NetApp has developed a new backup service called NDAS or NetApp Data Availability Services. NDAS is based in the public cloud and provides the ability to run analytics against secondary data in AWS S3, without having re-hydrate through a backup platform. Chris met with Charlotte Brooks (Technical Marketing Engineer) and Joel Kaufman (Director of Technical Marketing) to discuss how NDAS works and what customers are doing with their cloud-based data.

NDAS provides some interesting features that make the product slightly different from existing backup software. The solution runs in AWS using the customer’s account. This ensures data is secure, but also provides the ability to access data directly and run other services (like analytics) against the backup data.

NDAS uses a feature called libC2C to directly access data in S3 as if it was a file system. This self-describing capability means data can be accessed long after the backup software has been shut down, or even decommissioned.

You can read more on NDAS in this blog post that also links to some great Tech Field Day presentations explaining NDAS in more detail.

Elapsed Time: 00:31:51

Timeline

* 00:00:00 – Intros

* 00:01:00 – What happened to Joel’s beard?

* 00:02:00 – NetApp Data Availability Services – NDAS

* 00:05:00 – NDAS is an enabler for getting data into the public cloud

* 00:06:30 – Full SaaS or run in the customer’s own AWS account?

* 00:08:05 – NDAS is deployed through the AWS Marketplace

* 00:10:28 – Today just AWS, possibly other clouds and on-prem in the future

* 00:12:20 – What do we mean by self-describing data?

* 00:16:00 – Scanning file systems isn’t efficient – how is metadata indexed?

* 00:17:44 – What else can customers do with this secondary data?

* 00:20:00 – IT relevance – building an internal catalogue of services

* 00:23:00 – How are customers using NDAS data?

* 00:29:39 – Any teasers for futures?

* 00:31:16 – Wrap Up

Related Blogs & Podcasts

* Exploiting Secondary Data with NDAS from NetApp* #91 – Storage Field Day 18 in Review

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