Google Cloud NetApp Volumes now available for more workloads

When Google Cloud announced the availability of Google Cloud NetApp Volumes at Google Cloud Next ’23, we knew it was just the beginning for this high-performance file storage service. The initial release included Premium and Extreme service levels. Today, we’re excited to announce the availability of the Standard service level. This new service level expands the offer and will cost-effectively address an even greater range of workloads.

Google Cloud NetApp Volumes is the latest innovation from the five-year collaboration between Google Cloud and NetApp. This fully managed, cloud-based data storage service provides advanced data management capabilities and highly scalable performance.

With Google Cloud NetApp Volumes, you can run critical traditional and cloud-first applications in Google Cloud without redesigning your code, your processes, or your teams. You’ll harness cloud advantages faster and at lower cost.

Google Cloud NetApp Volumes offers enterprise-grade data management features from Google Cloud:

• Fully managed cloud storage service: file storage service with no infrastructure to configure
• Multiprotocol file system support: concurrent file access across Windows and Linux file systems
• Scalability: rapid scaling to hundreds of volumes; the ability to dynamically resize volumes up and down
• Backup and data protection: volume backups, snapshots, and volume replication for synchronized data protection across and within cloud regions
• Google Cloud user experience: secure integration with Google Identity and Access Management (IAM), Google Cloud APIs, the gCloud CLI, and the Google Cloud console; includes extended integration with the Google Cloud portfolio of services
• Secure by design: network security, access control, and data encryption, at rest and in motion, with support for customer-managed encryption keys

Google Cloud NetApp Volumes helps you quickly and simply migrate existing workloads to Google Cloud. It also provides you with a platform to develop and maintain a file storage solution in the cloud, which minimizes physical space and reduces hardware, procurement time, cooling, and power use.

The new Standard service level provides cost-effective file storage for workloads with lower throughput requirements. It will initially be available in 14 Google Cloud regions with plans to expand to all Google Cloud regions early next year.

Google Cloud NetApp Volumes offers these service levels:

• Standard: highly available general-purpose storage with advanced data-managed capabilities; 16MiB/sec per TiB; recommended for file shares, VMs, DevTest
• Premium: highly available high-performance storage with advanced data management capabilities; 64MiB/sec per TiB; recommended for file shares, VMs, and databases
• Extreme: highly available, low-latency, high-throughput storage with advanced data management capabilities; 128MiB/sec per TiB; recommended for OLTP high-performance databases and low-latency applications

Just like the service’s Premium and Extreme service levels, the Standard service level allows you to easily migrate, deploy, and manage data and workloads in Google Cloud without needing to refactor applications or redesign processes.

The data protection features in Google Cloud NetApp Volumes have been expanded with integrated backup. The new backup capabilities join NetApp^® Snapshot^™ technology and multiregion volume replication to help protect your company’s valuable information from ransomware attacks, hardware failure, natural disasters, and human error. For the best possible protection, we recommend using volume snapshots together with volume backup to create a cost-efficient second copy of your data; this approach provides the lowest recovery time objective (RTO) and a recovery point objective (RPO) of less than 1 hour. For the highest availability, volume replication provides data access from a different region for immediate use.

With Google Cloud NetApp Volumes, you can individually protect each volume while meeting your RPOs for preventing data loss and RTOs for business continuity and downtime.

NEW! Integrated backup. Google Cloud NetApp Volumes now provides a fully managed backup solution for long-term recovery, archive, and compliance. A backup is a copy of a volume stored independently from the volume in a backup vault. If a volume is lost or deleted, you can use backups to restore your data to a new volume. The RPO is one day.

Snapshots. Google Cloud NetApp Volumes helps you manage your data using snapshots. Snapshots are immutable point-in-time versions of a volume that are valuable protection against ransomware and malware attacks. Using snapshots allows users to self-restore for a low RTO.

Cross-region volume replication. Asynchronously replicate a source volume in one location to a destination volume in a different location. This capability enables you to use the other volume for critical application activity if a locationwide outage or disaster occurs.

With Google Cloud NetApp Volumes, you have the tools and flexibility you need to intelligently protect your data, minimize risk, and maintain business continuity by leveraging any of these data protection capabilities. 

The Google Cloud NetApp Volumes enterprise-grade managed file storage service makes it easier, safer, and more cost efficient to migrate and run your enterprise applications and workloads in Google Cloud. Find out more.