Which features help scale NAS performance in ONTAP?

• A. SnapMirror only
• B. Deduplication only
• C. FlexGroup scales out NAS IOPS and throughput across multiple volumes; dedup/compression help
• D. NVMe caching exclusively for SAN workloads

Answer: (C)

Scaling NAS performance in ONTAP comes from using a scale-out NAS architecture that distributes the workload across many volumes and storage nodes. FlexGroup provides a single NAS namespace that spans multiple volumes, with I/O served in parallel by the different volumes and nodes. As you add more nodes, the IOPS and throughput grow in proportion to the number of volumes and disks involved, overcoming the bottlenecks of a single-volume system and delivering higher, linear-scale performance for heavy file workloads.

Deduplication and compression, while not the primary means of increasing I/O capacity, improve overall performance by reducing the data footprint and the amount of data that must be moved or stored. Fewer data blocks being read and written translates to lower I/O pressure, which helps maintain higher effective throughput.

SnapMirror is about data replication for DR and disaster recovery, not about boosting NAS performance. NVMe caching can speed up access by keeping hot data in fast flash, but it isn’t exclusive to SAN workloads and does not by itself scale NAS performance in the way a scale-out NAS arrangement does.

So the best option is the feature that scales NAS IOPS and throughput by spreading the workload across multiple volumes and nodes, with deduplication and compression providing supporting efficiency.