What is Amazon FSx for NetApp ONTAP (FSxN)?
In practice, Red Hat® OpenShift® Service on AWS (ROSA) users employ Elastic Block Store (EBS) for locally-attached volumes of data storage. This method works well, but lacks some robustness needed for specific situations. Amazon FSx for NetApp ONTAP (FSxN) enables users that need data persistence and sharing across multiple containers, even across different Availability Zones (AZs).
What will you learn?
- The basics of FSxN
What do you need before starting?
- Nothing! Use this resource as a starting point.
The differences between EBS and FSxN
Experienced ROSA users are likely very familiar with Amazon EBS. EBS typically allows for mid-range storage to be attached to an Amazon EC2 instance, so you can run your applications with high availability. This can work well, but may not serve scenarios in which data persistence and sharing across multiple containers is needed.
FSxN differs in that it provides fully managed shared storage in conjunction with the access and management options of ONTAP. This enables faster migration of existing workloads and shared storage service availability across on-premise and cloud environments. In addition, users can leverage key features such as snapshots, FlexClones, cross-region replication with SnapMirror, and a highly available file server that supports seamless failover.
Another key benefit of FSxN is that it is a true first-party AWS offering, just like EBS. This means that customers can retire their committed spend with AWS and also get direct support from Amazon as needed.
