Workload Factory offers clones for your block devices so that you can provision writable and efficient copies of your data quickly while controlling capacity, access, and lifecycle.

Manage block storage in NetApp Workload Factory

The block device table now includes a column that shows tags of the EC2 hosts which are consuming each block device. This helps you identify which host uses each block device during troubleshooting or audits.

To create tags on each block device, deploy an EC2 instance using our provided user script.

EC2 user data script to assign tags to block devices

Learn about SSD capacity trends directly from the overview for your FSx for ONTAP file systems. The new card for capacity management shows usage trends from the previous month. This analysis compares actual and allocated capacity, making it easy to assess resource use.

Manage capacity automatically in NetApp Workload Factory

After analysis, you can download a PDF 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.

You can now receive Workload Factory notifications via email without configuring an Amazon SNS topic. Enable email notifications to send notifications to any email addresses associated with the account.

You can configure email notifications from either the Workload Factory console or the NetApp Console. The NetApp Console also provides the option to configure NetApp Console notifications that appear under the bell icon.

If you configure notifications in NetApp Console, NetApp Console takes ownership of notification delivery. Notification settings in the Workload Factory console become read-only to prevent duplicate notifications.

The NetApp Workload Factory notification service includes the notification for EDA latency that notifies you when the latency of an EDA operation exceeds a certain threshold.

Configure Workload Factory notifications

The NetApp Workload Factory notification service includes the notification with a monthly cost summary for your account, showing spending trends, unusual changes, and the best savings opportunities for FSx for ONTAP file systems.

Configure Workload Factory notifications

You can now receive automatic notifications when latency events are detected on your FSx for ONTAP volumes. Configure email or Amazon SNS notifications in Workload Factory settings to receive real-time alerts when volumes breach your configured latency thresholds.

Notifications are sent on a file system basis and include details about all affected volumes, severity levels, threshold comparisons, and a direct link to the Latency page for investigation.

Learn how to configure latency notifications.

The latency analysis panel now includes a tabbed interface for comprehensive latency analysis:

The Over time tab displays raw CloudWatch latency data (read or write, depending on which alarm triggered) with warning and critical threshold lines, breach indicators, and detailed metrics for each violation.

This comprehensive visualization helps you identify patterns, understand whether latency issues are recurring or isolated, and make more informed decisions about remediation.

Learn how to analyze latency trends.

Workload Factory analyzes your FSx for ONTAP file systems for inactive NAS volumes. The configuration analysis identifies NAS volumes that are not actively used and recommends actions to optimize storage utilization and reduce costs.

Implement well-architected FSx for ONTAP file systems

The Journal table feature provides a way to manage FSx ONTAP S3 object storage at scale, allowing you to easily audit user access events and operations on objects in your buckets. With Workload Factory, you can set up automatic scans of your buckets and S3 tables to keep a record of events, showing all objects, their details, and user actions.

Set up the journal table infrastructure for NetApp Workload Factory

Workload Factory supports managing existing igroups. You can add or remove block devices and host initiators to deliver your deployed workload on time.

Manage block storage in NetApp Workload Factory

Workload Factory supports creating FlexVol volumes on a chosen aggregate. This allows you to split the capacity and performance load across all the file system resources.

Create a FlexVol volume in NetApp Workload Factory

Workload Factory reports the last access time for block devices. The time is based on when you last accessed the igroup in Workload Factory. Knowing when each block device was last used allows you to optimize your resources.

The well-architected analysis includes the following new configurations for Oracle:

Implement well-architected database configurations in Workload Factory

Workload Factory now offers a one-time assessment to analyze the configurations of your Oracle database deployments whenever needed - new deployments, post-migration, troubleshooting, and more. You'll get recommendations to help you optimize your deployment configurations and comply with best practices. This is your opportunity to use the well-architected feature without fully committing to the setup process. You can assess your databases without storing credentials in Workload Factory, registering database resources, or setting up external connections.

Perform a one-time assessment of your Oracle database deployments

We've enhanced the cost savings analysis for Oracle to provide a consolidated storage solution for several Oracle on-premises databases on one FSx for ONTAP file system. This consolidation optimizes storage costs by reducing the number of file systems required for multiple databases, leading to improved cost savings.

Explore savings for detected databases on Oracle on-premises

The NetApp Workload Factory notification service includes the notification for NetApp Autonomous Ransomware Protection with AI (ARP/AI) for Storage.

Notifications for NetApp Workload Factory

Workload Factory now automatically analyzes the SSD capacity of each FSx for ONTAP cluster in your EDA inventory and generates capacity recommendations when adjustments are needed. The algorithm runs once every 24 hours for each cluster.

When a recommendation is identified:

Select a cluster with an active recommendation to view the recommendation, which explains the suggested change and the reasoning.

Learn more about capacity recommendations.

Latency analysis now includes AI-agent analysis.

For complex scenarios involving data or cluster latency, you can invoke AI-agent analysis to receive:

AI-agent analysis requires Amazon Bedrock model ARN configuration and is available on-demand for scenarios where basic analysis recommends deeper investigation. The AI agent can identify issues such as bully volumes, non-optimal mount point configurations, FlexGroup rebalancing needs, and scale-out requirements.

Learn more about AI-agent analysis.

NetApp Workload Factory now supports Google Cloud VMware Engine. You can migrate your on-premises VMware workloads to Google Cloud VMware Engine using Google Cloud NetApp Volumes as external NFS datastores, optimizing cost and enabling more control over your VMware environment without needing to refactor or re-platform your applications.

The Google Cloud VMware Engine migration advisor provides:

Workload Factory now offers a one-time assessment to analyze the configurations of your SQL Server database deployments whenever needed - new deployments, post-migration, troubleshooting, and more. You'll get recommendations to help you optimize your deployment configurations and comply with best practices. This is your opportunity to use the well-architected feature without fully committing to the setup process. You can assess your databases without storing credentials in Workload Factory, registering database resources, or setting up external connections.

Perform a one-time assessment of your database deployments

You can now discover and register Microsoft SQL Server instances with the Always On availability group (AOAG) deployment model and Oracle databases with the Data Guard deployment model in the Databases workload of NetApp Workload Factory. This enhancement allows for better management of SQL Server and Oracle resources within the Workload Factory console.

After registering your AOAG instances and Data Guard databases, you can take advantage of the various features in Workload Factory for Databases such as viewing resource details and analyzing error logs.

Workload Factory for Databases also supports the well-architected analysis for Microsoft SQL Server instances with the AOAG deployment model. You can analyze the configurations of your SQL Server instances in an availability group and receive recommendations to optimize your deployment configurations and comply with best practices. Register your AOAG instances to enable this feature.

Register resources in Workload Factory for Databases

The well-architected analysis includes Operating system patches for Oracle to check if you have the latest patches on the operating system and tell you how to install them.

Additionally, the well-architected analysis for Oracle notifies you when a configuration such as storage layout has dependencies on other configurations. The notification tells you which actions to optimize linked configurations so that all recommendations we provide are optimal.

Implement well-architected database configurations in Workload Factory

Workload Factory for Databases now analyzes and helps you plan for Oracle on-premises database migration to Amazon FSx for NetApp ONTAP. You can use the savings calculator to estimate the cost of running your Oracle on-premises database environment in the cloud and review recommendations for migrating your on-premises database environment to the cloud.

Explore savings for on-premises database environments

We added a new Ask Me bookmark on every screen in Workload Factory console. This improvement makes it easier and faster for you to access Ask Me whenever you need help. Ask Me is our AI assistant, enabling you to ask questions about your own workload environments, get personalized insights directly from your environment, and refer to previous conversations.

You can open Ask Me from any page by clicking the new bookmark. It launches Ask Me in a side panel without interrupting your current work and offers quick explanations and recommendations related to what you're currently doing.

Learn more about Ask Me

Workload Factory analyzes your FSx for ONTAP file systems for the following configurations:

Workload Factory supports replicating on-premises ONTAP data to FSx for ONTAP and creating S3 access points for AWS Artificial Intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) services to accelerate AI/ML workflows.

Replicate on-premises data for AI & ML use cases

You can change the user and user type for an existing S3 access point attached to a volume. You can also enable or disable metadata for the access point.

Edit S3 access points in NetApp Workload Factory

If you're using block storage, you can view the block storage diagram to visualize how block devices connect to nodes and igroups. The diagram helps you understand and manage your block storage.

Manage block storage in NetApp Workload Factory

This update separates the feature into two distinct features: automatic capacity management and capacity notifications.

Automatic capacity management automatically adds or removes file system capacity to maintain optimal performance. New options include incremental and adaptive modes. In incremental mode, the system increases capacity by a fixed amount at thresholds; in adaptive mode, it uses historical data to predict and adjust capacity.

Capacity notifications alert you whenever a capacity adjustment occurs and when file systems reach set limits, so you can manage storage before issues arise.

Learn about automatic capacity management and capacity notifications in NetApp Workload Factory

We added a new Ask Me bookmark on every screen in Workload Factory console. This improvement makes it easier and faster for you to access Ask Me whenever you need help. Ask Me is our AI assistant. You can ask questions about your workload environments, get personalized insights, and review previous conversations.

You can open Ask Me from any page by clicking the new bookmark. It launches Ask Me in a side panel without interrupting your current work and offers quick explanations and recommendations related to what you're currently doing.

Learn more about Ask Me

We added a new Ask Me bookmark on every screen in Workload Factory console. This improvement makes it easier and faster for you to access Ask Me whenever you need help. Ask Me is our AI assistant, enabling you to ask questions about your own workload environments, get personalized insights directly from your environment, and refer to previous conversations.

You can open Ask Me from any page by clicking the new bookmark. It launches Ask Me in a side panel without interrupting your current work and offers quick explanations and recommendations related to what you're currently doing.

Learn more about Ask Me

We added a new Ask Me bookmark on every screen in Workload Factory console. This improvement makes it easier and faster for you to access Ask Me whenever you need help. Ask Me is our AI assistant, enabling you to ask questions about your own workload environments, get personalized insights directly from your environment, and refer to previous conversations.

You can open Ask Me from any page by clicking the new bookmark. It launches Ask me in a side panel without interrupting your current work and offers quick explanations and recommendations related to what you're currently doing.

Learn more about Ask Me

As an IT administrator managing dozens of FSx for ONTAP file systems, you can use the Overview dashboard to answer common operational questions about cluster health, utilization, and volume placement.

The Overview dashboard includes:

The previous main dashboard is now accessible in the Project tab. EDA tabs are now ordered: Overview, Latency , Project, CI/CD.

Learn more about the Overview dashboard.

Latency analysis now includes automated basic analysis. When latency events are detected, the system automatically analyzes ONTAP QoS delay center metrics to identify the source of latency issues.

Basic analysis evaluates QoS policies, disk performance, network issues, and cluster configurations to provide immediate insights in the Details column of the latency events table.

We added a new Ask Me bookmark on every screen in Workload Factory console. This improvement makes it easier and faster for you to access Ask Me whenever you need help. Ask Me is our AI assistant, enabling you to ask questions about your own workload environments, get personalized insights directly from your environment, and refer to previous conversations.

You can open Ask Me from any page by clicking the new bookmark. It launches Ask Me in a side panel without interrupting your current work and offers quick explanations and recommendations related to what you're currently doing.

Learn more about Ask Me

NetApp Workload Factory now supports migration for storage VMs. This feature allows migration of ONTAP storage system data and configurations from on-premises ONTAP systems or first-generation FSx for ONTAP file systems to second-generation FSx for ONTAP file systems. You can replicate storage VM data and configuration settings to move to the new file system with minimal downtime and disruption to users and applications.

To use this feature, create a replication relationship and select Migration as the use case. To complete the migration process, you must cut over the storage VM and its replicated volumes immediately to permanently migrate data and storage VM configuration settings to the target FSx for ONTAP file system.