🚀 Azure NetApp Files — September 2025 Feature Updates.
Wow! What a month September was been for new updatrs and releases for Azure NetApp Files.
If you’re following developments in Azure storage, September 2025 was a strong month for Azure NetApp Files (ANF). The product team delivered a series of generally available features and enhancements that broaden flexibility, performance, and security for customers.
Below is a roundup of what’s new, with commentary on why these changes matter.
🆕 What’s New in September 2025
Short-term Clones (GA)
The new short-term clones capability is now generally available. These are space-efficient, thin clones created from snapshots that provide instant read/write access to data—without full data duplication.
They’re perfect for development, testing, analytics, or DR use cases where you need a fast copy for a limited time. Clones live for up to one month and only consume extra capacity when changes are made.
This feature reduces storage overhead and accelerates workflows by eliminating long copy cycles.
NFSv4.1 ID Domain Customization for Non-LDAP Volumes (GA)
You can now configure a custom NFSv4.1 ID domain for non-LDAP volumes, aligning ID domain settings across NFS clients.
Previously, without this feature, you might encounter inconsistent user mappings (“root squashing”). With this update, root and non-root access behave consistently across environments.
It’s especially useful if you plan to move toward LDAP/Active Directory or want consistent behavior across heterogeneous NFS clients.
Support for Windows Server 2025 Domain Controllers
Azure NetApp Files now supports Windows Server 2025 DCs, enabling you to modernize your Active Directory infrastructure without disrupting SMB or dual-protocol workloads.
Customers can confidently upgrade their domain controllers while continuing to use ANF for enterprise file storage.
Flexible Service Level Enhancements (GA + Cool Access)
September brought two major milestones for the Flexible service tier:
Flexible Service Level (GA): Decouple storage capacity and throughput so you can scale independently, avoid overprovisioning, and tune cost-to-performance precisely. Throughput can reach 640 MiB/s per TiB of capacity — ideal for demanding workloads.
Cool Access (GA): Transparently tier cold or infrequently accessed data to lower-cost Azure storage, cutting total cost of ownership while maintaining performance for hot data.
Together, these updates make the Flexible tier a powerful, cost-optimized option for mixed or tiered workloads.
Azure NetApp Files with Azure VMware Solution Gen 2 (Datastore Support)
ANF datastores are now supported in Azure VMware Solution (AVS) Generation 2.
Because AVS Gen 2 deploys directly inside an Azure virtual network, you no longer need ExpressRoute to connect to ANF datastores — simplifying architecture, reducing latency, and improving VMware workload performance.
Azure NetApp Files Migration Assistant (GA)
The Azure NetApp Files Migration Assistant is now generally available.
It leverages ONTAP’s native replication to simplify and accelerate migrations from on-premises or Cloud Volumes ONTAP to ANF, maintaining metadata and minimizing downtime.
This makes moving to ANF faster and more predictable than ever.
Cross-tenant Customer-managed Keys (GA)
You can now manage volume encryption keys across tenants — perfect for SaaS providers or multi-tenant environments.
Customers can retain control of their encryption keys while the service provider hosts the data, improving trust, security, and compliance flexibility.
Security and Role Updates for AVS Datastores
With the introduction of ANF datastores for AVS, new role-based access control (RBAC) permission requirements have been added.
While built-in roles like Contributor often suffice, custom roles may need updates to include permissions for create/update/delete operations on ANF datastores.
If you use custom roles, it’s a good time to review and update them.
💡 Why September’s Changes Matter
These updates highlight three key themes:
Flexibility & Efficiency — The GA of the Flexible service level and Cool Access give customers fine-grained control over performance vs cost. Short-term clones further reduce duplication and accelerate test/dev cycles.
Modernization & Integration — Support for Windows Server 2025 DCs, improved NFS domain handling, and cross-tenant key management show ANF evolving with hybrid and multi-tenant enterprise needs.
Migration & Adoption — The Migration Assistant and AVS Gen 2 datastore support make it easier than ever to adopt ANF for VMware and on-premises workloads.
Overall, these changes show an active roadmap and a product team focused on making Azure NetApp Files more capable, secure, and cost-efficient.
Summary
September 2025 was a milestone month for Azure NetApp Files, with the product team delivering a rich set of new capabilities across performance, efficiency, and security.
Key highlights include the general availability of short-term clones, the Flexible service level with Cool Access, Windows Server 2025 domain controller support, and cross-tenant customer-managed keys — all aimed at simplifying operations and giving customers more control over cost and performance.
Together, these updates reinforce ANF’s position as a leading enterprise file storage service on Azure — flexible, integrated, and ready for the next generation of cloud workloads.
I hope this short blog post about using Terraform to configure Azure NetApp Files Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery features using IaC method with Terraform has been useful.
For more information on the Azure NetApp Files service, check out the What’s new in Azure NetApp Files page.
Stay tuned for more updates and enhancements in Azure NetApp Files!