NetApp Volumes also supports the creation of volume subdirectories and access using the NFS Container Storage Interface (CSI) driver.
Access to persistent storage through SMB: supports the creation of volume subdirectories and access to persistent storage through SMB using the SMB Container Storage Interface (CSI) driver.
Databases
You can use NetApp Volumes to quickly access primary databases or snapshot copies of open source or enterprise databases.
NetApp Volumes supports different levels of performance for each file system. Database administrators can allocate individual storage pools for hot or cold data, which allows them to control the use of high-performance and high-capacity storage. You can use NetApp Volumes to ensure file systems are available and resilient against system failures, which simplifies the setup for reliable database services in the cloud.
What's next
Review the NetApp Volumes product overview.