Amazon News of AWS on Storage

Amazon announced new services and solutions for AWS.

EFS Archive storage class
EFS Archive is a storage class that is cost-optimized for long-lived file data that is accessed a few times a year or less.

With EFS Archive, you have a cost-effective way to retain even your coldest data so that it’s always available to power new business insights. In addition, as part of this launch, the storage price for the existing EFS Infrequent Access (IA) storage class is being reduced by 36% to make EFS a better solution for sharing a range of data.

With EFS Archive, you can easily and cost-effectively share data for a wide spectrum of use cases – from data analytics to ML training to SaaS applications – with the same instant access, GB/s throughput, and designed-for 11 9s durability that EFS delivers today. EFS Archive supports the same intelligent tiering experience as existing EFS storage classes, which means that you can now combine the sub-millisecond SSD latencies of EFS Standard for your active frequently-accessed data with the lower costs of EFS IA and EFS Archive for your colder data. When needed, all your data is accessible from a single EFS file system that’s automatically cost-optimized for a mix of active and inactive data. With EFS Archive, customers can save up to 50% – compared to the reduced price of EFS IA – when storing long-lived, rarely-accessed data.

EFS Archive and the EFS IA price reduction are available for all file systems using the EFS Elastic Throughput mode, in all commercial AWS regions and GovCloud (US) regions.

Resources :
Video : Amazon EFS Archive introduction
Blog : Optimize your storage costs for rarely-accessed files with Amazon EFS Archive    
User guide
Enable Lifecycle Management using the Amazon EFS Console, API, or AWS CLI.

Amazon EFS supports up to 250,000 IO/s/file system
EFS supports up to 250,000 read IO/s and up to 50,000 write IO/s per file system, making it easier to power IO/s-intensive file workloads on AWS.

It provides serverless, fully elastic file storage that makes it simple to set up and run file workloads in the cloud. It supports up to 250,000 read IO/s (4.5x improvement) when you are working with frequently-accessed data and up to 50,000 write IO/s (2x improvement). With these IO/s improvements, you can easily run more demanding workloads on EFS, such as AI/ML (iterative training, fine- tuning, inferencing), data science user shares, SaaS applications, and media processing. 

These higher IO/s limits are available for EFS file systems using Elastic Throughput, in all commercial AWS regions and the AWS GovCloud (US) regions.

Resource:
Amazon EFS Documentation.

FSx for NetApp Ontap scale-out file systems
Now, you can create FSx for Ontap scale-out file systems that deliver up to 36GB/s of throughput and 1.2 million IO/s – 9x higher performance than before. FSx for Ontap is a first storage service that allows you to launch and run fully managed, fully-featured Ontap file systems in the cloud. This allows you to migrate or extend your workloads that rely on Ontap’s widely used data management features to AWS without having to modify your applications, tools, processes, or workflows. Now, you can leverage Ontap’s data management features for a broader range of high-performance workloads on AWS.

All FSx for Ontap file systems created before today are ‘scale-up’ file systems, powered by a single, HA pair of file servers delivering up to 4GB/s of throughput and 160,000 IO/s. Most workloads are well-served by the performance of a single HA pair file system. However, customers with the most compute-intensive Ontap workloads – such as large-scale electronic design automation, seismic analysis, and clustered databases – need higher performance than a single pair of file servers can deliver. Now, you can create scale-out FSx for Ontap file systems with a maximum throughput of 36GB/s and 1.2 million IO/s – offering up to 9x higher performance than existing file systems. Scale-out file systems deliver the performance of multiple file systems in one by automatically spreading your workloads across multiple (up to 6) pairs of file servers – each delivering up to 6GB/s of throughput and 200,000 IO/s – enabling to lift-and-shift more high-performance Ontap workloads to AWS.

Scale-out file systems are available in the following AWS regions: US East (N. Virginia, Ohio), US West (Oregon), Europe (Ireland), and AsiaPac (Sydney, Australia).

FSx for OpenZFS supports on-demand data replication across file systems
AWS announces on-demand data replication for FSx for OpenZFS, enabling you to easily and efficiently transfer incremental point-in-time snapshots of volumes between file systems.

On-demand data replication provides a simple and resilient way to replicate production data in a separate file system for development, experimentation, and analytics workloads.

FSx for OpenZFS provides fully managed, cost-effective, shared file storage powered by the OpenZFS file system, with OpenZFS-powered data management capabilities like snapshots, data cloning, and compression, as well as sub-millisecond latencies and up to 10GB/s of throughput. Previously, you could use snapshots to replicate volumes within a file system, making it to test new changes to your data and applications. Now, you can also replicate volumes across file systems, enabling full isolation of production and development workloads, so developers or analysts can work with production data without impacting the production environment.

You can replicate volumes across file systems in the same account and region in all regions where FSx for OpenZFS is available. There is no charge for on-demand data replication, but you will pay standard AWS data transfer charges when you replicate across availability zones from or to a Single-AZ file system.

Resource :
How to use on-demand replication with FSx for OpenZFS file systems,

Manage and backup FSx for Ontap FlexGroup volumes using AWS Console and API
FSx for Ontap, a service that provides fully-managed shared storage built on Ontap file system, now allows you to create, manage, and back up FlexGroup volumes using the AWS Management Console, FSx CLI, and AWS SDK, making it easier to manage and protect your data at-scale.

Ontap offers 2 types of volumes in which you can store your data: FlexVols and FlexGroups. FlexVols are the default Ontap volume type for general-purpose workloads, and FlexGroups are purpose-built to deliver higher performance and storage scalability for large-scale workloads (such as electronic design automation, software build and test, and seismic analysis). Before today you could only use the Ontap CLI or REST API to manage your FlexGroup volumes, and you could not create Amazon FSx backups for your FlexGroup volumes. Now, you can create, manage, and backup your FlexGroup volumes using the AWS Console, FSx CLI, and AWS SDK, giving you more flexibility in how you manage and protect your data.

You can manage FlexGroup volumes with AWS-native management tools for all FSx for Ontap file systems and backup FlexGroup volumes on file systems created on or after November 15, 2023 in all AWS Regions where FSx for Ontap is available.

Resources:
Blog : FlexGroup Volume Management for Amazon FSx for NetApp Ontap is now available   
FSx for Ontap user guide

AWS mainframe modernization data replication with Precisely is available for IBM i
AWS announces public availability of AWS Mainframe Modernization Data Replication with Precisely for IBM i.

The capability, already available to mainframe augmentation customers, is now also available for midrange systems including IBM i, iSeries, System i, or AS/400. It leverages data replication offered by Precisely to enable near real-time replication of midrange data to the AWS Cloud with support for heterogeneous source and target databases. It builds resilient high-performance data pipelines that replicate data changes via Change Data Capture (CDC) from midrange data stores to AWS database services like Amazon Aurora and Amazon RDS. As a result, businesses can modernize and augment midrange applications by offloading data processing, building new business functions or channels, and driving business insights and intelligence with analytics, ML and AI on the AWS Cloud to speed modernization and deliver cost savings, agility, and innovation.

Use cases enabled by capability are:

• Near-zero downtime and no data loss during production switchover to modernize midrange applications on the AWS Cloud
• Cloud-based reporting, analytics, ML, and AI based on midrange data replicated to data warehouses, data lakes, and data marts on the AWS Cloud
• Innovation with new business functions, channels, and services based on midrange data replicated to AWS Cloud
• Application equivalence testing of migrated midrange applications using test environments and test data residing on the AWS Cloud

Contact AWS sales representative to adopt AWS Mainframe Modernization Data Replication.

Resources:
AWS Mainframe Modernization service
Documentation pages.

AWS Elastic DR in GovCloud (US) Regions
AWS Elastic Disaster Recovery (AWS DRS) announces general availability in the AWS GovCloud (US) Regions.

This launch gives customers in both the public and commercial sectors, as well as their partners, access to AWS DRS capabilities in the AWS GovCloud (US) Regions.

AWS DRS minimizes downtime and data loss with fast, reliable recovery of on-premises and cloud-based applications using affordable storage, minimal compute, and point-in-time recovery. It helps increase application resilience and enables organizations to meet availability goals for their AWS-based applications, using AWS DRS to recover applications in a different AWS Region – now including the AWS GovCloud (US) Regions.

With this launch, AWS DRS is available in all commercial and AWS GovCloud (US) Regions.

Resources:
AWS Regional Services List for the latest availability information.
AWS DRS product page
AWS DR documentation
Get started, sign in to AWS Elastic Disaster Recovery Console. 

AWS Backup supports Amazon Elastic Block Store (EBS) snapshots archive
AWS Backup announces support for EBS Snapshots Archive, allowing customers to automatically move EBS Snapshots created by AWS Backup to EBS Snapshots Archive. EBS Snapshots Archive is low-cost, long-term storage tier meant for your rarely-accessed snapshots that do not need frequent or fast retrieval, allowing you to save up to 75% on storage cost.

User can now use AWS Backup to transition your EBS Snapshots to EBS Snapshots Archive and manage their lifecycle, alongside AWS Backup’s other supported resources. EBS Snapshots are incremental, storing only the changes since the last snapshot and making them cost effective for daily and weekly backups that need to be accessed frequently. You may also have EBS snapshots that you only need to access every few months or years, retaining them for long-term regulatory requirements. For these long-term snapshots, you can now transition your EBS snapshots managed by AWS Backup to EBS Snapshots Archive Tier to store full, point-in-time snapshots at lower storage costs

AWS Backup support for EBS Snapshots Archive is available in all commercial regions, where AWS Backup and EBS Snapshots Archive are available.

Resources:
Using AWS Backup console, API, or CLI.
Blog: Amazon EBS Snapshots Archive is now available with AWS Backup    
Documentation

DR drill validation automation for AWS Elastic DR
AWS Elastic DRS (AWS DRS) now allows you to automate validations when launching EC2 instances for recovery and drills. This saves you time used to perform tedious manual verifications, as AWS DRS empowers you to define custom automated validations tailored to your specific needs. Also, you can leverage the convenience of pre-defined validations such as volume free space detection and network connectivity verification, providing you with the tools to conduct thorough drills to ensure robust and resilient production environments.

AWS Elastic DR helps minimize downtime and data loss with fast, reliable recovery of on-premises and cloud-based applications using affordable storage, minimal compute, and point-in-time recovery. With this change, you can now include and automate any required validation in the AWS DRS launch flow, and raise your confidence that if a disaster strikes, the recovery of your applications will be successful.

The new capabilities are available in all of the AWS regions where AWS Elastic Disaster Recovery is supported.

Resources:
AWS Regional Services List formost up-to-date availability information
AWS Elastic Disaster Recovery product page
Documentation
Get started, sign in to AWS Elastic Disaster Recovery Console.

AWS Backup launches support for restore testing
AWS Backup announces the availability of restore testing, a new capability within AWS Backup that helps perform automated and periodic restore tests of supported AWS resources that have been backed up. It is a fully managed service that centralizes and automates data protection across AWS services and hybrid workloads. With this launch, AWS Backup customers can test recovery readiness to prepare for possible data loss events and to measure duration times for restore jobs to satisfy compliance or regulatory requirements.

Get started with restore testing using the AWS Backup console, API, or CLI. User start by configuring a restore testing plan. You can integrate it with your test suites using Amazon EventBridge (CloudWatch Events), validating the restored services and sending back completion status. After the restore testing plan completes its run, you can use the results to show compliance for organizational or governance requirements such as the successful completion of restore test scenarios or the restore job completion time.

AWS Backup support for restore testing is available in the following regions: US East (N. Virginia, Ohio), US West (N. California, Oregon), Africa (Cape Town), AsiaPac (Hong Kong, Hyderabad, Jakarta, Melbourne, Mumbai, Osaka, Seoul, Singapore, Sydney, Tokyo), Canada (Central), Europe (Frankfurt, Ireland, London, Milan, Paris, Spain, Stockholm, Zurich), Middle East (Bahrain, UAE), and South America (Sao Paulo).

Resources:
AWS Backup product page
Blog: Automatic restore testing and validation now available in AWS Backup    
Documentation