Beyond the Bucket
Unveiling the Data Operating System: Features that redefine enterprise storage and solve challenges that standard cloud-native file systems cannot touch.
1. The "Zero-Capacity" Innovation Engine
Traditional storage requires full-sized copies for testing. FlexClone® enables writable, point-in-time copies of massive volumes instantly, using zero initial storage.
Efficiency Metric: 50 Dev/Test Clones from a 10TB Master
Accelerated DevOps
Eliminate the "restore wait" time. Developers can spin up personal copies of production data for testing, patching, or analytics without impacting production performance or budget.
Instant Lifecycle: Create and destroy clones in seconds via API or Console.
Metadata Magic: Clones only consume space for "delta" changes written by the tester.
2. Ransomware Defense: Active Intelligence
Why settle for passive backups? ONTAP acts as an active gatekeeper with built-in behavioral monitoring and recovery.
FPolicy Vscan
Real-time behavior analysis of file headers and extensions.
Autonomous Blocking
Instantly blocks the user account causing abnormal encryption.
Rapid Restore
Roll back to the last clean Snapshot™ in seconds.
3. The Protocol "Swiss Army Knife"
ONTAP is the only AWS service providing **concurrent multi-protocol access** to the same data volume. Eliminate the need for data duplication across silos.
Active Directory integrated Windows shares.
High-performance Linux / HPC workloads.
Object access for GenAI and Analytics.
Block storage for SQL Server & VMC.
Data Operating System IQ
Maturity Score: Features unmatched by basic cloud storage.
4. FlexCache: Breaking the Geography Barrier
Solve high-latency challenges for distributed teams. **FlexCache** caches "hot" data in remote locations while keeping the "Gold Copy" centralized, ensuring sub-millisecond local performance.
Deploy Anywhere
Edge AWS Regions
Scale reads globally by caching data in other AWS regions or local zones.
On-Prem Appliances
Cache AWS data on physical NetApp hardware for sub-ms LAN speeds.
Virtual Appliances (ONTAP Select)
Deploy a software-defined cache on your existing on-prem hypervisor.
Edge Region
FSx for ONTAP Instance
On-Premise
Physical/Virtual
5. The Exclusive Toolkit: Features Unmatched in AWS
Why FSx for ONTAP is the "Gold Standard": Capabilities that existing AWS-native storage (EBS/EFS/Windows) cannot natively offer.
🔄 SnapMirror®
Beyond simple sync. SnapMirror provides block-level, incremental-only replication that maintains dedupe and compression signatures over the wire.
Multi-Hop DR:
Replicate A -> B -> C for extreme resilience.
Efficiencies Preserved:
Only compressed data traverses the network.
🚥 Granular Storage QoS
Eliminate "Noisy Neighbor" problems. Define precise IOPS and Throughput limits (Floors & Ceilings) per volume or even per file.
Visualization: IOPS Guardrails for Multi-Tenant Environments
Storage Virtual Machines (SVM)
True multi-tenancy. Create virtual storage controllers with their own network endpoints and management credentials within a single cluster.
Granular File-Level Restore
Don't restore the whole volume. Browsable `.snapshot` directories allow users to drag-and-drop individual files from past versions without admin tickets.