NetApp has wrapped up Elements HCI and the Google Cloud Platform (GCP) into its Data Fabric en route to building a hybrid multi-cloud orchestration or operating system.

Data Fabric is an IT consumption-based, cloud-style service running in local and remote data centres, be they in the customer's organisation or operated in a public cloud belonging to AWS, Azure or GCP.

The customer sites are viewed as quasi regions and apps or services are deployed in the chosen cloud. The actual services are delivered as NetApp Cloud Data Services – a bunch of products to deploy, run, monitor, maintain and manage services.

There are several Cloud Data Services up and running, and NetApp announced this week four new ones – Cloud Volumes HCI; a beta of Cloud Volumes GCP; Cloud Volumes ONTAP for GCP; and NetApp Kubernetes Services for HCI:

Product HCI AWS Azure GCP Cloud Volumes New Yes Yes - Azure NetApp Files New Beta Cloud Volumes ONTAP n/a Yes Yes New NetApp Kubernetes Services New Yes Yes Yes

Cloud Volumes provides file services, such as NFS and CIFS. They have now been extended to support the Elements HCI product, classed as separate deployment region. A beta version of Cloud Volumes for GCP has also been announced.

Cloud Volumes ONTAP provides ONTAP services in public clouds and is already available for AWS and Azure. It's now on CGP too. There is also a Cloud Volumes Service On Premises, a fully managed, pay-per-use, NetApp data storage service.

NetApp Kubernetes Service (NKS) provides Kubernetes orchestration facilities for AWS, Azure and GCP, and that's been extended to the Elements HCI product.

NetApp's Sunnyvale crew have also announced a Fabric Orchestrator toolset. This is a cloud data service to help customers discover, manage, automate, and govern all of their data, on-premises and in the major public clouds.

The NetApp HCI product can be paid for on a consumption basis via monthly payments.

NetApp Cloud Insights is a SaaS-based tool providing infrastructure-monitoring and cost optimisation. It's available as a "freemium" product with a no-charge Basic edition for NetApp systems that includes NetApp's HCI and AFF systems. The service includes monitoring and placement optimisation for NetApp HCI and NetApp Kubernetes Service and real-time dashboards.

NetApp's professional services organisation has got in on the Data Fabric act with services available to help customers design, implement, automate, and orchestrate a Data Fabric setup.

The Reg's take

Two thoughts – all these separate Cloud Data Services could be bundled together to provide a single Data Fabric product.

The Data Fabric is, obviously, about data. Extending it to the Elements HCI NetApp adds compute to the mix. It's very early days but this could be a significant move. ®