Building application templates for your organization
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Select one or more of the NetApp-provided "actions" and quickly build an application template that your organization can use to start optimizing the creation of resources.
Quick start
Get started quickly by following these steps, or scroll down to the remaining sections for full details.
Verify required prerequisites
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Before users can create a Cloud Volumes ONTAP or Azure NetApp Files volume using a template, make sure they have access to a Cloud Volumes ONTAP or Azure NetApp Files Working Environment where the volume will be deployed.
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If you plan to add a Cloud service "action" to your template, such as Cloud Backup, ensure that your environment has an active and licensed Cloud Backup service.
Launch the Application Templates service
Select the AppTemplate service and add your template.
Build the template by selecting "actions" and defining parameters
Follow the creation wizard and define the actions that will be performed by the template.
Requirements
Read the following requirements to make sure that you have a supported configuration.
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If you don’t already have a Connector, see how to create Connectors for AWS, Azure, and GCP.
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When creating a Cloud Volumes ONTAP volume template, make sure you have a Cloud Volumes ONTAP working environment available for your users. See how to launch a Cloud Volumes ONTAP system in AWS, Azure, or in GCP.
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When creating an Azure NetApp Files volume template, make sure you have an Azure NetApp Files working environment available for your users. See how to create an Azure NetApp Files working environment in Cloud Manager.
Special template controls
Before you start creating your template, you should understand some special options that you can set when pre-populating a value for a parameter in a template.
Editable checkbox
Check this box to let the storage admin override the pre-populated value you have entered in the template. This gives the storage admin a suggestion for what the value should be, but it allows them to customize the value when creating the resource.
When unchecked, the user can’t change the value and the hard-coded value in the template is always used when the admin deploys a resource.
Using a regular expression (regex) in fields
There are a few fields within templates that allow you to enter a regex to define the value that your admin can enter in the field; for example "Volume Name" and "Share Name".
As an example, if you enter "^[a-zA-Z][0-9a-zA-Z_]{0,149}$" as the regex for the volume name, it means that "the name should start with an alphabetic character, it can contain only numbers, letters, or the underscore, and it should be 150 or fewer characters in length".
Creating a template for a Cloud Volumes ONTAP volume
See how to provision Cloud Volumes ONTAP volumes for details about all the parameters you need to complete in the Cloud Volumes ONTAP volume template.
For this example we’ll create a template named "CVO volume for databases" and include the following 2 actions:
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Create Cloud Volumes ONTAP Volume
Make the volume for the AWS environment, configure it with 100 GB of storage, set the Snapshot Policy to "default", and enable Storage Efficiency.
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Enable Cloud Backup
Create daily backups with a retention value of 30 copies.
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Select the AppTemplate service and click Add New Template.
The Select_Primary Action page is displayed.
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Select Create Volume in Cloud Volumes ONTAP as the type of resource you want to create, and click Next.
The Add Definitions page is displayed.
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Template Details: Enter the template name CVO volume for databases (for this example) and a more detailed description so that this template can be distinguished from other similar templates.
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Details: Enter the volume name and size.
Field Description Volume Name
Select one of the 5 options. You can let the admin enter any name by selecting Free Text, or you can specify that the volume name must have a certain prefix or suffix, that it contains certain characters, or that it follows rules from a regular expression (regex) you enter.
For example, you could specify that "db" be a required prefix, suffix, or contains; requiring the user to add volume names like "db_vol1", "vol1_db", "vol_db_1".Volume Size
You can specify a range of allowable values, or you can specify a fixed size. This value is in GB. For our example we can add a fixed value 100.
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Protection: Choose whether this volume will have Snapshot copies created by selecting "Default" or some other policy, or choose "None" if you do not want to create Snapshot copies.
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Usage Profile: Choose whether or not NetApp storage efficiency features are applied to the volume. This includes Thin Provisioning, Deduplication, and Compression. For our example, keep storage efficiency enabled.
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Disk Type: Choose the cloud storage provider, the type of disk, and the capacity tier (optional) that will be used for the aggregate that the volume uses for storage. For our example, choose AWS and select GP2 as the Disk Type.
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Protocol: Select NFS or SMB to set the protocol of the volume. And then the provide the protocol details.
NFS Fields Description Access Control
Choose whether access controls are needed to access the volume.
Export Policy
Create an export policy to define the clients in the subnet that can access the volume.
NFS Version
Select the NFS version for the volume: either NFSv3 or NFSv4, or you can select both.
SMB Fields Description Share Name
Select one of the 5 options. You can let the admin enter any name (Free Text) or you can specify that the share name must have a certain prefix or suffix, that it contains certain characters, or that it follows rules from a regular expression (regex) you enter.
Permissions
Select the level of access to a share for users and groups (also called access control lists, or ACLs).
Users / Groups
Specify local or domain Windows users or groups, or UNIX users or groups. If you specify a domain Windows user name, you must include the user’s domain using the format domain\username.
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Tiering Policy: Choose the tiering policy that you would like applied to the volume, or set this to "None" if you do not want to tier cold data from this volume to object storage.
See volume tiering policies for an overview, and see Tiering inactive data to object storage to make sure your environment is set up for tiering.
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Click Next after you have defined the parameters needed for this action.
The Add Actions page is displayed.
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Use the switch to enable Backups (if required), and then set the policy to create daily backups with a 30-day retention value.
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In the read-only Volume Name field the value "$input.[0].name" appears. This just means that the value entered by the admin in the "Volume Name" field will be populated here as well so that Backup functionality is added to the volume.
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Click Next and the Configure Drift page is displayed. In the future this page will allow you to choose whether the Drift feature should be applied to the template. This will allow Cloud Manager to monitor the hard-coded values you entered for parameters when creating this template.
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Click Create Template.
The template is created and you are returned to the Template Dashboard where your new template appears.
Creating a template for an Azure NetApp Files volume
Creating a template for an Azure NetApp Files volume is done in the same manner as creating a template for a Cloud Volumes ONTAP volume.
See how to provision Azure NetApp Files volumes for details about all the parameters you need to complete in the ANF volume template.
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Select the AppTemplate service and click Add New Template.
The Select_Primary Action page is displayed.
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Select Create Volume in Azure NetApp Files as the type of resource you want to create, and click Next.
The Add Definitions page is displayed.
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Azure NetApp Files Details: Add the details for a new or an existing Azure NetApp Files account.
Field Description NetApp Account Name
Enter the name you want to use for the account.
Azure Subscription ID
Enter the Azure Subscription ID. This is the full ID in a format similar to "2b04f26-7de6-42eb-9234-e2903d7s327".
Region
Enter the region using the internal region name.
Resource Group Name
Enter the name of the Resource Group you want to use.
Capacity Pool Name
Enter the name of an existing capacity pool.
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Volume Details: Enter a volume name and size, the VNet and subnet where the volume should reside, and optionally specify tags for the volume.
Field Description Volume Name
Select one of the 5 options. You can let the admin enter any name by selecting Free Text, or you can specify that the volume name must have a certain prefix or suffix, that it contains certain characters, or that it follows rules from a regular expression (regex) you enter.
For example, you could specify that "db" be a required prefix, suffix, or contains; requiring the user to add volume names like "db_vol1", "vol1_db", "vol_db_1".Volume Size
You can specify a range of allowable values, or you can specify a fixed size. This value is in GB.
Subnet
Enter the VNet and subnet. This value includes the full path, in a format similar to "/subscriptions/<subscription_id>/resourceGroups/<resource_group>/ providers/Microsoft.Network/virtualNetworks/<vpc_name>/subnets/<subhet_name>".
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Protocol: Select NFSv3, NFSv4.1, or SMB to set the protocol of the volume. And then the provide the protocol details.
NFS Fields Description Volume Path
Select one of the 5 options. You can let the admin enter any path by selecting Free Text, or you can specify that the path name must have a certain prefix or suffix, that it contains certain characters, or that it follows rules from a regular expression (regex) you enter.
Export Policy Rules
Create an export policy to define the clients in the subnet that can access the volume.
SMB Fields Description Volume Path
Select one of the 5 options. You can let the admin enter any path by selecting Free Text, or you can specify that the path name must have a certain prefix or suffix, that it contains certain characters, or that it follows rules from a regular expression (regex) you enter.
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Snapshot Copy: Enter the Snapshot ID for an existing volume Snapshot if you want this new volume to be created using characteristics from an existing volume.
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Click Next after you have defined the parameters needed for this action.
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Click Next as there are no additional Actions available at this time for ANF volumes.
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In the future the Configure Drift page will allow you to choose whether the Drift feature should be applied to the template. This will allow Cloud Manager to monitor the hard-coded values you entered for parameters when creating this template.
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Click Create Template.
The template is created and you are returned to the Template Dashboard where your new template appears.
What to do after you have created the template
After you have created a template, you should inform your storage administrators to use the template when creating new volumes.
Your users should select Add Volume From Template when adding a volume to a Working Environment in the future. The selection is available from the Working Environment page, and from the Volume Details page. See how to provision Cloud Volumes ONTAP volumes or how to provision Azure NetApp Files volumes using templates.
Editing and deleting a template
You can modify a template if you need to change any of the parameters. After you save your changes, all future resources created from the template will use the new parameter values.
You can also delete a template if you no longer need it. Deleting a template does not affect any of the resources that were created with the template.
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