A customer wants to usecloud storage as part of their data strategy. Their existing storage is a mixture of NFS and SMB workloads. The customer wants…

Azure NetApp Files (ANF) is a first-party, fully managed file storage service built on NetApp technology and offered natively within the Microsoft Azure cloud. It is specifically designed to provide high-performance, shared file storage for both NFS and SMB workloads. As a fully managed service, Azure and NetApp handle the deployment, management, and maintenance of the underlying infrastructure, allowing the customer to simply provision volumes and consume the service. This directly meets the customer's requirement for a managed cloud service to support their existing file-based workloads without the overhead of managing the storage system software or hardware.

A. StorageGRID: This is an object storage solution, primarily using the S3 protocol. It is not designed for native NFS and SMB file-based workloads.

B. AFF: All-Flash FAS (AFF) is an on-premises physical storage appliance. It does not meet the customer's requirement for a cloud storage solution.

C. NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP: While this solution runs in the cloud and supports NFS/SMB, it is a customer-managed instance. The customer is responsible for deploying and managing the ONTAP software on cloud infrastructure.

1. Azure NetApp Files Documentation: "Azure NetApp Files is an Azure native, first-party service for migrating and running the most demanding enterprise file-workloads in the cloud: databases, SAP, and high-performance computing applications, with no code changes. It's a fully managed service..."

Source: Microsoft Azure Documentation, "What is Azure NetApp Files".

2. Cloud Volumes ONTAP Overview: "Cloud Volumes ONTAP is a software-only storage appliance that runs the NetApp ONTAP storage software in a virtual machine in your cloud provider... You are responsible for managing Cloud Volumes ONTAP and your cloud infrastructure."

Source: NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP Documentation, "Learn about Cloud Volumes ONTAP".

3. StorageGRID Overview: "NetApp StorageGRID is a software-defined, object-based storage solution that supports industry-standard object APIs, such as the Amazon Simple Storage Service (S3) API."

Source: NetApp StorageGRID Documentation, "What StorageGRID is".

4. AFF C-Series Datasheet: "NetApp AFF C-Series systems are all-flash arrays that deliver an optimal blend of performance, efficiency, and data services for your on-premises environment."

Source: NetApp Datasheet DS-4028, "NetApp AFF C-Series".