Cloud Sync uses the NetApp data broker software to sync data from a source to a target (this is called a sync relationship).

The data broker controls the sync relationships between your sources and targets. After you set up a sync relationship, Cloud Sync analyzes your source system and breaks it up into multiple replication streams to push to your selected target data.

After the initial copy, the service syncs any changed data based on the schedule that you set.

The 14-day free trial starts when you sign up for the Cloud Sync service. You're not subject to NetApp charges for Cloud Sync relationships you create for 14 days. However, all resource charges for any data broker that you deploy still applies.

There are two types of costs associated with using Cloud Sync: service charges and resource charges.

Service charges

For pay-as-you-go pricing, Cloud Sync service charges are hourly, based on the number of sync relationships that you create.

Cloud Sync licenses are also available through your NetApp representative. Each license enables 20 sync relationships for 12 months.

Learn more about licenses.

Resource charges

The resource charges are related to the compute and storage costs for running the data broker in the cloud.

There are two ways to pay for sync relationships after your 14-day free trial ends. The first option is to subscribe from AWS or Azure, which enables you to pay-as-you-go or to pay annually. The second option is to purchase licenses directly from NetApp.

Yes, you can use Cloud Sync in a non-cloud architecture. The source and target can reside on-premises and so can the data broker.

Note the following key points about using Cloud Sync outside of the cloud:

Go to the Cloud Sync page on NetApp Cloud Central and click Start Free Trial. Log in or sign up to Cloud Central. After you’ve authenticated, you’re ready to get started using the Cloud Sync service.

Cloud Sync supports many different types of sync relationships. View the entire list.

Cloud Sync supports NFS version 3 and later, and SMB version 1 and later.

Learn more about sync requirements.

Yes, you can choose a specific S3 storage class when AWS S3 is the target:

You can choose a specific Azure Blob storage tier when a Blob container is the target:

The Cloud Sync environment requires that the data broker is connected with the source and the target through the selected protocol (NFS, SMB, EFS) or object storage API (Amazon S3, Azure Blob, IBM Cloud Object Storage).

In addition, the data broker needs an outbound internet connection over port 443 so it can communicate with the Cloud Sync service and contact a few other services and repositories.

For more details:

Yes.

Cloud Sync supports proxy servers with or without basic authentication. If you specify a proxy server when you deploy a data broker, all HTTP and HTTPS traffic from the data broker is routed through the proxy. Note that non-HTTP traffic such as NFS or SMB can’t be routed through a proxy server.

The only proxy server limitation is when using data-in-flight encryption with an NFS or Azure NetApp Files sync relationship. The encrypted data is sent over HTTPS and isn’t routable through a proxy server.

The default schedule is set for daily synchronization. After the initial synchronization, you can:

You can schedule a relationship to sync data as often as every 1 minute.

The data broker doesn't timeout when a single file fails to transfer. Instead, the data broker retries 3 times before skipping the file. The retry value is configurable in the settings for a sync relationship.

Learn how to change the settings for a sync relationship.

If a single directory contains 600,000 files or more, contact us so we can help you configure the data broker to handle the payload. We might need to add additional memory to the data broker machine.

Yes. All Cloud Sync service networking connectivity is done using Amazon Simple Queue Service (SQS).

All communication between the data broker and Amazon S3, Azure Blob, Google Cloud Storage, and IBM Cloud Object Storage is done through the HTTPS protocol.

If you're using Cloud Sync with on-premises (source or destination) systems, here's a few recommended connectivity options:

Any of these methods establishes a secure connection between your on-premises NAS servers and a Cloud Sync data broker.

You can set up Cloud Sync to preserve access control lists (ACLs) between a source SMB share and a target SMB share. Or you can manually copy the ACLs yourself. Learn how to copy ACLs between SMB shares.

The sync relationship shows the throughput of the data broker's network adapter. If you accelerated sync performance by using multiple data brokers, then the throughput is the sum of all traffic. This throughput refreshes every 20 seconds.

The data broker can sync 4 files at a time. If you have very large files (multiple TBs each), it can take a long time to complete the transfer process and performance might be impacted.

Limiting the number of concurrent transfers can help. Contact us for help.

When you sync data to or from Azure NetApp Files, you might experience failures and performance issues if the disk service level is Standard.

Change the service level to Premium or Ultra to enhance the sync performance.

Learn more about Azure NetApp Files service levels and throughput.

When you sync data to or from a cloud volume, you might experience failures and performance issues if the level of performance for the cloud volume is Standard.

Change the Service level to Premium or Extreme to enhance the sync performance.

When you create a new relationship, you start with a single data broker (unless you selected an existing data broker that belongs to an accelerated sync relationship). In many cases, a single data broker can meet the performance requirements for a sync relationship. If it doesn't, you can accelerate sync performance by adding additional data brokers. But you should first check other factors that can impact sync performance.

Multiple factors can impact data transfer performance. The overall sync performance might be impacted due to network bandwidth, latency, and network topology, as well as the data broker VM specs and storage system performance. For example, a single data broker in a sync relationship can reach 100 MB/s, while disk throughput on the target might only allow 64 MB/s. As a result, the data broker keeps trying to copy the data, but the target can't meet the performance of the data broker.

So be sure to check the performance of your networking and the disk throughput on the target.

Then you can consider accelerating sync performance by adding an additional data broker to share the load of that relationship. Learn how to accelerate sync performance.

Deleting a relationship stops all future data syncs and terminates payment. Any data that was synced to the target remains as-is.

By default, if you have an active sync relationship, the item deleted on the source server is not deleted from the target during the next synchronization. But there is an option in the sync settings for each relationship, where you can define that Cloud Sync will delete files in the target location if they were deleted from the source.

Learn how to change the settings for a sync relationship.

If an item is deleted from the target, it will not be removed from the source. The relationship is one-way—from source to target. On the next sync cycle, Cloud Sync compares the source to the target, identifies that the item is missing, and Cloud Sync copies it again from the source to the target.

Sure. Here are the most important points: