To say that the team has been busy is an understatement! This month’s update is full of awesome new features that will simplify the way you provide instant restore capability, replicate data for DR, provide long-term backup and restore and even instantly change performance tiers to match your application requirements! Without further ado, let’s run through all the new features below:
Dynamic volume service level change
Volumes can now be changed between service levels instantly. This allows a variety of benefits:
- Lower your costs of DR – with ANF your DR site can be standard tier (lowest-cost) and if you need to invoke DR you simply change it to ultra or premium as part of your failover steps with no data migration at all
- Accelerate system migration or bulk jobs – simply use the fastest storage tier when you need it, reduce your migration or batch processing windows, then right-size to the appropriate tier when you have completed those tasks.
Note: Please use the following powershell instructions to enable this feature: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/azure-netapp-files/dynamic-change-volume-service-level#register-the-feature
Dual protocol volumes
Finally! A single volume can now serve both NFS and SMB simultaneously! This is a must have feature for users that have a mix of windows and linux/unix based environments! Access the volume with the preferred native protocol for maximum compatibility and performance.
Snapshot Policies
Another highly requested feature – volumes can now be associated with user-defined snapshot policies to create, hourly, daily, weekly and monthly snapshots. The retention policy will automatically remove snapshots after the defined period of time.
Note: If you do not see this feature, please use the following PowerShell commands to enable it: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/azure-netapp-files/azure-netapp-files-manage-snapshots#register-the-feature
Private Preview: Azure NetApp Files Backup
This is a highly requested feature that is initially available in US central only (sorry EMEA and APAC – but it will be rolled out globally later this year).
This enables long-term backup of ANF volumes directly to cost effective Azure BLOB storage! Easily set up your backup policies for daily, weekly and monthly retention periods.
NFS 4.1 Client Encryption
Need encryption in flight? Done! End-to-end encryption of NFS 4.1 data traffic for ANF is now here.
NFS Root Access Controls
Enables control of access rules for the root user, sometimes referred to as root squashing. This enables the ability to block the root user from accessing the target volume.
Cross-region enhancements
Read only access is now enabled on the destination volume of a replication relationship, without breaking peering.
