Custom dashboards now make it easier to manage your work.

You can edit dashboards directly from the catalog, including metrics, charts, and time ranges.

When you edit a dashboard, Workload Factory reopens the chat with your previous prompts and messages. You can then update the dashboard, save your changes, or restore the previous version.

Only the dashboard creator can edit the dashboard. While you are editing, other users cannot see your changes until you save them.

The dashboard catalog now includes more filters to help you quickly find dashboards based on category and status.

If your administrator disables AI features or your monthly credit limit is reached, dashboard creation and editing are disabled.

Learn about custom dashboards

Create a custom dashboard

Manage custom dashboards

Troubleshoot custom dashboards

Workload Factory now detects more AWS services for workload tagging, expanding support for resources that can be tagged. It can now find Amazon EKS and Amazon WorkSpaces resources and include them in the tagging system so they are available for tagging.

The cost dashboard now includes a cost executive summary section that provides an overview of your organization's spending, helping you quickly understand and manage costs. Ask Me, the AI assistant for Workload Factory, can provide additional insights and recommendations based on your cost data. You can interact with Ask Me to get detailed explanations and suggestions for optimizing your costs.

In addition, you can filter the cost data by one or more file systems and one or more volumes within a file system. When filters are applied, Workload Factory displays:

All cost information comes directly from the AWS Cost Explorer API except for file system and volume-level cost allocation; Workload Factory estimates file system- and volume-level cost allocation.

You can access the well-architected dashboard from the main menu in the Workload Factory console and from within a file system. To find the well-architected dashboard from the main menu, select the main menu and then select Well-architected.

Workload Factory now includes the following configurations in the well-architected analysis for FSx for ONTAP file systems:

Learn more about best practice recommendations for your FSx for ONTAP file systems.

Volumes explorer is a central place in the Workload Factory console where you can view and manage all your volumes across different file systems. It provides detailed information about each volume, including its performance, usage, and protection status. The enhancements for this release include workload selection, volume latency display, and ARP/AI status for volumes.

When the status of a replication relationship is unhealthy, Workload Factory sends an email notification every 24 hours while the relationship remains unhealthy. Reminder notifications stop when the relationship returns to a healthy state.

Workload Factory supports two types of ONTAP credentials for an FSx for ONTAP file system: primary and restricted. By default, a file system uses the primary ONTAP credentials. We use restricted credentials only for AI operations (AIOps) like Rule builder, Custom dashboards, and Ask Me, our AI assistant. Now you can add your own credentials, using either a username and password or a secret ARN, to restrict access for AIOps features.

Manage ONTAP credentials for an FSx for ONTAP file system

Workload Factory now includes a Workloads field in volume creation so that you can select the workload to associate with the volume. This ensures that the volume is optimized for the intended workload from the moment it is created.

Create a volume in the Workload Factory console

Workload Factory now recognizes the preferred FlexCache write mode for volumes and recommends changing it if necessary to optimize performance.

All link documentation is now covered in the Workload Factory setup and administration documentation. You can still refer to the Learn about NetApp Workload Factory links from the Workload Factory FSx for ONTAP documentation and find links to the relevant pages in the setup and administration documentation.

Learn more about configuring links in the Workload Factory console.

Workload Factory now supports finding connections between hosts and storage across multiple AWS regions as part of the workload tagging service. It can identify and link hosts and storage resources across regions, including mapping IP addresses between regions, so host-to-storage relationships are tagged and classified correctly.

Workload Factory now more accurately identifies and classifies workloads and hosts in the workload tagging service. Updated detection methods reduce misclassification and provide more accurate tagging and classification results.

Workload Factory now gives you a clearer view of your file systems in the interface. You can view SSD capacity and throughput usage trends, workload summaries, and detailed configuration information directly from the file system overview. Workload Factory now more accurately identifies and classifies workloads and hosts in the workload tagging service. Updated detection methods reduce misclassification and provide more accurate tagging and classification results.

Workload Factory for Databases supports multiple file systems per a single Microsoft SQL Server instance. You can register multiple file systems in a SQL Server instance, and fix one configuration issue for multiple file systems in a SQL Server instance at the same time.

Workload Factory AIOps uses AI to analyze your environment and recommend improvements. If you approve, it can also take actions using the credentials and permissions you set up. AI agents analyze your environment, helping you find risks, improve workloads, and troubleshoot issues in Workload Factory and Slack.

Access AI agents in the new Explore Agents section in Ask Me. By default, agents run in read-only mode and provide recommendations and analysis.

Use Agents settings to control how agents work. You can:

These additional controls give you more visibility and oversight. In read-write mode, agents must get your approval before making changes to AWS, ONTAP, or supported APIs. You can also choose how much detail to see in responses, including information about the agent's reasoning and, in Slack, its tool activity.

Agents also support multi-account environments and easier setup. A single agent can securely work across multiple AWS accounts using multiple credentials.

Learn about AI agents

Manage agents settings

You can now tailor a prompt in Ask Me chat to create scheduled tasks. Use scheduled tasks to ask Ask Me to run recurring checks and send updates in chat based on the schedule you define.

Example prompts:

Learn more about Ask Me

Ask Me now supports FSx for ONTAP and Google Cloud NetApp Volumes. Use the same chat experience to get answers and insights across your supported storage environments.

Learn more about Ask Me

NetApp Console notifications are now enabled by default. NetApp Console users will automatically receive Workload Factory notifications without additional configuration.

Workload Factory notifications

Workload Factory now reminds you to complete link association after you successfully add credentials. While credentials enable resource discovery, advanced ONTAP features require link association with the discovered file systems. You'll receive the email notification once a week on Monday. After you complete the link association, the notifications stop.

Workload Factory now alerts you when a Lambda link is not using the latest available image. If automatic upgrades are not supported for a link, the notification shows when a newer version is available.

You can view upgrade instructions from the Links page. The instructions explain how to manually update the Lambda link image and enable automatic upgrades when available. Keeping links up to date gives you access to the latest features, fixes known issues, and applies recent security updates.

You also get an alert in the FSx for ONTAP dashboard when a newer link version is available for a link that does not support automatic upgrades.

SSD capacity management notifications now include detailed error messages for troubleshooting automation failures. Notifications are sent for successful capacity increases, errors during increase operations, capacity check failures, threshold warnings, and recommendations. Error details include specific failure reasons such as missing permissions, concurrent updates in progress, AWS cooldown periods, or CloudWatch metric retrieval issues.

Learn about SSD capacity management.

Latency analysis graphs now support a 1-week time frame in addition to existing options (1 hour, 3 hours, 12 hours, 24 hours, 72 hours). Use the week view to identify longer-term patterns and trends in volume latency behavior.

Learn about latency trend analysis.

Workload Factory now gives you a clearer view of your file systems in the interface. You can view SSD capacity and throughput usage trends, workload summaries, and detailed configuration information directly from the file system overview.

You can now create links directly from the Links page in the Administration menu, in addition to the FSx for ONTAP inventory page and the file system overview page.

Learn more about creating links.

You can compare various cost components of running Microsoft SQL Server workloads like storage, compute, SQL license, snapshots, and clones for your database workloads on FSx for ONTAP file systems against Elastic Block Store (EBS), FSx for Windows File Server, and on-premises storage using only view, planning, and analysis permissions.

Workload Factory improves the onboarding experience for credentials and links, making it easier to get started. After you create your account and log in, select Get started in any workload tile, for example Storage, and the next page takes you through the setup process step by step.

All volume actions are directly available from Volumes explorer for one or more volumes. This makes it quicker to perform volume-level operations. Volume actions include modifying volume settings, managing snapshots, and doing other volume tasks without leaving Volumes explorer. You can also access these actions from the Volumes tab in the FSx for ONTAP file system overview.

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.