Today NetApp announced the general availability of NetApp Astra, formally known as Project Astra, on Google Cloud. Astra is said to be a fully managed application-aware data management service built for Kubernetes workloads. The service allows businesses to protect, recover, and move applications deployed on Kubernetes with no software to download, install, manage, or upgrade.
Today NetApp announced the general availability of NetApp Astra, formally known as Project Astra, on Google Cloud. Astra is said to be a fully managed application-aware data management service built for Kubernetes workloads. The service allows businesses to protect, recover, and move applications deployed on Kubernetes with no software to download, install, manage, or upgrade.
As we said at the time Project Astra was announced, purpose-built for and in collaboration with Kubernetes developers and operations managers, Astra bridges the gap between the popularity of containers today, the capabilities and user experience they require, and their ability to deliver true, comprehensive portability. NetApp would like to see users’ choice any Kubernetes and then be able to use it on any cloud or on-prem. Project Astra leverages the underlying technology delivered through NetApp’s public cloud partners.
Containers are still growing in popularity and use cases, and Kubernetes will retain its top spot in container orchestration for the foreseeable future. NetApp certainly thinks so as it is putting a lot of eggs into this basket with NetApp Astra. The company goes so far as to state that they view Kubernetes as the next-generation cluster operating system running all workloads, modern and traditional. Time will tell if this turns out to be the case, with the steam behind Kubernetes, they may be on to something. NetApp has embraced Kubernetes to the extent that they leverage it for operating its own NetApp Cloud Volumes Service. Astra is going to help NetApp’s customers adopt and leverages Kubernetes.
Kubernetes doesn’t quite have the same data management functionality of traditional VM-centric IT environments. Users still need data protection, disaster recovery, and migration, and application portability use cases to run business-critical applications on Kubernetes. Astra is set to help with the above while providing a consistent set of tools for data management in Kubernetes clusters. Now with NetApp Astra being generally available in Google Cloud, customers will have access to a fully managed, multi-hybrid cloud application-aware data-management platform.
Key capabilities on NetApp Astra include:
- Data protection with snapshots. Teams can take snapshots for local data protection. If the data is accidentally deleted or corrupted, the applications and associated data can be reverted to a previously recorded snapshot in the same Kubernetes cluster.
- Disaster/data recovery with remote backups. Teams can also take a full application-aware backup of an application and state. The backup can be used to restore the application with its data to a different Kubernetes cluster in the same or a different region to address data recovery use cases.
- Simplified application portability and migration with active clones. Entire applications, along with their data, can be moved from one Kubernetes cluster to another, no matter where the clusters are located.
Availability
NetApp Astra is currently supported by Google Cloud, more specifically Google Kubernetes Engine clusters in Google Cloud, and will soon have support on Microsoft Azure and AWS clouds as well as on-prem.
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