Spot Storage and Spot Ocean together are said to make it easy for organisations to cost-effectively build, deploy, and run microservice-based applications on Kubernetes without having to administer storage and data services.
AWS spot instances are 90% cheaper than regular EC2 instances as they represent otherwise unused capacity, but they can be terminated on two minutes' notice, explained NetApp ANZ solutions engineering director Dhruv Dhumatkar. So Spot uses AI to predict where spot instances will be available, and then makes it easy to move Kubernetes-based microservices to those availability zones.
Examples include CI/CD operations, he said.
Enhancements to Cloud Manager include autonomous data protection, optimisation and portability. The improved visibility and control are said to allow enterprises to save up to 90% on compute and storage costs.
Cloud Manager makes it possible to manage all hybrid cloud systems via a central control plane, Dhruv Dhumatkar told iTWire. This allows optimisation and management across an entire hybrid environment.
The new NetApp Virtual Desktop Management Service along with a validated hybrid cloud virtual desktop infrastructure design are aimed at organisations with remote workforces, and can reduce costs by up to 50%, the company claims.
Changes to Ontap allow greater consolidation, deeper cloud integration, and continuous data availability for improved simplicity, efficiency, and protection of business-critical enterprise applications, according to the company.
These include integrated NAS caching across a hybrid cloud, improved business continuity features for applications such as SAP and Oracle, support for the S3 protocol, support for IPsec, cloud tiering, a 33% improvement in storage efficiency, and new file system analytics.
NetApp Keystone is designed to provide a cloud-like on-premises storage experience. Flex Subscription offers pay-as-you-grow storage or converged infrastructure, with the option of public cloud integration provided by NetApp partners.
NetApp ANZ vice president and managing director Paul Crighton told iTWire that Keystone had its genesis in Australia, where a year or two ago the company offered to build hybrid multi-cloud infrastructure for its largest customers on a shared risk basis.
He expects Keystone to account for 40% of NetApp's ANZ business in the next few months.
For example, Woolworths' SAP migration from on-premises to Azure was achieved in part through the use of NetApp products, and the two companies are working closely on the migration of other applications to various public clouds, said Crighton.
Dhumatkar noted that the company's software is availabe on the major public clouds including AWS, Azure and Google Cloud, as either first-party or third-party services.
NetApp SolidFire enterprise software-defined storage is a containerised version of the company's Element software, providing an alternative to SolidFire appliances.
"Digital transformation has accelerated to the point where projects that used to take years to accomplish now need to be completed in months or even weeks," said NetApp president César Cernuda.
"With its rich data-centric software innovation, NetApp is uniquely positioned to help organisations quickly adapt and sustainably transform in today's hybrid cloud world. Now, we make it easier for them to develop applications in the cloud, move applications to the cloud, or create cloud-like experiences on premises."
