Skytap on Azure is a cloud infrastructure as a service (Iaas) that you can use to run IBM Power workloads such as AIX, IBM i (AS/400), and Linux on Power together with x86 workloads natively on Azure. Skytap doesn't require refactoring, rearchitecting, or replatforming, so you can easily move traditional workloads to Azure.
If you deploy Skytap on Azure, use Azure NetApp Files for file storage. You can scale storage allocations up or down at any time without service interruptions. You can also dynamically adjust storage service-level performance requirements.
For more information, see Migrate IBM i series to Azure with Skytap.
Architecture
Download a Visio file of this architecture.
Workflow
This architecture demonstrates how to use Azure NetApp Files with workloads in Skytap on Azure. The following workflow corresponds to the previous diagram:
- Use an Azure VPN gateway or an Azure ExpressRoute circuit to connect to the private network.
- Set up an Azure NetApp Files capacity pool and a share from the Azure portal.
- Mount the share on AIX, IBM i, or Linux on Power-based workloads in Skytap on Azure.
- Use shares as primary storage, and share files across platforms and Azure-native deployments.
Components
The architecture uses these components:
Skytap on Azure is a service in Azure that natively runs IBM Power and x86 traditional workloads on hardware in Azure datacenters. If your organization runs IBM Power-based AIX, IBM i, or Linux operating systems (OS), you can use Skytap on Azure to migrate workloads to Azure with minimal upfront effort.
Azure NetApp Files is an Azure-native, enterprise-class, high-performance file storage service. Azure NetApp Files provides volumes as a service that you can use to create NetApp accounts, capacity pools, and volumes. You can select service and performance levels and manage data protection and replication across zones and regions.
ExpressRoute extends your on-premises networks into the Microsoft cloud over a private connection with the help of a connectivity provider. You can use ExpressRoute to establish connections to Microsoft cloud services, such as Microsoft Azure and Microsoft 365.
Azure virtual machines (VMs) are an on-demand, scalable computing resource that Azure offers. Typically, you use a VM when you need more control over a computing environment than what other resources provide.
Azure VPN Gateway connects your on-premises networks to Azure through site-to-site VPNs in a process similar to the one that you use to set up and connect to a remote branch office. This configuration provides secure connections that use the industry-standard protocols Internet Protocol Security (IPsec) and Internet Key Exchange (IKE).
Alternatives
- Azure Blob Storage
- Azure Files
Scenario details
Potential use cases
You can use Azure NetApp Files for scenarios that need network file storage in the cloud and for the following use cases:
Scalable and resilient file share service: A scalable and resilient file share service is a robust storage solution that can grow alongside your data needs and keep your information safe. Use a file share service to add storage capacity in real time when you need it to improve performance. You can also incorporate replication for built-in data resiliency to ensure that data is always accessible. Azure NetApp Files provides a reliable and adaptable platform for sharing and storing your mission-critical workload files that are hosted on the IBM Power platform.
Critical backups: You can use the AIX
mksysbcommand to create bootable backups of your system's core so that you can migrate to new hardware or restore your system after a crash. Themksysbcommand captures the root volume group and settings by saving it to a file that you can use to restore the systems base image or a few files. Azure NetApp Files provides a scalable, cost-effective way to store these backups in the Azure cloud.Centralized data storage: You can use Azure NetApp Files to create a shared storage pool that multiple AIX systems can access through Network File System (NFS). This shared storage pool includes user home directories, application data, or project files across your network. You often use a shared storage pool for distributed applications.
High availability: For failover capabilities, you can integrate Azure NetApp Files with AIX clustering solutions like PowerHA SystemMirror. If one server goes down, clients can seamlessly access data from another server that hosts the same NFS repository in Azure NetApp Files.
SAP global transport directory: The SAP global transport directory (/usr/sap/trans) is a shared location that resides on the global domain controller of an SAP transport management system (TMS). Depending on requirements, you might have one global transport directory or multiple transport directories. You can use this directory as an NFS share that's hosted in the Azure cloud on Azure NetApp Files. Use the directory to share files with multiple clients across a network. Azure NetApp Files provides resiliency and performance in this scenario.
Considerations
Azure NetApp Files contains a set of features that provide design considerations based on the pillars of the Azure Well-Architected Framework, which is a set of guiding tenets used to improve the quality of a workload.
Reliability
Reliability ensures your applications meet the commitments you make to your customers. For more information, see the Overview of the Reliability pillar.
Skytap on Azure provides a standard 99.95% availability service-level objective (SLO) for the platform and logical partitions (LPARs).
Azure NetApp Files provides a standard 99.99% availability service-level agreement (SLA) for all tiers and supported regions. Azure NetApp Files also supports provisioning volumes in availability zones that you choose, and supports HA deployments across zones for added data protection if there's a zone outage.
For improved recovery point objective and recovery time objective (RPO/RTO) SLAs, integrated data protection with snapshots and backup are available with the service. Additionally, cross-region replication provides disaster recovery benefits across Azure regions.
Security
Security provides assurance against deliberate attacks and abuse of valuable data and systems. For more information, see Overview of the Security pillar.
Azure NetApp Files provides an extra level of security by keeping volumes and data traffic within your virtual networks and not providing a publicly addressable endpoint. All data is encrypted at rest always. You can also use NFS Kerberos to encrypt data in transit.
Azure NetApp Files provides support for standard NFSv4.1 security measures, such as name strings, limited firewall port exposure, LDAP integration, and NFSv4.1 ACLs.
The Azure Policy can help you enforce organizational standards and assess compliance at scale. Azure NetApp Files supports Azure Policy through custom and built-in policy definitions.
Cost optimization
Cost optimization is about looking at ways to reduce unnecessary expenses and improve operational efficiencies. For more information, see Design review checklist for Cost Optimization.
Understand the Azure NetApp Files cost model to help you manage your cloud spend.
Billing for Azure NetApp Files is based on provisioned storage capacity, which you allocate by creating capacity pools.
Capacity requirement fluctuations
If your capacity pool size requirements fluctuate, consider resizing your volumes and capacity pools to balance cost with your variable capacity and performance needs. You can resize with no disruption to your workloads.
Performance requirement fluctuations
If your capacity pool size requirements are consistent but performance requirements fluctuate, consider dynamically changing the service level of a volume. Azure NetApp Files has multiple service levels to provide the best blend of performance to cost optimization for your cloud needs. For instance, if your workloads are busy only at certain times in the quarter, apply the Premium or Ultra service levels to maximize your performance. Or if your workload occasionally goes stagnant, nondisruptively adjust the service level of the volume to Standard to reduce costs.
Automatically tier cold data
Azure NetApp Files has a Standard storage service level with cool access. You can use this feature to tier cold data and reduce S3 object storage cost. Cool access automatically moves cold blocks to S3 object storage and automatically returns them to the active file system when a client requests them.
You can also provision and deprovision various types of capacity pools throughout the month to provide just-in-time performance and reduce costs during periods when you don't need high performance.
Pricing
Determine which Azure NetApp Files service level (Standard, Premium, or Ultra) that you need based on your capacity and performance requirements. Use the Azure Pricing calculator to evaluate the costs for these components:
- Skytap on Azure components
- Azure NetApp Files
- ExpressRoute circuits and VPN gateways
- Virtual networks
Performance efficiency
Performance efficiency is the ability of your workload to scale to meet the demands placed on it by users in an efficient manner. For more information, see Design review checklist for Performance Efficiency.
Azure NetApp Files offers the ability to dynamically scale up performance service levels or scale down performance service levels without disruption as your workload needs change.
Service levels include:
- Standard: 16MiB/s per 1 TiB
- Premium: 64MiB/s per 1 TiB
- Ultra: 128MiB/s per 1 TiB
If you need more performance than the capacity permits, consider setting the manual Quality of Service (QoS) type on the capacity pool to maximize the allowed throughput on the volume.
Use Azure NetApp Files to control costs based on required performance for your application workload.
For requirements related to your throughput and capacity, see:
Skytap at scale
To scale compute performance, you can add capacity to LPARs that run in Skytap on Azure. You can also dynamically scale storage for Azure NetApp Files volumes. Automatic QoS automatically scales performance. For more granular control of each volume, use manual QoS to control the performance of each volume separately for your capacity pools.
Azure NetApp Files volumes are available in Ultra, Premium, and Standard performance tiers. When you choose the tier that best suits your performance requirements, consider that available performance bandwidth scales with the size of a volume. You can change the service level of a volume at any time without disruption to storage operations. For more information about the Azure NetApp Files cost model, see Pricing examples.
To get started, see the Azure NetApp Files performance calculator.
Contributors
This article is maintained by Microsoft. It was originally written by the following contributors.
Principal authors
- Abhishek Jain | Cloud Solutions Architect, Skytap
- Jason Scott | Director of Field Technical Sales, Skytap
Other contributors:
- Justin Parisi | Technical Marketing Engineer, Azure NetApp Files
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Next steps
- About Skytap
- Skytap help and documentation
- What is Azure NetApp Files?
- Understand NAS concepts in Azure NetApp Files | Microsoft Learn
- Understand data protection and disaster recovery options in Azure NetApp Files | Microsoft Learn