Today, we're excited to announce the general availability (GA) of Azure NetApp Files, the industry’s first bare-metal cloud file storage and data management service. Azure NetApp Files is an Azure first-party service for migrating and running the most demanding enterprise file-workloads in the cloud including databases, SAP, and high-performance computing applications with no code changes. Today’s milestone is the result of deep investment by both companies to provide a great experience for our customers through a service that’s unique in the industry.

Since launching in preview mode, several Fortune 100 enterprises across the world have provided valuable feedback that helped us enrich the service.

“We wanted an on-premise like performance for our reservoir simulation and analysis software. We were thrilled to see Azure NetApp Files exceeding our expectations with an over 5x performance increase. Most importantly, the massive scale-up/down capability of Azure NetApp Files now allows for pure cloud-based consumption of both capacity AND performance,” said Juan Pedro Bretti, Digital Transformation Engineer, E&P at Repsol.

Azure NetApp Files represents the culmination of a deep partnership between Microsoft and NetApp, combining NetApp’s proven and industry-leading ONTAP technology with the scale, reach, and enterprise capabilities of Azure.

“Azure NetApp Files is the most significant proof-point of NetApp’s commitment to accelerate our customer’s digital transformation, said Anthony Lye, Senior Vice President and General Manager of Cloud BU at NetApp. “We have partnered extensively with Microsoft across engineering, sales, and marketing to help customers benefit from the availability of our industry leading storage and data management technology on Azure. The general availability of Azure NetApp Files is also a fantastic moment to thank our customers for their enormous interest and feedback that has helped shaped this service.”

Read more about NetApp’s perspective on this announcement on the NetApp blog.

Deep integration of NetApp’s industry leading ONTAP storage and data management technology into Azure provides unique value to our customers in several ways:

Seamless Azure experience

Azure NetApp Files is a fully managed cloud service with full Azure portal integration and access via REST API and Azure SDKs, and soon via Azure CLI and PowerShell. It’s sold and supported exclusively by Microsoft. Customers can seamlessly migrate and run applications in the cloud without worrying about procuring or managing storage infrastructure. Additionally, customers can purchase Azure NetApp Files and get support through existing Azure agreements, with no up-front or separate term agreement.

Power of NetApp ONTAP

NetApp’s ONTAP systems serve hundreds of thousands of customers and has earned the trust of enterprise organizations over decades. The technology provides proven protocol support, including support for NFSv3 and SMB 3.1. It enables powerful data management with snapshots of datasets, high availability, and can achieve sub-millisecond latency.

Advanced security for business-critical data

Azure NetApp Files is built and operated with Azure’s industry-leading standards and processes for security, and benefits from the multi-layered security provided by Microsoft across its physical datacenters, infrastructure, and operations. Azure NetApp Files provides FIPS-140-2-compliant data encryption at rest, role-based access control (RBAC), Active Directory authentication (enabled for SMB), and export policies for network-based access control.

Support for hybrid scenarios

Azure NetApp Files enables easy migration of data across on-premises and cloud infrastructures using Cloud Sync, a NetApp service for rapid, security-enhanced data synchronization. This simplifies lift and shift and DevOps scenarios with capabilities like instantaneous snapshot, restore, and Active Directory integration (for SMB) that work the same way in the cloud and on premises. Integrated data replication and backup will be available in the near future. Learn more about Cloud Sync.

Get started with Azure NetApp Files

You can request onboarding to Azure NetApp Files by submitting an online request or by reaching out to your Microsoft representative.

We will continue to strongly partner with NetApp and look forward to hearing your feedback on Azure NetApp Files. You can email us at ANFFeedback@microsoft.com or share your ideas and suggestions for Azure Storage on our feedback forum.