Backing up your volumes helps support data retention and compliance needs. Use volume backups to set up automated backups and retention for your data.

Schedule local snapshots for efficient backup and quick restores. Snapshots are instant, point-in-time images of your volumes. This recommendation doesn't apply to database environments.

For database environments, use application-consistent snapshots with NetApp SnapCenter to take accurate, reliable snapshots of your volume data at a specific moment in time. This keeps your apps running smoothly and your data safe. SnapCenter makes backups easier and helps you restore data quickly and correctly, reducing downtime and protecting your most important workloads.

Cross-region replication ensures that your data is replicated to another AWS region, providing enhanced data durability and availability. Set up cross-region replication to support disaster recovery and compliance.

The SSD storage tier capacity should not exceed 80% utilization. This might impact data reads and writes to your capacity pool storage tier and impact the throughput capacity of your file system. When capacity runs out, data volumes become read-only. Services trying to write new data also fail.

The snapshot policy labels of the source volume and the replication policy labels must match to ensure data reliability.

The file capacity threshold should be raised to avoid hitting the volume capacity limit. Low file capacity (inodes) prevents writing additional data to the volume. Workload Factory recommends maintaining file capacity utilization below 80% to allow new file creation.

NetApp Autonomous Ransomware Protection with AI (ARP/AI) helps protect your volumes from ransomware threats. Workload Factory recommends enabling ARP/AI for all volumes.

Volumes serving application data using iSCSI should not allow NAS access at the same time. Workload Factory recommends restricting iSCSI volumes from using any other protocol.

Automatic capacity management should be enabled to regularly ensure that the SSD tier doesn't exceed the threshold.

Workload Factory recommends that volume capacity doesn't exceed 80% utilization. This might impact data reads and writes to your application. Volume capacity increases can be manual or automatic using the volume autogrow feature.

For optimal performance, Workload Factory recommends the cache relationship write mode that best suits your workload. Write-around mode provides better performance for read-heavy workloads with small files, whereas write-back mode provides better performance for write-heavy workloads with large files.

Workload Factory recommends enabling volume autosize and scrubbing on cache volumes to maintain optimal size and focus the cache on hot data for peak efficiency.

Workload Factory recommends enabling host-visible capacity reporting to provide better visibility into storage usage at the volume level.

Workload Factory recommends ensuring that the ONTAP LUN operating system (OS) type value matches the operating system partitioning scheme to achieve I/O alignment. Incorrect configuration might reduce performance.

Workload Factory recommends configuring block device space settings for LUNs used by database host instances to prevent write failures and improve space efficiency on FSx for ONTAP. This configuration applies to the recommended combination of settings for thin-provisioned volumes: space reservation, space allocation, and fractional reserve.

Workload Factory recommends configuring thin provisioning for FSx for ONTAP volumes hosting database instances. This approach allows more logical data to be stored than physically available.

Enable cold data tiering to reduce SSD storage tier utilization. Workload Factory recommends applying a tiering policy to every volume focused on general data storage. For database volumes, we'll recommend enabling cold data tiering where appropriate. FSx for ONTAP continuously scans the data for cold data and moves it to the capacity pool tier without disruption.

Enable storage efficiencies — compaction, compression, and deduplication — to optimize storage utilization and reduce the SSD tier cost.

Workload Factory recommends deleting any manually created backups for volumes that were deleted, and any backups older than two weeks. These backups don't expire automatically, can increase costs, and add complexity if you no longer need them for SLA or recovery.

Workload Factory recommends deleting old or manually created snapshots you no longer need. Removing them can lower costs and reduce clutter, especially if they aren't required for your SLA or recovery needs.

After a block device isn't used for seven days, Workload Factory recommends archiving block device data or deleting the unused block device to reduce costs.

An overprovisioned SSD capacity tier adds unnecessary costs. Workload Factory recommends reducing the SSD tier capacity while maintaining a 20% free space buffer. A decrease operation takes several hours to several days, and other file system operations are unsupported during this time.

The configuration analysis identifies NAS volumes that are not actively used and recommends deleting or archiving the volumes to reduce costs.

Workload Factory recommends rebalancing your FlexGroup volumes to improve efficiency. After scaling out, capacity and workload activity can become uneven across the volume.

Workload Factory recommends rebalancing your FlexVol volumes to improve efficiency. After scaling out, capacity and workload activity can become uneven across the volume.