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Accelerating Innovation: NetApp and the Google Cloud VMware Engine
Niraj Verma
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As IT organizations accelerate their digital transformation amidst a host of new challenges—the rise of remote work, the inability to access data centers—it’s never been a better time to move virtual machines (VMs) to the cloud. Today, NetApp is excited to announce our support for the GA release of Google Cloud VMware Engine, a fully native, first party solution for companies to run VMware-based applications in Google Cloud.

NetApp Cloud Volumes Service for Google Cloud is the perfect complement to this new offering, with robust data management, backup, and disaster recovery capabilities that extend seamlessly across on-premises and cloud environments. NetApp Cloud Volumes Service enables customers running on-premises VMware workloads to seamlessly migrate to Google Cloud without having to re-architect or refactor their applications, allowing them to leverage the value of their existing VMware investments while maintaining operational continuity and avoiding complex data management, hardware refreshes, and procurement cycles.

We have established the gold standard for partnerships at Google Cloud with NetApp Cloud Volumes Service (something that we are extremely proud of), and we have won Google Cloud Infrastructure Partner of the Year two years in a row. Our long-standing commitment to VMware has included a broad portfolio of solutions, and we have learned many lessons that bring immediate value to vSphere virtual machine (VM) workloads in Google Cloud.

There are many potential use cases for our customers:

  • Retire, migrate, or extend data centers
  • Create a new disaster recovery environment or complement an existing one
  • Support remote workers through virtual desktops and design applications
  • Deploy high-performance enterprise applications and databases such as Microsoft SQL Server, and SAP
  • Modernize applications and enable hybrid capabilities

Accelerate your journey to cloud, without disruption

The VMware software-defined data center (SDDC) is intrinsic to many organizations that are running most of their enterprise and mission-critical workloads on premises. There’s a strong desire to seamlessly migrate workloads to Google Cloud to take advantage of native service offerings and improve application portfolios. For enterprises that have large virtual data center environments, VMware Cloud Foundation has become a way to standardize deployment and extend to a hybrid cloud, without having to refactor or rearchitect applications.

With Google Cloud VMware Engine, you no longer have to think about all the underlying complexity and technical nuances in migrating or connecting VMware environments. The solution allows you to run your workloads on a native VMware SDDC stack on bare-metal Google Cloud infrastructure, composed of VMware vSphere, vCenter Server, vSAN, and NSX. NetApp Cloud Volumes Service is a fully managed file storage offering that allows you to deploy high-performance applications in your VMware environment in minutes and easily run them at scale.

Simplify data management

While Google Cloud VMware Engine frees IT from the operational complexity of managing physical infrastructure, Cloud Volumes Service abstracts away the complexity of traditional storage with robust data management, backup, and disaster recovery capabilities built-in. Cloud Volumes Service delivers a native Google Cloud UI for the provisioning and management of cloud volumes that can easily be configured to use with the VMware SDDC stack on Google Cloud.

As shown in the following figure, you can deploy high-performance NFS and SMB shares in the guest OS of the VMs running on Google Cloud. You can then use the rich data management capabilities of NetApp technology to keep workflows intact. Architecture of Google Cloud VMware Engine with NetApp Cloud Volumes Service: File Shares

Modernize business process agility

With Cloud Volumes Service for Google Cloud VMware Engine, you no longer have to worry about designing and scaling your enterprise storage requirements. NetApp and Google Cloud have spent more than two years working together to simplify the process of delivering high-end, enterprise-grade storage services. To highlight just a few benefits
  • Take advantage of dynamic service levels and choose from Standard (16MBps per TB), Premium (64MBps per TB), and Extreme (128MBps per TB) volumes.
  • Change performance or capacity on demand without affecting the availability to the application.
  • Use NetApp Snapshot™ technology to create on-demand copies or set up automated ones according to a predefined schedule enabling you to easily restore corrupted or deleted files.


You also can deploy VMs on NetApp Cloud Volumes Service. As shown in the following figure, you can choose to run your application workloads on NetApp technology as the storage layer, focusing on agility and speed to transform your business processes.

Being able to independently scale storage capacity from the VMware SDDC compute infrastructure is critical to enterprise workloads. NetApp technology not only allows this scaling, but also makes it simple with APIs that can be programmatically invoked. Architecture of Google Cloud VMware Engine with NetApp Cloud Volumes Service: VM Datastores

Making the most of this moment

This is a pivotal time in your digital transformation journey. Chances are that you have large investments in VMware tools and skill sets, and many of your staff members love their VMware environment and don’t want to leave it behind. Today, they don’t have to. NetApp can help you build a data fabric that allows you to solve your data management challenges and meet your workload portability needs.

For any workload that demands robust enterprise storage capabilities — workloads that you were previously forced to keep on premises — you can now enjoy all the benefits of cloud. With VMware pioneering the private cloud for years, extending it to enable hybrid solutions, and now partnering with the most differentiated public cloud — Google Cloud — there couldn’t be a better time for IT leaders to act. Let NetApp help you supercharge your VM workloads and deliver the operational efficiency and seamless user experience you need.

Learn more by watching this video. Or visit  NetApp Cloud Volumes Service for Google Cloud. `); }); });
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