Last year I told you about Amazon FSx for NetApp ONTAP and showed you how you can create a file system in minutes with just a couple of clicks. You can use these high-performance, scalable (up to 176 PiB) file systems to migrate your on-premises applications to the cloud and to build new, cloud-native applications. As I noted in my original post, your file systems can have up to 192 TiB of fast, SSD-based primary storage, and many pebibytes of cost-optimized capacity pool storage. Your file systems also support many of ONTAP’s unique features including multi-protocol (NFS, SMB, and iSCSI) access, built-in deduplication & compression, cloning, and replication.

We launched Amazon FSx for NetApp ONTAP with a Multi-AZ deployment type that has AWS infrastructure in a pair of Availability Zones in the same AWS region, data replication between them, and automated failover/failback that is typically complete within seconds. This option has a 99.99% SLA (Service Level Agreement) for availability, and is suitable for hosting the most demanding storage workloads.

New Deployment Type
Today we are launching a new single-AZ deployment type that is designed to provide high availability and durability within an AZ, at a level similar to an on-premises file system. It is a great fit for many use cases including dev & test workloads, disaster recovery, and applications that manage their own replication. It is also a great for storing secondary copies of data that is stored elsewhere (either on-premises or AWS), or for data that can be recomputed if necessary.

The AWS infrastructure powering each single-AZ file system resides in separate fault domains within a single Availability Zone. As is the case with the multi-AZ option, the infrastructure is monitored and replaced automatically, and failover typically completes within seconds.

This new deployment type offers the same ease of use and data management capabilities as the multi-AZ option, with 50% lower storage costs and 40% lower throughput costs. File operations deliver sub-millisecond latency for SSD storage and tens of milliseconds for capacity pool storage, at up to hundreds of thousands of IOPS.

Creating a Single-AZ File System
I can create a single-AZ NetApp ONTAP file system using the Amazon FSx Console, the CLI (aws fsx create-file-system), or the Amazon FSx CreateFileSystem API function. From the console I click Create file system, select Amazon FSx for NetApp ONTAP, and enter a name. Then I select the Single-AZ deployment type, indicate the desired amount of storage, and click Next:

On the next page I review and confirm my choices, and then click Create file system. The file system Status starts out as Creating, then transitions to Available within 20 minutes or so, as detailed in my original post.

Depending on my architecture and use case, I can access my new file system in several different ways. I can simply mount it to an EC2 instance running in the same VPC. I can also access it from another VPC in the same region or in a different region across a peered (VPC or Transit Gateway) connection, and from my on-premises clients using AWS Direct Connect or AWS VPN.

Things to Know
Here are a couple of things to know:

Regions – The new deployment type is available in all regions where FSx for ONTAP is already available.

Pricing – Pricing is based on the same billing dimensions as the multi-AZ deployment type; see the Amazon FSx for NetApp Pricing page for more information.

Available Now
The new deployment type is available now and you can start using it today!

— Jeff;