This page provides a detailed overview of the Google Cloud NetApp Volumes storage pools feature.
About storage pools
Storage pools act as a container for volumes. All volumes in a storage pool share the same location, service level, Virtual Private Cloud network, Active Directory policy, and customer-managed encryption key (CMEK) policy. You can assign the capacity of the pool to volumes within the pool. Billing is based on the location, service level, and capacity allocated to a pool independent of consumption at the volume level.
Supported locations
All volumes in a storage pool live in the same location as the pool. For more information on supported locations, see NetApp Volumes supported locations.
Service levels
The service level is a property of the storage pool. Service levels have capacity-dependent throughput limits. NetApp Volumes offers three service levels: Standard, Premium, and Extreme. For a volume to have a different service level, you need to reassign it to a storage pool with the target service level. See NetApp Volumes service levels table to learn more.
The following table provides the throughput of allocated volume capacity for each service level and what each service level is best used for:
| Service level | Throughput per GiB of allocated volume capacity | Workload types |
|---|---|---|
| Standard | 16 KiBps | General purpose storage |
| Premium | 64 KiBps | Databases and applications |
| Extreme | 128 KiBps | High-performance applications |
Network
A pool defines which Virtual Private Cloud (VPC) its volumes connect to. The volumes are accessible only for clients that are on the same VPC or those connected to it with a VPN.
Active Directory settings
Some network-attached storage (NAS) protocols or protocol variations require access to an external directory service. NetApp Volumes supports Active Directory as the only directory service. A single pool can only attach one Active Directory policy. All volumes in the pool use the same policy.
Customer-managed encryption key settings
NetApp Volumes encrypts the data of all volumes at rest using a Google-managed key, however, you can choose to encrypt the volumes using a customer-managed encryption key (CMEK). You can attach a CMEK policy during storage pool creation; all of the volumes created in that pool use the policy.
Capacity
NetApp Volumes lets you add or remove capacity to your volume as needed to adjust for any application changes. Capacity is allocated to storage pools and volumes, and can be modified. You can allocate the following amounts of capacity to NetApp Volumes storage pools and volumes.
Storage pools: You can allocate between 1 TiB to 200 TiB for Standard service level pools, and between 2 TiB to 10 PiB for Premium and Extreme service level pools. You can increase or decrease capacity in 1 TiB increments.
Volumes: You can allocate between 100 GiB to 102,400 GiB of capacity for Premium and Extreme service level volumes, and between 1 GiB to 102,400 GiB of capacity for Standard service level volumes depending on the region or location. You can increase or decrease in 1 GiB increments.
Volumes
You can assign volumes to storage pools, and also move a volume within a pool to a different pool with the same settings (location, network, Active Directory policy, and CMEK policy) as long as the service level allows and the target pool has enough spare capacity.
Before you can start to create volumes, you need to provision a storage pool to host the volumes.