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Learn about NetApp Workload Factory for VMware

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NetApp Workload Factory for VMware provides tools to move your data from on-premises systems to Amazon Elastic VMware Service (EVS), VMware Cloud on AWS (VMC), Amazon EC2, or Google Cloud VMware Engine.

What is NetApp Workload Factory for VMware?

NetApp Workload Factory for VMware provides a planning center and migration advisors that enable you to analyze your current virtual machine configurations in on-premises vSphere environments. The migration advisors then generate a plan to deploy recommended VM layouts to Amazon EVS, Amazon EC2, VMware Cloud on AWS vSphere clusters, or Google Cloud VMware Engine, using customized cloud-native storage as external datastores. For AWS environments, this includes Amazon FSx for NetApp ONTAP file systems. For Google Cloud environments, this includes Google Cloud NetApp Volumes. The planning center, acting as the Workload Factory for VMware dashboard, enables you to manage saved VM inventory datasets, and saved migration plans and provision any of the migration plans that you have saved.

Amazon FSx for NetApp ONTAP is an external NFS datastore built on NetApp's ONTAP file system that can be attached to Amazon EVS or Amazon EC2 instances or VMware Cloud on AWS vSphere clusters. Similarly, Google Cloud NetApp Volumes provides external NFS datastores for Google Cloud VMware Engine environments. There is no need to add more hosts to increase available storage; instead, just use these cloud-native storage volumes as external datastores to complement vSAN datastores. This provides you with a flexible, high-performance, virtualized storage infrastructure that scales independently of compute resources.

For more information about Workload Factory, refer to the Workload Factory overview.

How the VMware migration advisors work

The migration advisors can help you move on-premises virtual machines (VMs) and their data, running on any VMware supported datastores, to Amazon EVS, Amazon EC2, VMware Cloud, or Google Cloud VMware Engine datastores, which includes supplemental NFS datastores on an FSx for ONTAP file system or Google Cloud NetApp Volumes.

Note that you can attach up to four (4) FSx for ONTAP volumes to a single vSphere cluster on VMware Cloud on AWS.

What you can do with the migration advisors

The migration advisors provide the following functionality:

  • Analyze current on-premises VM configurations

  • Determine which VMs to migrate to Amazon EC2, Amazon EVS, VMware Cloud on AWS, or Google Cloud VMware Engine

  • Identify the space required on cloud-native storage volumes to be used as VM external datastores

  • Review resulting report to understand the deployment steps

  • Perform the actual deployment (for Amazon EC2, Amazon EVS, and VMware Cloud on AWS)

The migration advisor supports configuration planning for a single Amazon EVS, Amazon EC2, or VMware Cloud on AWS cluster connected to Amazon FSx for NetApp ONTAP file systems, or a Google Cloud VMware Engine cluster connected to Google Cloud NetApp Volumes.

Benefits of using the migration advisors

Transitioning parts of your current infrastructure to Amazon EC2, Amazon EVS, VMware Cloud on AWS, or Google Cloud VMware Engine using cloud-native storage as external NFS datastores provides the following benefits:

  • Cost optimization due to host and storage decoupling and advanced data efficiency

  • Ability to grow the storage capacity as needed without the need to purchase additional host instances

  • NetApp ONTAP data management capabilities in the cloud, such as space efficient snapshots, cloning, compression, deduplication, compaction, and replication

  • Reduction in management of hardware refreshes

  • Ability to change data throughput, IOPS, and the size of the file system in addition to increase or decrease the size of volumes

  • High availability supporting multiple Availability Zone (AZ) deployments

  • Cost and latency reduction from single-AZ configurations that use VPC peering without requiring a Transit Gateway

Tools to use NetApp Workload Factory

You can use NetApp Workload Factory with the following tools:

  • Workload Factory console: The Workload Factory console provides a visual, holistic view of your applications and projects.

  • NetApp Console: The NetApp Console provides a hybrid interface experience so that you can use Workload Factory along with other NetApp data services.

  • Ask me: Use the Ask me AI assistant to ask questions and learn more about Workload Factory without leaving the Workload Factory console. Access Ask me from the Workload Factory help menu.

  • CloudShell CLI: Workload Factory includes a CloudShell CLI to manage and operate AWS and NetApp environments across accounts from a single, browser-based CLI. Access CloudShell from the top bar of the Workload Factory console.

  • REST API: Use the Workload Factory REST APIs to deploy and manage your FSx for ONTAP file systems and other AWS resources.

  • CloudFormation: Use AWS CloudFormation code to perform the actions you defined in the Workload Factory console to model, provision, and manage AWS and third-party resources from the CloudFormation stack in your AWS account.

  • Terraform NetApp Workload Factory provider: Use Terraform to build and manage infrastructure workflows generated in the Workload Factory console.

Well-architected analysis for EVS environments

The Well-architected tab provides automated daily analysis of your Amazon Elastic VMware Service (EVS) environments to ensure alignment with AWS and NetApp best practices. The tab identifies configuration issues and provides detailed remediation guidance to help you maintain optimal operations, security, and cost efficiency.

Automatic scans are performed using AWS APIs—no vSphere credentials are required. Findings are organized by configuration area, with each finding including status, severity levels, impacted resource details, and step-by-step remediation procedures.

Implement well-architected EVS configurations in Workload Factory. == Cost

There is no cost for using Workload Factory for VMware.

You'll need to pay for AWS resources that you deploy based on the recommendations from the migration advisors.

Licensing

No special licenses are needed from NetApp to use Workload Factory for VMware.

Regions

Workload Factory is supported in all commercial regions where FSx for ONTAP is supported. View supported Amazon regions.

The following AWS regions aren't supported:

  • China regions

  • GovCloud (US) regions

  • Secret Cloud

  • Top Secret Cloud