A customer is consuming 30TB of capacity in NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP and is running enterprise file shares. However, only 10TB of capacity is…

The most cost-efficient solution is to implement data tiering. Cloud Volumes ONTAP's data tiering feature automatically and transparently moves inactive ("cold") data blocks from the high-performance, higher-cost performance tier (e.g., Azure Premium SSDs) to a low-cost, capacity-based object storage tier (e.g., Azure Blob storage). In this scenario, the 20TB of inactive data would be tiered to Azure Blob, significantly reducing overall storage costs, while the 10TB of active data remains on the performance tier for fast access. This directly addresses the customer's goal of optimizing costs based on data access patterns.

A. Store all data in the premium storage tier.

This would increase costs, as premium storage is the high-performance, high-cost tier. The goal is to reduce costs by not storing inactive data on expensive storage.

B. Enable BlueXP backup and recovery.

This provides data protection by creating backup copies, not cost optimization for the primary storage volume. It addresses a different operational need and does not reduce the cost of the active 30TB dataset.

D. Deploy an additional single-node Cloud Volumes ONTAP instance.

This would add compute, licensing, and storage costs, directly contradicting the goal of creating a more cost-efficient solution for the existing data.

1. NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP Documentation, "Learn about data tiering": This document states, "Data tiering is a Cloud Volumes ONTAP feature that tiers inactive data from high-performance SSDs to low-cost object storage in the cloud. This functionality can help you reduce your storage costs." This directly supports the explanation for option C.

Source: NetApp Product Documentation. Retrieved from docs.netapp.com/us-en/bluexp-cloud-volumes-ontap/concept-data-tiering.html

2. NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP Documentation, "Tiering cold data to low-cost object storage": This guide details the mechanism: "You can reduce your storage costs by tiering inactive data from the performance tier to a capacity tier... Cloud Volumes ONTAP automatically tiers the data to an object store based on the tiering policy that you select for each volume." This confirms that tiering is the intended feature for this use case.

Source: NetApp Product Documentation. Retrieved from docs.netapp.com/us-en/bluexp-cloud-volumes-ontap/task-tiering-data.html

3. NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP Documentation, "Storage and tiering": This page describes the underlying Azure storage used. The "Performance tier" is comprised of Azure Managed Disks (Premium SSD, Standard SSD, or Standard HDD), while the "Capacity tier" is Azure Blob storage. The document explains that data tiering moves data between these two tiers to balance cost and performance. This invalidates option A, which suggests using only the expensive tier.

Source: NetApp Product Documentation. Retrieved from docs.netapp.com/us-en/bluexp-cloud-volumes-ontap/reference-storage.html