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.

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.