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VMware Cloud Foundation and NetApp ONTAP

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VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) is a set of technologies designed to simplify the journey to a hybrid cloud experience across a customer’s heterogeneous ecosystem.

Introduction

Using NetApp with VCF enhances data management and storage efficiency through NetApp's advanced features like deduplication, compression, and snapshots. This combination provides seamless integration, high performance, and scalability for virtualized environments. Additionally, it simplifies hybrid cloud deployments by enabling consistent data services and management across on-premises and cloud infrastructures.

Introduction to NetApp ONTAP

NetApp ONTAP is a comprehensive data management software that delivers advanced storage features across a wide product line. ONTAP is available as software defined storage, as a first party service through the major cloud providers and as the storage OS for NetApp ASA (All San Array), AFF (All-flash FAS) and FAS (Fabric-Attached Storage) platforms. ONTAP delivers high-performance and low-latency for a variety of use cases including VMware virtualization, without creating silos.

Introduction to VMware Cloud Foundation

VCF integrates compute, network and storage offerings with VMware products and 3rd party integrations, facilitating both native Kubernetes and virtual machine-based workloads. This software platform includes key components such as VMware vSphere, NSX, Aria Suite Enterprise, Tanzu Kubernetes Grid, HCX Enterprise, SDDC Manager and storage-capacity linked to host CPU cores via vSAN. NetApp ONTAP integrates seamlessly with a variety of VCF deployment models both on-premises and in the public cloud.

VMware Cloud Foundation Components

VCF Domains

Domains are a foundational construct within VCF that enable the organization of resources into distinct, independent groupings. Domains help organize the infrastructure more effectively, ensuring resources are utilized efficiently. Each domain is deployed with its own compute, network and storage elements.

VMware Cloud Domains

There are two primary types of domains with VCF:

  • Management Domain – The management domain includes components responsible for the core functions of the VCF environment. The components handle essential tasks such as resource provisioning, monitoring, maintenance and include 3rd party plug-in integrations such as NetApp ONTAP Tools for VMware. Management domains can be deployed using the Cloud Builder Appliance to ensure best practices are followed, or an existing vCenter environment can be converted into a VCF management domain.

  • Virtual Infrastructure Workload Domain – Virtual Infrastructure Workload domains are designed to be pools of resources dedicated to a specific operational need, workload or organization. Workload domains are deployed easily via the SDDC Manager, helping to automate a series of complex tasks. Up to 24 workload domains can be provisioned within a VCF environment, with each representing a unit of application-ready infrastructure.

Storage with VCF

Central to the functionality of domains is the storage that they consume. While VCF includes CPU-core based vSAN capacity for hyper-converged use cases, it also supports a wide range of external storage solutions. This flexibility is crucial for enterprises that have significant investments in existing storage arrays or need to support protocols beyond what vSAN affords. VMware supports multiple storage types with VCF.

There are two primary types of storage with VCF:

  • Principal storage – This storage type is allocated during the initial creation of the domain. For management domains, this storage houses the VCF administrative and operations components. For workload domains, this storage is designed to support the workloads, VMs or containers for which the domain was deployed.

  • Supplemental storage – Supplemental storage can be added to any workload domain after deployment. This storage type helps organizations leverage existing investments in storage infrastructure and integrate various storage technologies to optimize performance, scalability, and cost-efficiency.

Support VCF Storage types

Domain Type

Principal Storage

Supplemental Storage

Management Domain

vSAN
FC*
NFS*

vVols (FC, iSCSI, or NFS)
FC
NFS
iSCSI
NVMe/TCP
NVMe/FC
NVMe/RDMA

Virtual Infrastructure Workload Domain

vSAN
vVols (FC, iSCSI, or NFS)
FC
NFS

vVols (FC, iSCSI, or NFS)
FC
NFS
iSCSI
NVMe/TCP
NVMe/FC
NVMe/RDMA

Note: * Specific protocol support provided when using VCF Import Tool with existing vSphere environments.

Why ONTAP for VCF

In addition to use cases involving investment protection and multi-protocol support, there are many additional reasons to take advantage of external shared storage within a VCF workload domain. It may be assumed that storage provisioned for a workload domain is merely a repository to host VMs and container. However, organization needs often outgrow the capabilities of the licensed-capacity and require enterprise storage. Storage provided by ONTAP, allocated to domains within VCF, is easy to deploy and offers a future-proof shared storage solution.

Why ONTAP for VCF

For more information regarding the top ONTAP Benefits for VMware VCF identified below see Why ONTAP for VMware.

  • Flexibility on day 1 and as you scale

  • Offload storage tasks to ONTAP

  • Best in class storage efficiency

  • Enterprise-grade data availability

  • Efficient backup and recovery operations

  • Wholistic business continuity capabilities

Additional information:

Summary

ONTAP provides a platform that addresses all workload requirements, offering customized block storage solutions and unified offerings to enable faster results for VMs and applications in a reliable and secure manner. ONTAP incorporates advanced data reduction and movement techniques to minimize the data center footprint, while ensuring enterprise-level availability to keep critical workloads online. Additionally, the AWS, Azure and Google support NetApp-powered external storage to enhance vSAN storage in VMware cloud-based clusters as part of their VMware-in-the-Cloud offerings. Overall, NetApp's superior capabilities make it a more effective choice for VMware Cloud Foundation deployments.

Documentation resources

For detailed information on NetApp offerings for VMware Cloud Foundation, refer to the following the following:

VMware Cloud Foundation Documentation

Four (4) part blog series on VCF with NetApp

VMware Cloud Foundation with NetApp All-Flash SAN Arrays

VMware Cloud Foundation with NetApp All-Flash AFF Arrays

NetApp FlexPod solutions for VMware Cloud Foundation