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What's new in Azure NetApp Files | Microsoft Docs
Provides a summary about the latest new features and enhancements of Azure NetApp Files.
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azure-netapp-files
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06/07/2022
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What's new in Azure NetApp Files

Azure NetApp Files is updated regularly. This article provides a summary about the latest new features and enhancements.

June 2022

  • Azure NetApp Files datastores for Azure VMware Solution (Preview)

    Azure NetApp Files datastores for Azure VMware Solution is now in public preview. This new integration between Azure VMware Solution and Azure NetApp Files will enable you to create datastores via the Azure VMware Solution resource provider with Azure NetApp Files NFS volumes and mount the datastores on your private cloud clusters of choice. Along with the integration of Azure disk pools for Azure VMware Solution, this will provide more choice to scale storage needs independently of compute resources. For your storage-intensive workloads running on Azure VMware Solution, the integration with Azure NetApp Files helps to easily scale storage capacity and performance beyond the limits of native vSAN built on top of the AVS nodes and lower your overall total cost of ownership.

    Regional Coverage: Australia East, Australia Southeast, Brazil South, Canada Central, Canada East, Central US, East US, France Central, Germany West Central, Japan West, North Central US, North Europe, South Central US, Southeast Asia, Switzerland West, UK South, UK West, West US. Regional coverage will expand as the preview progresses.

  • Azure Policy built-in definitions for Azure NetApp

    Azure Policy helps to enforce organizational standards and assess compliance at scale. Through its compliance dashboard, it provides an aggregated view to evaluate the overall state of the environment, with the ability to drill down to the per-resource, per-policy granularity. It also helps to bring your resources to compliance through bulk remediation for existing resources and automatic remediation for new resources. Azure NetApp Files already supports Azure Policy via custom policy definitions. Azure NetApp Files now also provides built-in policy to enable organization admins to restrict creation of unsecure NFS volumes or audit existing volumes more easily.

May 2022

April 2022

March 2022

January 2022

  • Azure Application Consistent Snapshot Tool (AzAcSnap) v5.1 Public Preview

    Azure Application Consistent Snapshot Tool (AzAcSnap) is a command-line tool that enables customers to simplify data protection for third-party databases (SAP HANA) in Linux environments (for example, SUSE and RHEL).

    The public preview of v5.1 brings the following new capabilities to AzAcSnap:

    • Oracle Database support
    • Backint Co-existence
    • Azure Managed Disk
    • RunBefore and RunAfter capability

  • LDAP search scope

    You might be using the Unix security style with a dual-protocol volume or Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP) with extended groups features in combination with large LDAP topologies. In this case, you might encounter "access denied" errors on Linux clients when interacting with such Azure NetApp Files volumes. You can now use the LDAP Search Scope option to specify the LDAP search scope to avoid "access denied" errors.

  • Active Directory Domain Services (AD DS) LDAP user-mapping with NFS extended groups now generally available (GA)

    The AD DS LDAP user-mapping with NFS extended groups feature is now generally available. You no longer need to register the feature before using it.

December 2021

  • NFS protocol version conversion (Preview)

    In some cases, you might need to transition from one NFS protocol version to another. For example, when you want an existing NFS NFSv3 volume to take advantage of NFSv4.1 features, you might want to convert the protocol version from NFSv3 to NFSv4.1. Likewise, you might want to convert an existing NFSv4.1 volume to NFSv3 for performance or simplicity reasons. Azure NetApp Files now provides an option that enables you to convert an NFS volume between NFSv3 and NFSv4.1. This option doesn't require creating new volumes or performing data copies. The conversion operations preserve the data and update the volume export policies as part of the operation.

  • Single-file snapshot restore (Preview)

    Azure NetApp Files provides ways to quickly restore data from snapshots (mainly at the volume level). See How Azure NetApp Files snapshots work. Options for user file self-restore are available via client-side data copy from the ~snapshot (Windows) or .snapshot (Linux) folders. These operations require data (files and directories) to traverse the network twice (upon read and write). As such, the operations aren't time and resource efficient, especially with large data sets. If you don't want to restore the entire snapshot to a new volume, revert a volume, or copy large files across the network, you can use the single-file snapshot restore feature to restore individual files directly on the service from a volume snapshot without requiring data copy via an external client. This approach will drastically reduce RTO and network resource usage when restoring large files.

  • Features that are now generally available (GA)

    The following features are now GA. You no longer need to register the features before using them.

November 2021

  • Application volume group for SAP HANA (Preview)

    Application volume group (AVG) for SAP HANA enables you to deploy all volumes required to install and operate an SAP HANA database according to best practices, including the use of proximity placement group (PPG) with VMs to achieve automated, low-latency deployments. AVG for SAP HANA has implemented many technical improvements that simplify and standardize the entire process to help you streamline volume deployments for SAP HANA.

October 2021

  • Azure NetApp Files cross-region replication now generally available (GA)

    The cross-region replication feature is now generally available. You no longer need to register the feature before using it.

  • Standard network features (Preview)

    Azure NetApp Files now supports Standard network features for volumes that customers have been asking for since the inception. This capability has been made possible by innovative hardware and software integration. Standard network features provide an enhanced virtual networking experience through a variety of features for a seamless and consistent experience with security posture of all their workloads including Azure NetApp Files.

    You can now choose Standard or Basic network features when creating a new Azure NetApp Files volume. Upon choosing Standard network features, you can take advantage of the following supported features for Azure NetApp Files volumes and delegated subnets:

    • Increased IP limits for the VNets with Azure NetApp Files volumes at par with VMs
    • Enhanced network security with support for network security groups on the Azure NetApp Files delegated subnet
    • Enhanced network control with support for user-defined routes to and from Azure NetApp Files delegated subnets
    • Connectivity over Active/Active VPN gateway setup
    • ExpressRoute FastPath connectivity to Azure NetApp Files

    This public preview is currently available starting with North Central US and will roll out to other regions. Stay tuned for further information through Azure Update as more regions and features become available.

    To learn more, see Configure network features for an Azure NetApp Files volume.

September 2021

  • Azure NetApp Files backup (Preview)

    Azure NetApp Files online snapshots are now enhanced with backup of snapshots. With this new backup capability, you can vault your Azure NetApp Files snapshots to cost-efficient and ZRS-enabled Azure storage in a fast and cost-effective way. This approach further protects your data from accidental deletion.

    Azure NetApp Files backup extends ONTAP's built-in snapshot technology. When snapshots are vaulted to Azure storage, only changed blocks relative to previously vaulted snapshots are copied and stored, in an efficient format. Vaulted snapshots are still represented in full. They can be restored to a new volume individually and directly, eliminating the need for an iterative, full-incremental recovery process. This advanced technology minimizes the amount of data required to store to and retrieve from Azure storage, therefore saving data transfer and storage costs. It also shortens the backup vaulting time, so you can achieve a smaller Restore Point Objective (RPO). You can keep a minimum number of snapshots online on the Azure NetApp Files service for the most immediate, near-instantaneous data-recovery needs. In doing so, you can build up a longer history of snapshots at a lower cost for long-term retention in the Azure NetApp Files backup vault.

    For more information, see How Azure NetApp Files snapshots work.

  • Administrators option in Active Directory connections (Preview)

    The Active Directory connections page now includes an Administrators field. You can specify users or groups that will be given administrator privileges on the volume.

August 2021

  • Support for enabling Continuous Availability on existing SMB volumes

    You can already enable the SMB Continuous Availability (CA) feature when you create a new SMB volume. You can now also enable SMB CA on an existing SMB volume. See Enable Continuous Availability on existing SMB volumes.

  • Snapshot policy now generally available (GA)

    The snapshot policy feature is now generally available. You no longer need to register the feature before using it.

  • NFS Chown Mode export policy and UNIX export permissions (Preview)

    You can now set the Unix permissions and the change ownership mode (Chown Mode) options on Azure NetApp Files NFS volumes or dual-protocol volumes with the Unix security style. You can specify these settings during volume creation or after volume creation.

    The change ownership mode (Chown Mode) functionality enables you to set the ownership management capabilities of files and directories. You can specify or modify the setting under a volume's export policy. Two options for Chown Mode are available:

    • Restricted (default), where only the root user can change the ownership of files and directories
    • Unrestricted, where non-root users can change the ownership for files and directories that they own

    The Azure NetApp Files Unix Permissions functionality enables you to specify change permissions for the mount path.

    These new features put access control of certain files and directories in the hands of the data user instead of the service operator.

  • Dual-protocol (NFSv4.1 and SMB) volume (Preview)

    Azure NetApp Files already supports dual-protocol access to NFSv3 and SMB volumes as of July 2020. You can now create an Azure NetApp Files volume that allows simultaneous dual-protocol (NFSv4.1 and SMB) access with support for LDAP user mapping. This feature enables use cases where you might have a Linux-based workload using NFSv4.1 for its access, and the workload generates and stores data in an Azure NetApp Files volume. At the same time, your staff might need to use Windows-based clients and software to analyze the newly generated data from the same Azure NetApp Files volume. The simultaneous dual-protocol access removes the need to copy the workload-generated data to a separate volume with a different protocol for post-analysis, saving storage cost and operational time. This feature is free of charge (normal Azure NetApp Files storage cost still applies) and is generally available. Learn more from the simultaneous dual-protocol NFSv4.1/SMB access documentation.

June 2021

  • Azure NetApp Files storage service add-ons

    The new Azure NetApp Files Storage service add-ons menu option provides an Azure portal “launching pad” for available third-party, ecosystem add-ons to the Azure NetApp Files storage service. With this new portal menu option, you can enter a landing page by clicking an add-on tile to quickly access the add-on.

    NetApp add-ons is the first category of add-ons introduced under Storage service add-ons. It provides access to NetApp Cloud Data Sense. Clicking the Cloud Data Sense tile opens a new browser and directs you to the add-on installation page.

  • Manual QoS capacity pool now generally available (GA)

    The Manual QoS capacity pool feature is now generally available. You no longer need to register the feature before using it.

  • Shared AD support for multiple accounts to one Active Directory per region per subscription (Preview)

    To date, Azure NetApp Files supports only a single Active Directory (AD) per region, where only a single NetApp account could be configured to access the AD. The new Shared AD feature enables all NetApp accounts to share an AD connection created by one of the NetApp accounts that belong to the same subscription and the same region. For example, all NetApp accounts in the same subscription and region can use the common AD configuration to create an SMB volume, a NFSv4.1 Kerberos volume, or a dual-protocol volume. When you use this feature, the AD connection will be visible in all NetApp accounts that are under the same subscription and same region.

May 2021

  • Azure NetApp Files Application Consistent Snapshot tool (AzAcSnap) is now generally available.

    AzAcSnap is a command-line tool that enables you to simplify data protection for third-party databases (SAP HANA) in Linux environments (for example, SUSE and RHEL). See Release Notes for AzAcSnap for the latest changes about the tool.

  • Support for capacity pool billing tags

    Azure NetApp Files now supports billing tags to help you cross-reference cost with business units or other internal consumers. Billing tags are assigned at the capacity pool level and not volume level, and they appear on the customer invoice.

  • Enable Active Directory Domain Services (AD DS) LDAP authentication for NFS volumes (Preview)

    By default, LDAP communications between client and server applications are not encrypted. This means that it is possible to use a network-monitoring device or software to view the communications between an LDAP client and server computers. This scenario might be problematic in non-isolated or shared VNets when an LDAP simple bind is used, because the credentials (username and password) used to bind the LDAP client to the LDAP server are passed over the network unencrypted. LDAP over TLS (also known as LDAPS) is a protocol that uses TLS to secure communication between LDAP clients and LDAP servers. Azure NetApp Files now supports the secure communication between an Active Directory Domain Server (AD DS) using LDAP over TLS. Azure NetApp Files can now use LDAP over TLS for setting up authenticated sessions between the Active Directory-integrated LDAP servers. You can enable the LDAP over TLS feature for NFS, SMB, and dual-protocol volumes. By default, LDAP over TLS is disabled on Azure NetApp Files.

  • Support for throughput metrics

    Azure NetApp Files adds support for the following metrics:

    • Capacity pool throughput metrics
      • Pool Allocated to Volume Throughput
      • Pool Consumed Throughput
      • Percentage Pool Allocated to Volume Throughput
      • Percentage Pool Consumed Throughput
    • Volume throughput metrics
      • Volume Allocated Throughput
      • Volume Consumed Throughput
      • Percentage Volume Consumed Throughput

  • Support for dynamic change of service level of replication volumes

    Azure NetApp Files now supports dynamically changing the service level of replication source and destination volumes.

April 2021

  • Manual volume and capacity pool management (hard quota)

    The behavior of Azure NetApp Files volume and capacity pool provisioning has changed to a manual and controllable mechanism. The storage capacity of a volume is limited to the set size (quota) of the volume. When volume consumption maxes out, neither the volume nor the underlying capacity pool grows automatically. Instead, the volume will receive an “out of space” condition. However, you can resize the capacity pool or a volume as needed. You should actively monitor the capacity of a volume and the underlying capacity pool.

    This behavior change is a result of the following key requests indicated by many users:

    • Previously, VM clients would see the thinly provisioned (100 TiB) capacity of any given volume when using OS space or capacity monitoring tools. This situation could result in inaccurate capacity visibility on the client or application side. This behavior has now been corrected.
    • The previous auto-grow behavior of capacity pools gave application owners no control over the provisioned capacity pool space (and the associated cost). This behavior was especially cumbersome in environments where “run-away processes” could rapidly fill up and grow the provisioned capacity. This behavior has been corrected.
    • Users want to see and maintain a direct correlation between volume size (quota) and performance. The previous behavior allowed for (implicit) over-subscription of a volume (capacity) and capacity pool auto-grow. As such, users could not make a direct correlation until the volume quota had been actively set or reset. This behavior has now been corrected.

    Users have requested direct control over provisioned capacity. Users want to control and balance storage capacity and utilization. They also want to control cost along with the application-side and client-side visibility of available, used, and provisioned capacity and the performance of their application volumes. With this new behavior, all this capability has now been enabled.

  • SMB Continuous Availability (CA) shares support for FSLogix user profile containers (Preview)

    FSLogix is a set of solutions that enhance, enable, and simplify non-persistent Windows computing environments. FSLogix solutions are appropriate for virtual environments in both public and private clouds. FSLogix solutions can also be used to create more portable computing sessions when you use physical devices. FSLogix can be used to provide dynamic access to persistent user profile containers stored on SMB shared networked storage, including Azure NetApp Files. To enhance FSLogix resiliency to events of storage service maintenance, Azure NetApp Files has extended support for SMB Transparent Failover via SMB Continuous Availability (CA) shares on Azure NetApp Files for user profile containers. For more information, see Azure NetApp Files Azure Virtual Desktop solutions.

  • SMB3 Protocol Encryption (Preview)

    You can now enable SMB3 Protocol Encryption on Azure NetApp Files SMB and dual-protocol volumes. This feature enables encryption for in-flight SMB3 data, using the AES-CCM algorithm on SMB 3.0, and the AES-GCM algorithm on SMB 3.1.1 connections. SMB clients not using SMB3 encryption will not be able to access this volume. Data at rest is encrypted regardless of this setting. SMB encryption further enhances security. However, it might impact the client (CPU overhead for encrypting and decrypting messages). It might also impact storage resource utilization (reductions in throughput). You should test the encryption performance impact against your applications before deploying workloads into production.

  • Active Directory Domain Services (AD DS) LDAP user-mapping with NFS extended groups (Preview)

    By default, Azure NetApp Files supports up to 16 group IDs when handling NFS user credentials, as defined in RFC 5531. With this new capability, you can now increase the maximum up to 1,024 if you have users who are members of more than the default number of groups. To support this capability, NFS volumes can now also be added to AD DS LDAP, which enables Active Directory LDAP users with extended groups entries (with up to 1024 groups) to access the volume.

March 2021

  • SMB Continuous Availability (CA) shares (Preview)

    SMB Transparent Failover enables maintenance operations on the Azure NetApp Files service without interrupting connectivity to server applications storing and accessing data on SMB volumes. To support SMB Transparent Failover, Azure NetApp Files now supports the SMB Continuous Availability shares option for use with SQL Server applications over SMB running on Azure VMs. This feature is currently supported on Windows SQL Server. Linux SQL Server is not currently supported. This feature provides significant performance improvements for SQL Server. It also provides scale and cost benefits for Single Instance, Always-On Failover Cluster Instance and Always-On Availability Group deployments. See Benefits of using Azure NetApp Files for SQL Server deployment.

  • Automatic resizing of a cross-region replication destination volume

    In a cross-region replication relationship, a destination volume is automatically resized based on the size of the source volume. As such, you don’t need to resize the destination volume separately. This automatic resizing behavior applies when the volumes are in an active replication relationship. It also applies when replication peering is broken with the resync operation. For this feature to work, you need to ensure sufficient headroom in the capacity pools for both the source and the destination volumes.

December 2020

  • Azure Application Consistent Snapshot Tool (Preview)

    Azure Application Consistent Snapshot Tool (AzAcSnap) is a command-line tool that enables you to simplify data protection for third-party databases (SAP HANA) in Linux environments (for example, SUSE and RHEL).

    AzAcSnap leverages the volume snapshot and replication functionalities in Azure NetApp Files and Azure Large Instance. It provides the following benefits:

    • Application-consistent data protection
    • Database catalog management
    • Ad hoc volume protection
    • Cloning of storage volumes
    • Support for disaster recovery

November 2020

  • Snapshot revert

    The snapshot revert functionality enables you to quickly revert a volume to the state it was in when a particular snapshot was taken. In most cases, reverting a volume is much faster than restoring individual files from a snapshot to the active file system. It is also more space efficient compared to restoring a snapshot to a new volume.

September 2020

  • Azure NetApp Files cross-region replication (Preview)

    Azure NetApp Files now supports cross-region replication. With this new disaster recovery capability, you can replicate your Azure NetApp Files volumes from one Azure region to another in a fast and cost-effective way. It helps you protect your data from unforeseeable regional failures. Azure NetApp Files cross-region replication leverages NetApp SnapMirror® technology; only changed blocks are sent over the network in a compressed, efficient format. This proprietary technology minimizes the amount of data required to replicate across the regions, therefore saving data transfer costs. It also shortens the replication time, so you can achieve a smaller Restore Point Objective (RPO).

  • Manual QoS Capacity Pool (Preview)

    In a manual QoS capacity pool, you can assign the capacity and throughput for a volume independently. The total throughput of all volumes created with a manual QoS capacity pool is limited by the total throughput of the pool. It is determined by the combination of the pool size and the service-level throughput. Alternatively, a capacity pool’s QoS type can be auto (automatic), which is the default. In an auto QoS capacity pool, throughput is assigned automatically to the volumes in the pool, proportional to the size quota assigned to the volumes.

  • LDAP signing (Preview)

    Azure NetApp Files now supports LDAP signing for secure LDAP lookups between the Azure NetApp Files service and the user-specified Active Directory Domain Services domain controllers. This feature is currently in preview.

  • AES encryption for AD authentication (Preview)

    Azure NetApp Files now supports AES encryption on LDAP connection to DC to enable AES encryption for an SMB volume. This feature is currently in preview.

  • New metrics:

    • New volume metrics:
      • Volume allocated size: The provisioned size of a volume
    • New pool metrics:
      • Pool Allocated size: The provisioned size of the pool
      • Total snapshot size for the pool: The sum of snapshot size from all volumes in the pool

July 2020

  • Dual-protocol (NFSv3 and SMB) volume

    You can now create an Azure NetApp Files volume that allows simultaneous dual-protocol (NFS v3 and SMB) access with support for LDAP user mapping. This feature enables use cases where you may have a Linux-based workload that generates and stores data in an Azure NetApp Files volume. At the same time, your staff needs to use Windows-based clients and software to analyze the newly generated data from the same Azure NetApp Files volume. The simultaneous dual-protocol access removes the need to copy the workload-generated data to a separate volume with a different protocol for post-analysis. It helps you save storage cost and operational time. This feature is free of charge (normal Azure NetApp Files storage cost still applies) and is generally available. Learn more from the simultaneous dual-protocol access documentation.

  • NFS v4.1 Kerberos encryption in transit

    Azure NetApp Files now supports NFS client encryption in Kerberos modes (krb5, krb5i, and krb5p) with AES-256 encryption, providing you with more data security. This feature is free of charge (normal Azure NetApp Files storage cost still applies) and is generally available. Learn more from the NFS v4.1 Kerberos encryption documentation.

  • Dynamic volume service level change (Preview)

    Cloud promises flexibility in IT spending. You can now change the service level of an existing Azure NetApp Files volume by moving the volume to another capacity pool that uses the service level you want for the volume. This in-place service-level change for the volume does not require that you migrate data. It also does not impact the data plane access to the volume. You can change an existing volume to use a higher service level for better performance, or to use a lower service level for cost optimization. This feature is free of charge (normal Azure NetApp Files storage cost still applies). It is currently in preview. You can register for the feature preview by following the dynamic volume service level change documentation.

  • Volume snapshot policy (Preview)

    Azure NetApp Files allows you to create point-in-time snapshots of your volumes. You can now create a snapshot policy to have Azure NetApp Files automatically create volume snapshots at a frequency of your choice. You can schedule the snapshots to be taken in hourly, daily, weekly, or monthly cycles. You can also specify the maximum number of snapshots to keep as part of the snapshot policy. This feature is free of charge (normal Azure NetApp Files storage cost still applies) and is currently in preview. You can register for the feature preview by following the volume snapshot policy documentation.

  • NFS root access export policy

    Azure NetApp Files now allows you to specify whether the root account can access the volume.

  • Hide snapshot path

    Azure NetApp Files now allows you to specify whether a user can see and access the .snapshot directory (NFS clients) or ~snapshot folder (SMB clients) on a mounted volume.

May 2020

  • Backup policy users (Preview)

    Azure NetApp Files allows you to include additional accounts that require elevated privileges to the computer account created for use with Azure NetApp Files. The specified accounts will be allowed to change the NTFS permissions at the file or folder level. For example, you can specify a non-privileged service account used for migrating data to an SMB file share in Azure NetApp Files. The Backup policy users feature is currently in preview.

Next steps