Several database configurations have been combined and renamed to the following configurations in the well-architected analysis.

Configuration analysis in Workload Factory

Permissions for Databases were updated to improve feature access and limit SSM access where unnecessary.

The view, planning, and analysis permissions are limited to AWS SSM documents. With these permissions, you can view hosts, instances, and databases. You can also run a basic on-demand well-architected analysis of your resources.

The operations and remediation permissions allow you to make changes to your resources, analyze error logs, get a comprehensive well-architected analysis of your resources and fix configuration issues.

Permissions reference

Permissions for Databases were updated to improve feature access and limit SSM access where unnecessary.

The view, planning, and analysis permissions are limited to AWS SSM documents. With these permissions, you can view hosts, instances, and databases. You can also run a basic on-demand well-architected analysis of your resources.

The operations and remediation permissions allow you to make changes to your resources, analyze error logs, get a comprehensive well-architected analysis of your resources and fix configuration issues.

Permissions reference

You can control access to AI features across your organization with the following settings in Workload Factory administration.

The new administration page lets you manage these settings in one place.

AI features include Ask Me, custom dashboards, rule builder, and analyzers for EMS, database logs, and volume latency.

If AI features are turned off, users will see a message that AI is unavailable.

Learn about managing AI features

As a Workload Factory administrator, you can control access to AI latency analysis across your organization.

You can now manage throughput increase behavior from the EDA Overview page for one or more selected FSx for ONTAP file systems.

Learn how to use the Overview dashboard.

The well-architected analysis is now available for FSx for ONTAP file systems from the new well-architected dashboard in NetApp Workload Factory. The new dashboard provides a centralized view of all your file systems across accounts and regions and their configurations in one place. A popup notification appears when you visit the Well-architected tab from a file system. Access the new dashboard by selecting Well-architected from the left navigation menu in Workload Factory.

You can still access the well-architected analysis for a specific file system and from the Well-architected menu option in Storage.

The Storage dashboard now includes two new widgets to help you understand how you use storage and find ways to optimize it.

Each insight includes a summary, detailed findings, and recommended actions. Expand an insight to see more details and prioritize issues based on severity, performance improvements, and cost-saving opportunities.

Workloads are not tagged when an administrator disables AI features. If AI features are turned off in your Workload Factory account settings, the tagging service will not identify or classify workloads on your storage resources.

Learn about AI administration.

Explore savings now uses a consistent snapshot-capacity calculation, so FSx for ONTAP savings estimates correctly account for the additional snapshot capacity pool requirement.

Explore savings for your storage environments on Amazon Elastic Block Store, FSx for Windows File Server, and Elastic File System.

You can now send S3 access point events to the SNS topic on a set schedule. Each update includes all events that have occurred since the last update.

To set up notifications for S3 events, edit S3 access points and select Send S3 events by SNS under the Journal table section.

Volumes explorer now includes ONTAP features in the volumes table. These features provide more detailed insights into the configuration and status of your volumes, like protection coverage, Autonomous Ransomware Protection (ARP/AI) status, storage efficiency, tiering policy, and volume autogrow.

The EVS TCO calculator now supports AWS i7i.metal-24xl EC2 instances as cluster hosts. Compared to i4i.metal configurations, these instances lower the EVS starting cost by about 33% for compute and 25% for vSAN storage.

The calculator automatically compares both instance types and selects the most cost-efficient option. A new comparison section shows EVS host configurations side by side, making it easier to find the best setup for your needs.

Calculate estimated savings for EVS

Volumes Explorer gives you a simple, searchable view of all your volumes in NetApp Workload Factory. Quickly see which volumes serve block or file workloads. View each volume's logical size, physical used capacity, and whether it uses storage efficiency features (compression, deduplication, and compaction). Filter and sort by name, status (available/failed), latency, size, used capacity, and protection features.

Email notifications for replication delays now include more details about the affected relationship. The notification helps you quickly identify the affected relationship and look into it in the Workload Factory console.

Enable notifications for replication delays

Workload Factory supports block device creation from a volume snapshot.

Create a block device from a volume snapshot in Workload Factory

Workload Factory now identifies and tags volumes and block devices by their primary workload or application. You can assign predefined workload tags such as Microsoft SQL Server or Oracle Database, or create custom tags for your applications. Tags can be applied to individual resources or inherited by connected storage resources. This helps you align storage configurations with workload requirements, understand incident impact, and troubleshoot more effectively.

Create AI-powered dashboards that match your workloads and priorities so you can easily see how your operations are performing. Instead of relying on fixed views, custom dashboards let you focus on the information that matters most.

Just describe what you want to track in plain language, and the AI will create a dashboard based on your request. For example, you can track disaster recovery status, capacity and costs across regions, storage protection compliance, and other operational metrics.

Custom dashboards are read-only, so they cannot change your storage or workload settings. Anyone in your Workload Factory account can view and manage these dashboards, making it easy for teams to share insights and stay aligned.

Learn more about custom dashboards

The GenAI workload has been removed from the Workload Factory console.

The latency analysis panel now includes a Detailed latency analysis page with synchronized performance graphs:

All graphs use the same timeline and automatically show the correct metrics based on whether the event is a read or write.

You can adjust the view and correlate latency spikes with changes in IOPS and throughput. Breach markers and hover details help you see when thresholds were exceeded and review key metrics for the detected breach.

Learn how to analyze latency trends with multiple graphs.

You can now choose how often to receive email notifications for latency breaches:

If multiple latency issues occur on the same file system in one day, you'll receive only one email.

After sending a latency alert for a file system, Workload Factory waits 24 hours before sending another alert for that file system.

Daily notifications are enabled by default to reduce email volume while still alerting you to latency issues. You can change your notification preference when setting up latency monitoring or editing threshold settings.

Learn how to configure latency monitoring.

NetApp Workload Factory for Databases lets you customize savings for Oracle hosts on Amazon Elastic Block Store (EBS). You can adjust several fields like the snapshot frequency, the number of cloned copies, and volume details to see how they affect your savings.

Explore savings for Oracle hosts on EBS

NetApp Workload Factory for Databases now allows you to select multiple security groups when deploying Microsoft SQL Server and PostgreSQL hosts. This gives you greater flexibility when configuring network security for your database workloads.

NetApp Workload Factory supports AWS GovCloud (US) accounts. Using a GovCloud account, you can deploy and manage database workloads in the AWS GovCloud (US) regions.

NetApp Workload Factory supports AWS GovCloud (US) accounts. Using a GovCloud account, you can deploy and manage storage workloads in the AWS GovCloud (US) regions.

You can configure latency thresholds on a per-volume basis to monitor performance and receive alerts when latency values exceed your defined limits. Workload Factory monitors both read and write latency and generates alerts when either threshold is exceeded.

Set volume latency thresholds in NetApp Workload Factory

With NetApp Workload Factory, you can track replication delays for your FSx for ONTAP file systems that are configured with remote replication. Replication delays indicate the time delay between when data is written to the source file system and when it is replicated to the destination file system. Tracking replication delays helps you monitor the health of your replication setup and identify potential issues that could impact data consistency and recovery point objectives (RPOs).

Track replication delays in NetApp Workload Factory

Workload Factory identifies the hosts that consume storage and the types of workloads that are associated with host activity. Workload definitions are AI-generated based on AWS tags and metadata. You can view host details and workload definitions from the file system, volume, and block device resource screens in Workload Factory.

We display all file system and storage VM endpoints directly in the Overview tab for a file system. Direct endpoint visibility within the Workload Factory console makes it easier to monitor network access, endpoints, and failover status without using the CLI or CloudShell. To display LIF details including roles, endpoints, nodes, IP addresses, and status, you'll need to associate a link with the file system.

Learn how to associate a link with your file system in NetApp Workload Factory.

New optional page-level filters are available to improve the results for cost analysis for your resources across all AWS accounts. You can select multiple regions and use file system allocation tag key and key values to filter the cost analysis results and get resource-specific cost details for your FSx for ONTAP file systems and volumes.

Use filters for cost analysis in NetApp Workload Factory

During data replication setup, you can now schedule replication initialization for your FSx for ONTAP file systems. The options are to initialize the replication relationship immediately or at a specified time. Replication initialization is the process of creating a baseline for replication by copying data from the source file system to the destination file system. Scheduling replication initialization allows you to automate this process and ensure that your replication setup is up to date without manual intervention.

Replicate data in NetApp Workload Factory

After analysis, you can download an Excel report of the well-architected status of your FSx for ONTAP file systems for your records or to share with your teams.

View the well-architected status of your FSx for ONTAP file systems in NetApp Workload Factory

Workload Factory now supports viewing and analyzing latency events for FSx for ONTAP volumes. You can view latency events without a link connection, making it easier to monitor performance issues. To analyze latency events and receive AI-powered insights and recommendations, you must connect to the file system using a link. Analysis provides current latency values, thresholds, QoS response analysis, and remediation guidance.

Analyze FSx for ONTAP events in NetApp Workload Factory

You can now configure latency thresholds on a per-volume basis to monitor performance and receive alerts when read or write latency exceeds your defined limits. Latency monitoring helps you proactively identify performance issues before they impact your workloads.

Set volume latency thresholds in NetApp Workload Factory

NetApp Workload Factory supports AWS GovCloud (US) accounts. Using a GovCloud account, you can deploy and manage storage workloads in the AWS GovCloud (US) regions.

The NetApp Workload Factory notification service includes the notification for replication delay.

Configure Workload Factory notifications

You can now create AWS GovCloud (US) accounts in Workload Factory. This account type uses only AWS US GovCloud endpoints and regions for setup and operations. Credentials and secrets remain in GovCloud. GovCloud (US) regions are supported.

Create an AWS GovCloud (US) account in Workload Factory

Workload Factory now offers SSD capacity increase management modes to match your operational preferences:

The current mode and its parameters are shown at the top of the SSD usage graph on the file system details page. You can switch modes at any time based on your operational needs.

Learn about SSD management modes.

You can now adjust SSD capacity increase management parameters across multiple file systems from the Overview dashboard. Select one or more clusters in the Clusters table and edit the Threshold (10-90%), Lookback (1-200 hours), and Ahead (1-200 hours) values in bulk.

The edit dialog automatically populates based on your selection: if all selected file systems share the same parameter values, those values are shown; otherwise, default values are used. This helps you apply consistent capacity settings across your environment.

Learn how to bulk edit parameters.

The SSD usage graph now shows decision points indicating when capacity recommendations were generated or automated actions were taken.

Decision points can occur every 30 minutes and are displayed individually or consolidated depending on the selected time range.

Learn about capacity decision points.

The Clusters table on the Overview dashboard now includes an Associated link column that shows whether an FSx for ONTAP link is configured for each file system. Connection status is validated daily, helping you identify file systems that need link configuration or may have connectivity issues.

View the Overview dashboard.

NetApp Workload Factory supports AWS GovCloud (US) accounts. Using a GovCloud account, you can deploy and manage storage workloads in the AWS GovCloud (US) regions.