NetApp launches cloud-native storage solution for containers

After its purchase of cloud storage automation specialist Spot for $450 million this past June, NetApp is releasing its first new product under the brand. Called Spot Storage, it’s a “storageless” solution that’s designed to enable automated administration of cloud-native, container-based applications.

NetApp describes Spot Storage as a cloud-based, serverless offering for application-driven architectures that run microservices-based applications in Kubernetes containers.

“Serverless computing” is a bit of a misnomer. Your application and data still reside on servers, but they’re not tied to one particular physical location. Just like the cloud means never using the same physical box twice, a serverless storage service means the cloud provider runs the server and dynamically manages the allocation of machine resources.

With Spot Storage, NetApp is adding storageless management to serverless compute services. “Storage is intelligently allocated based on application requirements, and then optimized using NetApp’s thin-provisioning, compression and deduping technologies to drive down costs,” said Jonathan Cohen, director of alliances at NetApp, in a blog post announcing Spot Storage.

Spot Storage will be integrated into Spot Ocean, the company’s compute management product. Ocean was the first piece of the puzzle, offering simplified infrastructure management for Kubernetes to provide auto scaling and intelligent rightsizing for container resource requirements in a Kubernetes environment.

Spot Storage is the other half of the puzzle, introducing the concept of storageless infrastructure. Operators define simple storage requests which are then maintained as fully managed persistent volumes that automatically and dynamically match pod requirements. “Even with little knowledge of storage classes, performance tiers and capacity planning, developers can give their containerized applications exactly the right storage with just a few clicks,” Cohen wrote.