Welcome to "Run your Most Demanding File Workloads
with Azure NetApp Files."
I'm Andrew Chen, the Product Management Leader
for Azure NetApp Files, and it's my pleasure to be here.
Let's dive in.
The Azure Storage portfolio is durable,
highly available and massively scalable.
Azure offers a broad spectrum of products
covering all major categories in storage,
including Block, Object and File storage.
And most notably the focus of our talk,
Azure NetApp Files or ANF.
By way of context, what were the motivations
for building Azure NetApp Files?
Some key insights from the analyst data that we have here.
First, the majority of Enterprise workloads
are still on-premises,
and two, a significant portion of these workloads
are running on file-based storage,
but there've been three issues
that have traditionally prevented Enterprises
from moving to the Cloud.
One, the change to Cloud,
plus the change to replatform their applications
is too much transformation at one time.
Two, the administrative and operational burden
of managing IS file servers is undesirable.
Customers want a fully managed storage service.
And three, customers are unable or unwilling
to give up key capabilities that they've grown dependent on
over the years.
And so it was with these challenges in mind
that we partnered together with NetApp
to create Azure NetApp Files.
ANF is an Azure first party service
built in deep partnership with NetApp,
sold and supported by Microsoft.
Some important takeaways.
One Azure NetApp Files is a true first party service,
not a marketplace offering.
One purchase provides all the necessary components.
There are no separate licenses, support agreements
or add-ons from any additional vendors required.
ANF appears as just another item on your Azure bill.
Two, your existing Azure support agreements
also apply to ANF, and Azure takes first call for support.
Next Azure NetApp Files is a fully managed Cloud service.
You can deploy powerful Enterprise storage within minutes
without needing to perform any storage administrative tasks
or worrying about
any of the underlying infrastructure management.
Azure NetApp Files is built using the power of data on tap,
the world's number one storage OS,
deeply and uniquely integrated into Azure,
delivering combined capabilities
including high performance,
including sub-millisecond minimum latency,
broad protocol support, high availability,
efficient and performant data protection
and data management features.
Finally, security is critically important
in top tier Enterprise workloads,
and we offer significant capabilities in this area,
including FIPS 140-2 compliant data encryption at rest,
role-based access control and network access control lists.
So let's spend a few moments
and see how Azure NetApp Files was built.
ANF is singularly unique in the industry.
There is no combination of Enterprise storage technology
and public Cloud that is more deeply integrated
or performing.
Other offerings in the market
may appear cosmetically similar, but what we've built here
is far superior, which is why we offer it
under the Microsoft brand.
ANF is physically hosted inside of Azure's data centers
and operates within Azure security boundaries
and fully to Azure principles.
ANF truly Enterprise grade security,
which is proven by the fact that ANF is offered
in Azure government regions
and has achieved key certifications,
including US FedRAMP High, IL-4, IL-5, High Trust,
iRAP, and PCI DSS.
The underlying architecture and experience
are also very much Azure consistent.
You can perform control plane functions
through all typical means of access,
including portal, command line interface, and rest API.
Under the hood, Azure NetApp Files has a resource provider
and an orchestration engine,
which act as the virtual administrator for the entire fleet
in the region.
Azure NetApp Files is powered by top of the line
bare metal systems configured, deployed, operated,
and maintained to best practices.
The fleet of systems is connected directly
into the Azure internal high-speed network
through new networking technology that was first built
for Azure NetApp Files.
The ANF systems and network layer
directly route data plane traffic
into your own private VNET for highly secured access
at low latency and with full line rate performance.
So now let's start to explore the product structure
and capabilities.
There's five key pillars that I'd like to cover:
deployment flexibility, high performance,
integrated data protection, compatibility,
and workload support.
ANF offers different price performance service levels:
standard, premium, and our flagship ultra
to best match varying workload requirements
in your environment.
The service levels are defined by price point
in terms of dollars per gigabyte per month,
and the performance to capacity ratio,
which is governed by a quality of service throughput limit.
By design, there are no separate transaction fees
to keep pricing simple and costs predictable,
particularly in intensive use cases.
For additional flexibility in cost value,
we offer the capability to change tiers in place
without requiring a data copy and non-disruptively
without inflicting any interruption to IO.
ANF requires an initial minimum purchase of four terabytes
and can then be expanded in increments of one terabyte.
Some key concepts of capacity management.
First, the ANF account is similar,
but not the same as an Azure Storage account.
It is an administrative concept that is regional in scope.
Next, ANF is charged based on provision capacity,
which is done by creating pools.
Pools can vary in size from four terabytes
to 500 terabytes each, and a single ANF account
can contain up to 25 pools.
Provision capacity is like a debit card of capacity
that you purchase to which you can then assign
to volumes in the pool.
Volumes are the actual constructs that contain the data
and are mounted and accessed
through the file services protocol.
They're assigned a quota limit,
which can range from 100 gigabytes
all the way up to 100 terabytes.
You can create up to 500 volumes in a single pool.
We offer two types of capacity pools.
With auto pools, the QoS allocation for a given volume
is based on the tier of the pool
and the associated throughput to capacity ratio,
as well as the assigned volume capacity quota.
For example, if I have a volume in the premium tier,
which offers 64 megabytes per second
for every one terabyte of quota,
and then I have a volume
that is allocated two terabytes of quota,
that volume will have a gross QoS limit
of 128 megabytes per second.
This allows for simplicity of management.
We also offer the manual QoS pool,
which allows you to spend throughput budgets
separately from capacity allocations.
So now in this example, if I have a 12 terabyte pool
that is in the ultra tier,
I have a gross capacity budget of 12 terabytes,
and it gross throughput budget
of one and a half gigabytes per second
that I can assign separately to volumes in the pool.
You can see in this example, taller, thinner volumes
that don't use as much capacity,
but need higher performance.
And the shorter wider volumes consume more capacity,
but don't require as much performance.
This feature helps utilize those resources more efficiently,
such as in SAP landscapes,
which have a diversity of volume types
with varying requirements,
including the more demanding database and log volumes
and the larger, cooler backup volumes.
Some additional detail on how performance in ANF works.
QoS is throttled solely on throughput,
which means that the amount of IOPS achievable
is purely a function of the throughput, transfer size,
and your rewrite mix.
There is no separate or explicit throttle on IOPS,
separate from throughput.
IOPS performance that is achieved by ANF
does not count against the VM's disc limits.
So in some cases you can achieve greater IOPS
using a smaller VM, or in other cases,
you can achieve a greater total IOPS for a given VM
up to the limits of what the CPU can handle
by attaching additional ANF storage.
A single ANF volume, although it takes multiple clients,
can achieve up to four and a half gigabytes of throughput
or over 460,000 IOPS.
And depending on conditions,
it is possible to achieve sub-millisecond minimum latency
with an ANF volume.
As always, your mileage will vary
depending on your exact configuration, workload
and IO pattern.
Very importantly, ANF is dynamically adjustable.
In terms of degrees of freedom, you can add capacity
for any volume on the fly with no interruption to IO.
With an auto pool,
this will automatically scale QoS correspondingly.
And those changes in available throughput
are reflected in near real time.
For volumes belonging to a manual QoS pool,
you could also adjust the allocated throughput on the fly,
also with no interruption in IO.
Finally, you can also move volumes from one pool to another,
without interruption in IO.
One of the original motivations for building ANF
and delivering on the promise
of readily enabling workload deployments
was to deliver broad protocol support.
We offer NFS version three, 4.1,
which very importantly offers the protocol locking,
which is heavily utilized in SAP scale-out deployments
and other similar use cases and SMB.
Building on this protocol support,
we've continued to invest in enhancing support
for various capabilities by protocol.
We've added extended group support for larger deployments
And along with that, ADDS LDAP support
for NFS version three and 4.1.
For SMB and NFS version 4.1,
we've added protocol based encryption in transit.
For SMB, we offer multi-channel support
and support for continuous availability shares
that enables availability through fail over events
like planned maintenance and upgrades.
Beyond just offering the discreet protocols,
we offer simultaneous multi-protocol access
to the same volume,
first with NFS version three and SMB,
and more recently adding support
for NFS version 4.1 and SMB.
Powerful snapshotting capability
is one of the key differentiators of Azure NetApp Files.
Let's first discuss how ANF snapshot works.
The underlying operating system is constantly appending.
This means the data is never overwritten,
and updates to an active volume and snapshots
are accomplished through pointer manipulation,
which brings several significant benefits.
First, the ANF snapshots are extremely performant.
Only pointers are captured in the process
of taking a snapshot,
but data is not copied or moved out.
This results in snapshots being A, virtually instantaneous
and B, better yet instantaneous,
regardless of the size of the volume being snapshotted.
There's also no performance penalty inflicted
while a snapshot is being taken.
So this is hugely beneficial for providing data protection
for critical workloads such as databases.
ANF snapshots are also space efficient.
As you can see, only changed blocks are written to media.
Shared blocks common across snapshots are not duplicated.
Only the point of references.
The converse of taking a snapshot is also true.
A restore is accomplished
simply by manipulating the set of point of references
in the snapshot as an active volume.
This also means that a restore is instantaneous,
again, regardless of the volume size.
So this technology creates huge productivity gains
for key workflows such as test and development
where multiple users or stakeholders
may require instant access to a current
or past version of a dataset.
We offer the ability to take snapshots both on demand
and at scheduled intervals
using the snapshot policy feature.
And additionally, we also offer
the Azure Application Consistent or AzAc Snap tool,
which provides the orchestration needed
to create database consistent snapshots
and keep backup catalogs.
Moving into high availability and disaster recovery,
a very important capability is cross-region replication,
the ability to perform replication across two volumes.
Replication is one way.
The active volume is the source and the destination
or data protection volume is passive,
although it can be read only,
and also it can be made the active volume
if the user chooses to fail over.
Replication is asynchronous,
and we offer frequency options of once every 10 minutes,
every hour or every day.
The replication is blocked incremental and highly efficient
and only change data is replicated saving bandwidth.
Replication is high-scale and full fidelity.
Note that we offer replication in fixed region pairs.
In many cases, particularly in larger regions,
we do frequently offer multiple pair options,
which depending on the region
can sometimes include
both the legacy Azure Storage GRS pairing,
as well as additional frequently requested combinations.
The source and destination volume
must be in the same subscription,
but the destination volume can be
in a different capacity pool type or tier
than the source volume for cost optimization.
Replication data traverses over the Azure backbone
over a separate connection
and does not go through the data path.
Replication traffic also does not count against QoS limits.
ANF backup is a newly announced preview capability.
It is as the name suggests an integrated backup feature,
which also leverages the snapshot technology
to provide very space efficient, incremental backups.
ANF backup offers the option of either on-demand
or policy-based backups.
You can employ backups easily from the ANF portal
by creating policies which specify frequency intervals,
including hourly, daily, and monthly
and retention quantities by frequency.
You can then assign this policy to one or multiple volumes
for ease of management.
The backups are stored separately or hardened
in managed Azure Storage accounts
at a ZRS level of durability where available
to provide additional protection.
Backups are available in the region associated
with the ANF account and volumes,
and backups can be restored to new ANF volumes
within the same region.
So what's most important is fulfilling our original vision
of enabling customers to migrate
their most demanding workloads to the cloud.
And so I'd like to highlight just a few of the key workloads
and customer successes that we've had over the years.
First is SAP where ANF is an excellent fit
for storage requirements across the entire spectrum
of SAP deployment scenarios,
including meeting the stringent performance requirements of
and being certified for database analog deployments,
as well as enabling the end plus end
scale-out configuration,
which provides high performance and availability
at improved TCO.
We're very proud that SAP themselves
have successfully utilized ANF
in a multitude of their environments and use cases
for their customers.
We've helped them deploy SAP HANA environments
30 to 40% faster and reduce outages by up to 80%
versus on-premises infrastructure.
We've also seen a lot of success
in high-performance computing,
where we've enabled customers like Repsol
to achieve faster than on-premises performance.
In the EDA space, ANF's high IOPS and low-latency
have also enabled workloads
that previously could not be done in the Cloud.
Virtual Desktop is another great use case where ANF,
particularly with our rapid deployment
and Cloud-native management has enabled customer agility,
which was critically needed in the early days
of the COVID crisis.
And last but absolutely not least,
ANF broadly serves across a multitude of Enterprise needs
and requirements for general purpose file shares
such as at BP who uses ANF successfully
in a range of use cases
and has realized significant productivity benefits,
again from the combination of performance,
rich features, and rapid provisioning.
We've been continuously innovating
and delivering new capabilities with ANF
including the cross-region replication and backup features
that I just described.
I'm also very proud to say that we recently announced
instant availability for ANF,
which is now available in the Azure portal
for immediate deployment,
without any wait lists or additional approval steps
required to gain access to the service.
You'll see how easy this is in the upcoming demo.
Another very important capability I'm pleased to announce
is the preview of standard network features,
which deepens the innovation and integration of ANF
into the Azure network.
We're expanding the scale of ANF's connectivity
and adding key capabilities,
including network security groups,
user defined routes and support for Global VNET Peering.
Of course, none of this matters
unless you can access these capabilities
where you need them.
ANF is available today in 36 Azure regions worldwide,
delivering true bare metal performance in more regions
than some other hyperscale Clouds have in total.
ANF has deployed in multiple availability zones
in 13 regions,
and ANF is available physically co-located
with the VMs needed to run SAP workloads
within the physical envelope
needed to achieve sub millisecond latency in 25 regions.
ANF is also listed in the Azure Trust Center,
and as previously mentioned,
has achieved key certifications
as a Microsoft first party service that are listed here.
So let's take a moment to briefly explore
the ANF portal experience and see how easy it is
to access ANF's powerful capabilities
from a single pane of glass
with no storage administration experience required.
You can readily find ANF by searching for Azure NetApp Files
in the Create Resources page.
And from there it's only a few clicks
and simple inputs required to instantly create
your ANF account.
Let's explore an account I've already created and populated.
You can readily access key account properties,
identity access management,
and available resource quotas and limits.
Moving to capacity pools, you can see the options
for the three service levels,
provision capacity amount, and choosing QoS type.
Here in the Volume Create blade, you can see the options
for setting capacity and throughput
independently for manual QoS pools and advanced options.
In the protocol tab, you can choose
from either version of NFS, as well as SMB.
The ability to set export policy
and other additional options
appropriate to the protocol type are also available here.
You can also select
from one of the available dual protocol options.
You can also tag your volumes
for manageability and tracking.
If we explore one of the volumes I've already created,
you can see the options for adjusting the volume
or moving it to another pool.
And with this ultra volume, I've also set up replication.
You can see replication status and key metrics
in the Replication blade,
and you can also click through
to the paired destination volume,
which you can see is in a different region
and also a different service level for cost optimization.
For data protection, you can access snapshot policies,
see the schedule, assign volumes
and drill down to the actual snapshots.
You can also similarly access backup policies
as well as see the assigned volumes,
and from backups, view the option to restore a backup
to a new volume.
And lastly, beyond the rich set of features
that are built into ANF, we also offer easy access
through the Azure portal to additional services
offered by NetApp.
Let's dive a bit deeper into a success story,
showcasing customers solving large business challenges
with SAP and ANF.
CONA is the IT platform
for the North American Coca-Cola business
covering 500 operations in North America
representing over $20 billion in annual revenue.
They're dealing with
a rapidly changing business environment,
especially during the unprecedented conditions of 2020,
and sought to migrate their SAP workloads to the Cloud,
seeking greater flexibility, stability, and lower cost.
They migrated their SAP DB to Azure, and along with it,
their need for high availability and high performance.
Our native Azure experience allowed for fast deployment,
growth and easy management.
The snapshot and cloning capabilities
provided seamless and performant data protection,
and the industry leading performance of ANF
along with its ability to rapidly and non-disruptively scale
enabled them to meet their technical requirements.
You can see here their success stated in their own words,
but more importantly are the business outcomes
they were able to achieve,
delivering multiple millions in savings
while also achieving multiple millions in business growth.
Thank you for joining us for the session.
We'd like to leave you with some resources
so you can easily take the next step in your ANF journey.
You can quickly and easily get started with Azure Storage
with a free trial at aka.ms/AzureStorageFree.
You can learn more about Azure Storage
at aka.ms/AzureStorageLearn.
And particularly you can learn more about Azure NetApp Files
at aka.ms/NetApp
which also provide links to valuable information,
including our pricing,
regional availability and our deep documentation
and solution architecture library.
Thank you again.