NetApp Keystone storage as a service for the hybrid cloud

How many TV streaming services do you subscribe to? Three? Five? Seven? I used to subscribe to five because I wanted to watch specific shows on each service. For example, Ozark on Netflix, Pam & Tommy on Hulu, Game of Thrones on HBO Max, The Expanse on Prime, and The Walking Dead on AMC. What if you could subscribe to one monthly streaming service and pick the shows you want to watch, no matter which provider owns and streams the program? That would be amazing, right?

With the recent updates to NetApp^® Keystone^™, we offer a single-subscription, multideployment hybrid cloud capability for storage services. This capability enables you to simplify and accelerate IT operations and get to your hybrid multicloud environment faster.

Keystone is NetApp’s pay-as-you-grow, storage-as-a-service (STaaS) offering that delivers a seamless hybrid multicloud experience for companies that prefer opex consumption models to upfront capex or leasing. By removing the IT burdens of managing storage infrastructures and going through the lengthy procurement cycle, you can better align storage costs to business needs, accelerate IT operations, and focus on core business operations by managing outcomes, not equipment.

Now, with a unified management console that uses NetApp Cloud Manager and a monthly bill for both on-premises and cloud data storage services, Keystone lets you provision and monitor your hybrid multicloud environment. You can even use the Cloud Manager Digital Wallet to dynamically move storage spending for the ultimate in financial and operational flexibility.

Adopting an as-a-service model for on-premises storage delivers tremendous benefits in simplification, acceleration of IT operations, and digital initiatives, and speeds up IT decision making. Keystone takes those benefits a few steps further in how we embrace hybrid cloud environments. Keystone offers the following key enhancements for the hybrid multicloud.

• One subscription across clouds. Keystone delivers the operational and financial model to support our data fabric vision. A single Keystone subscription (NetApp offers 1-, 2-, and 3-year commitment options) can include both on-premises storage and cloud storage services supporting all major cloud providers: AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud.
  
  You can purchase NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP^® and NetApp Cloud Backup service under the same monthly subscription as the on-premises storage services (file, block, and object data services). You can then reallocate storage spending across clouds by using the Cloud Manager Digital Wallet. This capability is ideal for organizations that expect to migrate data or workloads to the cloud in future months, quarters, or years. NetApp delivers the freedom to shift the capacity allocation across sites while maintaining a single invoice and the same overall spending.

The following figure shows reallocation of spending across clouds.

• Native integration with Cloud Manager across hybrid multicloud environments. NetApp offers single-pane-of-glass management to discover, visualize, monitor, provision, report, invoice, and manage subscriptions across on-premises and cloud storage services. You can simplify ITOps by using Cloud Manager as a single management console for hybrid and/or multicloud environment. The following Keystone operations are centralized through Cloud Manager:
  • Deploy new or discover existing systems.
  • Manage connected multicloud environments.
  • Display initial views of all connected environments.
  • Manage your subscriptions of both on-premises and cloud storage services with a centralized view.
  • Access monthly storage usage across performance tiers for both committed and burst capacities.

The following screenshot shows Keystone native integration with Cloud Manager.

• Multiple service tiers offer granular flexibility to right-size your storage environment. Keystone offers a number of service options, including a new Performance service tier designed to address the low-latency, high- performance demands of OLTP, OLAP, VDI, containers, and software development workloads. With Keystone, you have tremendous flexibility to select the optimal cost per performance for the storage environment to match your workload requirements. The following table shows Keystone unified file and block, object, and cloud storage services.

• Built-in data protection and tiering. Core data protection and tiering capabilities, such as NetApp Snapshot™ copies, vaulting (SnapVault^®), replication (SnapMirror^®), WORM compliance (SnapLock^® Enterprise), and data tiering to a NetApp target are built into the Keystone standard rate. These built-in features simplify data protection, reduce overall business risk, and ensure that data is protected. You just need to add the low-cost storage capacity required for your data protection needs.
• Add-on professional services. NetApp offers a fully managed service for an additional monthly fee that will be applied to the Keystone invoice. Data migration services can migrate existing data onto the Keystone infrastructure and apply it to the Keystone monthly bill based on completed milestones.

Keystone offers an ideal way to support workload migrations to the cloud. IT simply needs to move the workloads from Keystone on premises to Cloud Volumes ONTAP or Cloud Backup service located within AWS, Azure, or Google Public Cloud—all under the same subscription. As data moves, the cost is also transferable from the on-premises environment to the cloud.

Keystone also supports backup to the cloud, all on NetApp technology. This capability reduces the need to manage multiple data center sites independently.

When cloud bursting occurs, IT can use the same technology on and off premises, which simplifies management of application environments that are spread across hybrid cloud infrastructures.

Monthly subscription-based services are here to stay. I’m not sure if I will ever patent and build a single monthly TV service based on programs rather than on streaming providers. But the good news is that you can have that capability for hybrid cloud storage services with Keystone. Now with a unified management console using NetApp Cloud Manager and a monthly bill for both on-premises and cloud data storage services, Keystone lets you provision and monitor your hybrid multicloud environment. You can even use the Cloud Manager’s Digital Wallet to dynamically move storage spending for the ultimate in financial and operational flexibility.

If you’re interested in Keystone, talk to an expert.