[SEO Subhead]
This Guidance shows how to automate the password rotation process for Amazon FSx for NetApp ONTAP administrators. FSx for ONTAP is a widely-adopted enterprise-grade storage software tool that you can use to effectively manage and analyze critical business data. By automating password rotations at customizable intervals, your organization can enhance the security of its resources, safeguarding sensitive data against potential threats and aligning the rotation cadence with your organization's specific security requirements.
Note: [Disclaimer]
Architecture Diagram

[Architecture diagram description]
Step 1
Deploy the AWS CloudFormation stack. This infrastructure-as-code method provisions and configures all the necessary resources and settings, including AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM) roles, the AWS Lambda function, and AWS Secrets Manager.
Get Started

Deploy this Guidance
Well-Architected Pillars

The AWS Well-Architected Framework helps you understand the pros and cons of the decisions you make when building systems in the cloud. The six pillars of the Framework allow you to learn architectural best practices for designing and operating reliable, secure, efficient, cost-effective, and sustainable systems. Using the AWS Well-Architected Tool, available at no charge in the AWS Management Console, you can review your workloads against these best practices by answering a set of questions for each pillar.
The architecture diagram above is an example of a Solution created with Well-Architected best practices in mind. To be fully Well-Architected, you should follow as many Well-Architected best practices as possible.
-
Operational Excellence
This Guidance uses Secrets Manager to enable FSx for ONTAP administrator password rotation and to trace changes to the underlying ONTAP file system. FSx for ONTAP is centrally managed, and Secrets Manager stores passwords and other sensitive information securely. Additionally, CloudWatch facilitates event monitoring, and AWS CloudTrail lets you audit important events occurring in and among AWS services.
-
Security
The automation of security workflows, such as password rotation, aligns with the security pillar of the AWS Well-Architected Framework. Lambda automatically rotates passwords for the FSxAdmin account, and Secrets Manager stores passwords and other sensitive information securely. Additionally, IAM policies allow Lambda only the minimal AWS resource access required for this Guidance to run. Working together, these services keep the FSxAdmin account’s credentials regularly updated, reducing the risk of unauthorized access.
-
Reliability
Amazon FSx provides a highly reliable way to run file systems in the cloud with built-in failovers. A Lambda function regularly updates FSx for ONTAP administrator passwords and stores them in Secrets Manager to prevent them from being lost. As the foundation of this Guidance, Lambda and Secrets Manager provide high reliability and availability through their serverless nature.
-
Performance Efficiency
By primarily using SSD storage for active data, FSx for ONTAP supports high I/O operations per second, high throughput, and low latency for data access. Additionally, as serverless services, Lambda and Secrets Manager act as a scalable and efficient mechanism for periodic password rotation.
-
Cost Optimization
As serverless services, Lambda and Secrets Manager dynamically scale on demand and don’t require any additional infrastructure provisioning or maintenance, thus reducing your overall costs. By automating password rotation, this Guidance also removes the burden from system administrators, freeing their time for higher-value work. And by avoiding manual errors, this Guidance helps you prevent loss of access to your storage infrastructure and the resulting potential loss of business.
-
Sustainability
Due to their serverless nature, Lambda and Secrets Manager dynamically scale on demand and don’t require any infrastructure overprovisioning, helping you avoid energy wastage. Additionally, you don’t have to provision or maintain on-premises hardware, reducing your company’s energy use.
Related Content

[Title]
Disclaimer
The sample code; software libraries; command line tools; proofs of concept; templates; or other related technology (including any of the foregoing that are provided by our personnel) is provided to you as AWS Content under the AWS Customer Agreement, or the relevant written agreement between you and AWS (whichever applies). You should not use this AWS Content in your production accounts, or on production or other critical data. You are responsible for testing, securing, and optimizing the AWS Content, such as sample code, as appropriate for production grade use based on your specific quality control practices and standards. Deploying AWS Content may incur AWS charges for creating or using AWS chargeable resources, such as running Amazon EC2 instances or using Amazon S3 storage.
References to third-party services or organizations in this Guidance do not imply an endorsement, sponsorship, or affiliation between Amazon or AWS and the third party. Guidance from AWS is a technical starting point, and you can customize your integration with third-party services when you deploy the architecture.