This page provides an overview of Google Cloud NetApp Volumes and how it works.
About NetApp Volumes
NetApp Volumes is a fully managed, cloud-based data storage service that provides advanced data management capabilities and highly scalable performance.
NetApp Volumes helps to accelerate deployment times, manage your workloads and applications, and migrate workloads to the cloud while keeping the performance and features of on-premises storage.
NetApp Volumes lets you move file-based applications to Google Cloud. It has support for Network File System (NFSv3 and NFSv4.1) and Server Message Block (SMB) protocols built-in, so you don't need to re-architect your applications and can continue to get persistent storage for your applications.
NetApp Volumes offers four service levels: Flex, Standard, Premium, and Extreme. Performance, features, and capabilities vary by service level.
Key features
NetApp Volumes offers the following features. For a comparison of features across service levels, see service levels.
Fully-managed service: provides fully-managed service with no operations, integrated with the Google Cloud console
Volume provisioning: provisions volumes from 1 GiB to 1 PiB in seconds
Multiprotocol support: supports NFSv3, NFSv4.1, and SMB 2.1, 3.0, and 3.1.1 protocols.
Automated snapshots: protects data with automated, efficient snapshots.
Backup: provides manual and automated backups for long-term retention.
Volume replication: enables business continuity with asynchronous volume replication across Google Cloud.
High availability: provides high availability with options for multi-region redundancy, backed by the NetApp Volumes service level agreement
Rapid cloning: accelerates application development with rapid cloning
Multiple service level offerings: offers multiple service levels based on location, allowing you to pick a service level that best fits your needs:
Flex: highly available, general purpose storage with advanced data management capabilities.
Performance: up to 16 KiBps per GiB of storage pool capacity shared by all volumes in the pool. Maximum of 1 GiBps per pool.
Sample use cases: common enterprise workloads such as Network File System (NFS) and Server Message Block (SMB) file shares, SAP shared files, containerized workloads, and Google Cloud VMware Engine.
Standard: highly available, general purpose storage with advanced data management capabilities.
Performance: up to 16 KiBps per GiB of volume capacity. Maximum of 1 GiBps per volume.
Sample use cases: common enterprise workloads such as Network File System (NFS) and Server Message Block (SMB) file shares, SAP shared files, and Google Cloud VMware Engine.
Premium: highly available, high-performance storage with advanced data management capabilities.
Performance: up to 64 KiBps per GiB exclusive to volume. Maximum of 4.5 GiBps per volume. 12.5 GiBps with large capacity volumes.
Sample use cases: performance-critical workloads requiring low latency, for example, Windows and enterprise NFS, self-managed databases and file shares, virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI), and VMware Engine.
Extreme: highly available, high-throughput storage with advanced data management capabilities.
Performance: up to 128 KiBps per GiB exclusive to volume. Maximum of 4.5 GiBps per volume. 12.5 GiBps with large capacity volumes.
Sample use cases: performance-critical workloads requiring high throughput and low latency, for example, Windows and enterprise NFS, self-managed databases and file shares, VDI, and VMware Engine.
How it works
NetApp Volumes provides fully managed NFS and SMB remote file systems as a service. Service administrators create and manage remote file systems as volumes and share them with NFS and SMB clients over a network. Clients such as Compute Engine VMs mount file system volumes, their users, and the applications within the client store files in the file system volumes. You can control access using Windows or UNIX-based permission models.
Tools to use NetApp Volumes
You can use Google Cloud NetApp Volumes using the following tools:
Google Cloud SDK: the Google Cloud command line interface lets you interact with NetApp Volumes through a terminal
Google Cloud console: the Google Cloud console provides a visual interface that gives you a holistic view of your applications and projects
Terraform Google Cloud Platform Provider: NetApp Volumes resources are part of the Google Terraform provider. For more information about how to provision NetApp Volumes resources using Terraform, see introduction to Terraform integration.
NetApp Volumes architecture
NetApp Volumes uses the Google Cloud Private Service Access framework, which creates a private connection linking your Virtual Private Cloud (VPC) to the NetApp Volumes VPC. The Google Cloud private service access framework assigns private addresses (RFC 1918) or non-private addresses (non-RFC 1918) to it using the Service Networking API and VPC peering constructs.
Network peering
Network peering is integrated in the storage pool creation workflow. All volumes in a pool are accessible from Network-attached storage (NAS) clients on the same VPC, but are subject to NAS access control. For Shared VPC, this enables data access across different projects. You can't attach a single volume or pool to multiple VPCs.
Independent of data access at the VPC level, all resources belong only to the project they're created in and can only be managed within that project Identity and Access Management (IAM) protects management access.
Region availability
NetApp Volumes is available in several regions. For details about region availability, see NetApp Volumes locations.
What's next
Read about service levels of Google Cloud NetApp Volumes.