Tours of the Black Prompt: Clustered NetApp Data ONTAP – Part 2

The Tours of the Black Prompt series so far:

Today we’re exploring command history more as well as display settings and options for clustered Data ONTAP.

Working with the Command History

In Part 1 we talked about using the history command to view the previously-entered commands. Note that this will only show the history of your current session – if you log out or get disconnected, the history from the previous session is not kept and therefor those older entries will not be displayed.

Besides navigating the CLI history using up and down arrows, or the Ctrl+n and Ctrl+p key combinations, you can also use the redo command.

cdot_mba1::> history
    1  storage aggregate show
    2  volume show
    3  network interface show
    4  network port show 

cdot_mba1::> redo 1
Aggregate     Size Available Used% State   #Vols  Nodes            RAID Status
--------- -------- --------- ----- ------- ------ ---------------- ------------
aggr0        900MB   43.54MB   95% online       1 cdot_mba1-01     raid_dp,
                                                                   normal

In this case, we told it to redo the first command in the history buffer, so it re-ran storage aggregate show. We could also tell it to run a prior command relative to the current using the format redo -2.

cdot_mba1::> redo -2
1 storage aggregate show
2 volume show
3 network interface show
4 network port show
5 history
6 storage aggregate show

Why did it re-run the history command? Because history itself will be displayed in its own output (it is a command being run, after all) and it was the second command from the bottom of the list. Note also that redo 1 is not displayed but instead the storage aggregate show is again listed: the redo functionality is simply a shortcut and it is the effective commands that are displayed by history and not the exact characters that are typed at the prompt.

Although:

cdot_mba1::> vol show
  (volume show)
Vserver   Volume       Aggregate    State      Type       Size  Available Used%
--------- ------------ ------------ ---------- ---- ---------- ---------- -----
cdot_mba1-01 
          vol0         aggr0        online     RW      851.5MB    233.2MB   72%

cdot_mba1::> history
    1  storage aggregate show
    2  volume show
    3  network interface show
    4  network port show
    5  history
    6  storage aggregate show
    7  history
    8  vol show

Notice that command 8 is different from command 2 (volume shortened to vol) even though they are the same effective command.

If you don't want to use a numeric ID or relative numeric value for a previously-entered command, you also use just use a string that uniquely matches the beginning of the prior command you want:

cdot_mba1::> redo vol
  (volume show)
Vserver   Volume       Aggregate    State      Type       Size  Available Used%
--------- ------------ ------------ ---------- ---- ---------- ---------- -----
cdot_mba1-01 
          vol0         aggr0        online     RW      851.5MB    231.9MB   72%

What if you use a string that isn't unique to one command?

cdot_mba1::> redo network
                                      Auto-Negot  Duplex     Speed (Mbps) 
Node   Port   Role         Link   MTU Admin/Oper  Admin/Oper Admin/Oper   
------ ------ ------------ ---- ----- ----------- ---------- ------------ 
cdot_mba1-01
       e0a    data         up    1500  true/true  full/full   auto/1000
       e0b    data         up    1500  true/true  full/full   auto/1000
       e0c    data         up    1500  true/true  full/full   auto/1000
       e0d    data         up    1500  true/true  full/full   auto/1000
4 entries were displayed.

When multiple entries match the same string, the most recent match is used, which in this case was network port show.

You can be very efficient when using this redo method, as the string you type doesn't need to be long - it just needs to be unique:

cdot_mba1::> redo s
Aggregate     Size Available Used% State   #Vols  Nodes            RAID Status
--------- -------- --------- ----- ------- ------ ---------------- ------------
aggr0        900MB   43.52MB   95% online       1 cdot_mba1-01     raid_dp,
                                                                   normal

Since only one previously-entered command began with the letter "s", redo knew that was the command that needed to be run. If you've been doing much in your session, of course, you're unlikely to be able to abbreviate it as much as in that example.

Would you believe there's an even more efficient way of re-running that command than redo s? Try this instead:

cdot_mba1::> !1
Aggregate     Size Available Used% State   #Vols  Nodes            RAID Status
--------- -------- --------- ----- ------- ------ ---------------- ------------
aggr0        900MB   43.54MB   95% online       1 cdot_mba1-01     raid_dp,
                                                                   normal

If you're used to Bash or other Unix/Linux shells, you may be used to using the "bang" (!) operator to re-run prior commands - and it works under clustered Data ONTAP as well! It operates just like the redo command where you specify the numeric ID for the command from history - but you don't even need a space between them.

One last efficiency trick: if you just want to rerun the last command you can simply type "!!".

cdot_mba1::> !!
Aggregate     Size Available Used% State   #Vols  Nodes            RAID Status
--------- -------- --------- ----- ------- ------ ---------------- ------------
aggr0        900MB   43.54MB   95% online       1 cdot_mba1-01     raid_dp,
                                                                   normal

Setting Display Preferences

In Part 1 we used the set command to change between privilege levels, but it has several other uses as well.

cdot_mba1::> set -?
  [[-privilege] {admin|advanced|diagnostic}]  Privilege Level
  [ -confirmations {on|off} ]                 Confirmation Messages
  [ -showallfields {true|false} ]             Show All Fields
  [ -showseparator  ]       Show Separator
  [ -active-help {true|false} ]               Active Help
  [ -units {auto|raw|B|KB|MB|GB|TB|PB} ]      Data Units
  [ -rows  ]                         Pagination Rows ('0' disables)
  [ -vserver  ]                         Default Vserver
  [ -node  ]                            Default Node
  [ -stop-on-error {true|false} ]             Stop On Error

The "-confirmations" parameter specifies whether the system should require you to confirm ("Are you sure?") when issuing potentially disruptive commands. This, of course, on by default - please don't change it on a production system.

The "-showallfields" parameter tells the system to include all possible fields when displaying tabular output. This is off by default, and here's an example of why:

cdot_mba1::> set
User Name:             admin
Profile Name:          admin
Privilege Level:       admin
Confirmation Messages: on
Show All Fields:       false
Show Field Separator:
Data Units:            auto
Pagination Rows:       54
Default Vserver:
Default Node:
Stop On Error:         false

cdot_mba1::> set -showallfields true 

cdot_mba1::> set
privilege   confirmations   username   profilename   from           app   showallfields   showseparator   active-help   units   allow-proxy   rows   trace-threshold   vserver   node   stop-on-error   
----------- --------------- ---------- ------------- -------------- ----- --------------- --------------- ------------- ------- ------------- ------ ----------------- --------- ------ --------------- 
admin       on              admin      admin         172.16.213.1   ssh   true            "   "           -             auto    false         54     0%                ""        ""     false           

If you do enable "-showallfields" you'll normally want to also set the "-showseparator" to a different character than a tab (like a comma to enable CSV output):

cdot_mba1::> set -showseparator ","

cdot_mba1::> set                   
privilege,confirmations,username,profilename,from,app,showallfields,showseparator,active-help,units,allow-proxy,rows,trace-threshold,vserver,node,stop-on-error,
Privilege Level,Confirmation Messages,User Name,Profile Name,Connected From,Application,Show All Fields,Show Separator,Active Help,Data Units,Allow Offline Proxy,Pagination Rows ('0' disables),SMF Tracing Threshold,Default Vserver,Default Node,Stop On Error,
admin,on,admin,admin,172.16.213.1,ssh,true,,,-,auto,false,54,0%,"","",false,

The "-active-help" parameter specifies that just typing "?" will activate help request. Setting this value to "true" will then require you to press [Enter] following the "?". You probably don't want to change this value.

The "-units" parameter specifies what unit of measurement for data storage should be used when reporting sizes. The default setting is "auto" which will auto-scale the size for human-readable output. You can override this to display everything consistently in bytes, kilobytes, etc.

cdot_mba1::> vol show
  (volume show)
Vserver   Volume       Aggregate    State      Type       Size  Available Used%
--------- ------------ ------------ ---------- ---- ---------- ---------- -----
cdot_mba1-01 vol0      aggr0        online     RW        851MB      213MB   74%
tours     tours_root   aggr0        online     RW         20MB       18MB    5%
2 entries were displayed.

cdot_mba1::> set -units B

cdot_mba1::> vol show    
  (volume show)
Vserver   Volume       Aggregate    State      Type       Size  Available Used%
--------- ------------ ------------ ---------- ---- ---------- ---------- -----
cdot_mba1-01 vol0      aggr0        online     RW   892841984B 223346688B   74%
tours     tours_root   aggr0        online     RW    20971520B  19808256B    5%
2 entries were displayed.

cdot_mba1::> set -units KB

cdot_mba1::> vol show
  (volume show)
Vserver   Volume       Aggregate    State      Type       Size  Available Used%
--------- ------------ ------------ ---------- ---- ---------- ---------- -----
cdot_mba1-01 vol0      aggr0        online     RW     871916KB   218632KB   74%
tours     tours_root   aggr0        online     RW      20480KB    19344KB    5%
2 entries were displayed.

cdot_mba1::> set -units TB

cdot_mba1::> vol show     
  (volume show)
Vserver   Volume       Aggregate    State      Type       Size  Available Used%
--------- ------------ ------------ ---------- ---- ---------- ---------- -----
cdot_mba1-01 vol0      aggr0        online     RW          0TB        0TB   74%
tours     tours_root   aggr0        online     RW          0TB        0TB    5%
2 entries were displayed.

My personal recommendation is to just leave it at the defaults, but there can be times that it's useful to change.
The "-rows" parameter specifies how many rows of output text before the pagination is required (in other words, before you have to hit [Space] to see the next page of output).

cdot_mba1::> vol show -ins
  (volume show)

                                 Vserver Name: cdot_mba1-01
                                  Volume Name: vol0
                               Aggregate Name: aggr0
                                  Volume Size: 851.5MB
                           Volume Data Set ID: -
                    Volume Master Data Set ID: -
                                 Volume State: online
                                  Volume Type: RW
                                 Volume Style: flex
                       Is Cluster-Mode Volume: false
                        Is Constituent Volume: false
                                Export Policy: -
                                      User ID: -
                                     Group ID: -
                               Security Style: -
                             UNIX Permissions: ------------
                                Junction Path: -
                         Junction Path Source: -
                              Junction Active: -
                       Junction Parent Volume: -
                                      Comment: -
                               Available Size: 221.4MB
                              Filesystem Size: 851.5MB
                      Total User-Visible Size: 808.9MB
                                    Used Size: 587.5MB
                              Used Percentage: 73%
         Volume Nearly Full Threshold Percent: 95%
                Volume Full Threshold Percent: 98%
         Maximum Autosize (for flexvols only): 1021MB
       Autosize Increment (for flexvols only): 42.57MB
                             Minimum Autosize: 851.5MB
           Autosize Grow Threshold Percentage: 85%
         Autosize Shrink Threshold Percentage: 50%
                                Autosize Mode: off
         Autosize Enabled (for flexvols only): false
          Total Files (for user-visible data): 25876
           Files Used (for user-visible data): 7589
                        Space Guarantee Style: volume
                    Space Guarantee in Effect: true
            Snapshot Directory Access Enabled: true
                 Space Reserved for Snapshots: 5%
                        Snapshot Reserve Used: 734%
                              Snapshot Policy: -
                                Creation Time: Fri Nov 07 20:45:01 2014
                                     Language: -
                                 Clone Volume: -
                                    Node name: cdot_mba1-01
                                NVFAIL Option: on
                    Is File System Size Fixed: false
                                Extent Option: off
                Reserved Space for Overwrites: 0B
Press  to page down,  for next line, or 'q' to quit... 

Setting this value to 0 turns off pagination and all output is sent immediately to the screen.

cdot_mba1::> set -rows 0

cdot_mba1::> vol show -ins
  (volume show)

                                 Vserver Name: cdot_mba1-01
                                  Volume Name: vol0
                               Aggregate Name: aggr0
                                  Volume Size: 851.5MB
                           Volume Data Set ID: -
                    Volume Master Data Set ID: -
                                 Volume State: online
                                  Volume Type: RW
                                 Volume Style: flex
                       Is Cluster-Mode Volume: false
                        Is Constituent Volume: false
                                Export Policy: -
                                      User ID: -
                                     Group ID: -
                               Security Style: -
                             UNIX Permissions: ------------
                                Junction Path: -
                         Junction Path Source: -
                              Junction Active: -
                       Junction Parent Volume: -
                                      Comment: -
                               Available Size: 221.6MB
                              Filesystem Size: 851.5MB
                      Total User-Visible Size: 808.9MB
                                    Used Size: 587.3MB
                              Used Percentage: 73%
         Volume Nearly Full Threshold Percent: 95%
                Volume Full Threshold Percent: 98%
         Maximum Autosize (for flexvols only): 1021MB
       Autosize Increment (for flexvols only): 42.57MB
                             Minimum Autosize: 851.5MB
           Autosize Grow Threshold Percentage: 85%
         Autosize Shrink Threshold Percentage: 50%
                                Autosize Mode: off
         Autosize Enabled (for flexvols only): false
          Total Files (for user-visible data): 25876
           Files Used (for user-visible data): 7589
                        Space Guarantee Style: volume
                    Space Guarantee in Effect: true
            Snapshot Directory Access Enabled: true
                 Space Reserved for Snapshots: 5%
                        Snapshot Reserve Used: 734%
                              Snapshot Policy: -
                                Creation Time: Fri Nov 07 20:45:01 2014
                                     Language: -
                                 Clone Volume: -
                                    Node name: cdot_mba1-01
                                NVFAIL Option: on
                    Is File System Size Fixed: false
                                Extent Option: off
                Reserved Space for Overwrites: 0B
                           Fractional Reserve: 100%
                  Snapshot Cloning Dependency: off
            Primary Space Management Strategy: volume_grow
                     Read Reallocation Option: off
             Inconsistency in the File System: false
                 Is Volume Quiesced (On-Disk): false
               Is Volume Quiesced (In-Memory): false
    Volume Contains Shared or Compressed Data: false
            Space Saved by Storage Efficiency: 0B
       Percentage Saved by Storage Efficiency: 0%
                 Space Saved by Deduplication: 0B
            Percentage Saved by Deduplication: 0%
                Space Shared by Deduplication: 0B
                   Space Saved by Compression: 0B
        Percentage Space Saved by Compression: 0%
                                   Block Type: 64-bit
                  FlexCache Connection Status: -
                             Is Volume Moving: -
               Flash Pool Caching Eligibility: read-write
Flash Pool Write Caching Ineligibility Reason: -
                   Managed By Storage Service: -
Create Namespace Mirror Constituents For SnapDiff Use: -
                      Constituent Volume Role: -
                        QoS Policy Group Name: -
              Is Volume Move in Cutover Phase: -
      Number of Snapshot Copies in the Volume: 5

One final note: rather than typing set -rows 0 (or whatever value you want) you can simply use rows 0 instead.

cdot_mba1::> rows
  0

cdot_mba1::> set -rows 54

cdot_mba1::> rows
  54

cdot_mba1::> set -rows 0

cdot_mba1::> rows
  0

cdot_mba1::> rows 54

cdot_mba1::> set 
User Name:             admin
Profile Name:          admin
Privilege Level:       admin
Confirmation Messages: on
Show All Fields:       false
Show Field Separator:  ,
Data Units:            auto
Pagination Rows:       54
Default Vserver:
Default Node:
Stop On Error:         false

The "-vserver" parameter specifies a default vserver (the older engineering term for what are now called Storage Virtual Machines, or SVMs) to be used with any command which has an applicable "-vserver" parameter.

cdot_mba1::> vserver show
                    Admin     Root                  Name    Name
Vserver     Type    State     Volume     Aggregate  Service Mapping
----------- ------- --------- ---------- ---------- ------- -------
cdot_mba1   admin   -         -          -          -       -
cdot_mba1-01 node   -         -          -          -       -
tours       data    running   tours_root aggr0      file    file
3 entries were displayed.

cdot_mba1::> set -vserver tours

cdot_mba1::> set
User Name:             admin
Profile Name:          admin
Privilege Level:       admin
Confirmation Messages: on
Show All Fields:       false
Show Field Separator:  ,
Data Units:            MB
Pagination Rows:       0
Default Vserver:       tours
Default Node:
Stop On Error:         false

cdot_mba1::> vserver show
                    Admin     Root                  Name    Name
Vserver     Type    State     Volume     Aggregate  Service Mapping
----------- ------- --------- ---------- ---------- ------- -------
tours       data    running   tours_root aggr0      file    file

Likewise, the "-node" parameter specifies a default node (or storage controller) to be used with any command which has an applicable "-node" parameter.

For both "-vserver" and "-node" you can return to the unspecified values by using "" (with no space in between):

cdot_mba1::> set -vserver ""

cdot_mba1::> vserver show
                    Admin     Root                  Name    Name
Vserver     Type    State     Volume     Aggregate  Service Mapping
----------- ------- --------- ---------- ---------- ------- -------
cdot_mba1   admin   -         -          -          -       -
cdot_mba1-01 node   -         -          -          -       -
tours       data    running   tours_root aggr0      file    file
3 entries were displayed.

cdot_mba1::> set
User Name:             admin
Profile Name:          admin
Privilege Level:       admin
Confirmation Messages: on
Show All Fields:       false
Show Field Separator:  ,
Data Units:            MB
Pagination Rows:       0
Default Vserver:
Default Node:
Stop On Error:         false

Finally, the "-stop-on-error" parameter specifies whether a continuing command will continue upon encountering an error or stop instead. The default is stop.

For all of these session settings, it's important to remember that they only affect the current session: upon logoff or disconnect any customizations you have made will be lost and the next session will use the default values instead.

Ok, that last section got pretty dry (display settings just aren't sexy, sorry), but in Part 3 we'll go over more advanced CLI uses with field options, queries, and extended queries. Trust me - it's more fun that sentence sounded!

Tech Smorgasbord #2

Continuing my reference series for interesting tech to investigate further or just especially good tech material in general. Go ahead and try a few – there should be a little something for everyone.


 OpenStack Summit Paris 2014

The latest OpenStack Summit was held in Paris earlier this month (the first week of November, to be precise).  Luckily for those of us who weren’t able to attend in person, the presentations were recorded and have already been posted online. There’s a ton of interesting stuff here – just as with VMworld there’s more interesting sessions than there is time to view them all. A few of the ones I plan to start with:


#vBrownBag TechTalks at OpenStack Summit Paris

The ever-busy vBrownBag team were also in attendance at the Summit, and recorded 72 of their own talks. Those videos were also quickly made available here, though it might be easier to browse the schedule and follow those links. There is a again a plethora of riches, but I’m going to start with the following:


VMworld Content Downloader

This isn’t new but I just stumbled across it, and it could be useful. I have a definite need to get the latest VMworld content downloaded for offline access (the only time I tend to watch videos is when I’m traveling), so I should try to play with this a bit. Having no experience with Ruby, let alone “Watir“, if I do try it I may post a short blog on the experience.


The Bracket Computing Cell

Not quite sure what to make of this. Bracket Computing is apparently a 3-year old startup founded by former employees of VMware, Cisco, and NetApp to provide enterprise-class virtualization running on top of the public cloud. They claim to be able to address the security, isolation, and performance concerns of using public cloud resources while at the same time enabling businesses to easily migrate their applications between various cloud providers (though only AWS is supported today). They’ve raised $85M so far from Andreessen Horowitz, GE, Qualcomm, and others, and have had some customers beta (or alpha) testing their product – the most notable being DirectTV.

They’ve certainly put a lot of work into the website, but the complete lack of technical details on the product is frustrating. Right now they’ve done a decent initial marketing blitz (nine news articles all released over the last nine days in October from the likes of eWeek, NetworkWorld, the Wall Street Journal, and the New York Ties) but without any technical information to provide it any credence.


Facebook’s “next generation data center fabric”

A long-ish article describing Facebook’s latest data center networking – sorry, data center fabric – from a design perspective. Good read.


Accelerating Open vSwitch to “Ludicrous Speed”

Open vSwitch is pretty well-known even outside of the OpenStack community, but you still don’t readily hear a lot of details on it (at least I don’t). This article goes through some of the performance improvements over the last few releases, and also points to a session from the OpenStack Summit that talks about Rackspace’s experience in their production deployment.

There is also a two-day Open vSwitch Fall 2014 Conference scheduled to start tomorrow, November 17th. Hopefully we’ll see that content get posted on-line as well.


Integrity of I/O for VMs on NFS Datastores:

Josh Odgers, VCDX #90, has written a blog series discussing some of the deep technical aspects of using NFS for VMware vSphere deployments. Josh’s site is one of the best virtualization blogs in the industry, and this series is some of his best work. I don’t need to paraphrase it – just go read. Highly recommended!

Part 1 – Emulation of the SCSI Protocol
Part 2 – Forced Unit Access (FUA) & Write Through
Part 3 – Write Ordering
Part 4 – Torn Writes
Part 5 – Data Corruption


 vSphere Cluster Sizing Calculator

Josh has also put together a simple but handy on-line tool to calculate CPU & RAM overcommitment ratios, and the appropriate percentage to use for vSphere HA resource reservations. Bookmark it.


vOneCloud

OpenNebula Systems recently announced the beta release of vOneCloud, a self-service cloud management solution specifically touted as a replacement for VMware’s vCloud Director. vOneCloud marries the functionality of the standard OpenNebula with vCenter-specific integrations and extensions – vSphere and vCenter 5.5 are required. It’s distributed as virtual appliance in OVA format based on CentOS 6.5, and with all components fully open-sourced. Documentation is available as HTML or PDF.


 

A Blog A Day – Thoughts So Far

You may have noticed a distinct uptick in the amount of posts since November 1st. Prior to that, despite the best of intentions, I had only managed the one post detailing what I took away from a VCDX Bootcamp at the start of VMworld US 2014. Since the first of this month, however, I’ve managed at least a short post each day.  Why the somewhat extreme change in output?

Thank or blame Greg Ferro‘s “I Challenge Me And You To 30 Blogs in 30 days” post from October 9th. I’ve had every intention of writing a blog since…well, at least as far back as 2005.  Yet it took me nine years to go from that first good intention to the first post, and then over another month had passed with no further posts when I read Greg’s challenge.  The timing of the challenge seemed equally appropriate and difficult due to both of NetApp’s Insight conferences (at both of which I was presenting) being scheduled over that next month. It seemed appropriate to have the two conferences somewhat book-end my 30 days of blogs by starting mid October and ending mid November. Of course, the preparation and travel for those events also made the goal that much more difficult, and other responsibilities contributed to me not starting until after Insight US was over. Two days after Insight was November 1st and I finally started rolling.

From the beginning, I had a long list of topics I wanted to cover so I thought it would be fairly easy to finish out the month once I got started. Starting anything is usually the hardest part: there’s far less satisfaction in starting in comparison to finishing. I’ve certainly felt a bit of inertia building up over the last couple weeks, and even contemplated trying to make it last longer than just 30 days (just don’t tell my wife that). 15 days into the process and at the halfway point I’ve still got 20 posts in various states of formulation with more undoubtedly likely to spring up in the meantime.  So it should be easy to keep going, right?

Yes and no. I’m a bit of a perfectionist, and I really like to work iteratively: draft, re-draft, re-work, and refine. The time constraints of posting daily aren’t particularly conducive to that approach, not unless or until you have a backlog of material in the queue anyway.  I had made the deliberate choice to not have any material written prior to the start of the challenge in an attempt to push myself even more outside of my comfort zone – and in that regard I’ve succeeded. Whether that will ultimately be a good thing or not I haven’t decided, but it certainly hasn’t been easy. The other issue is simply one of time, as the timing of my posts – and subsequent tweets announcing them – can attest. Virtually every post has been started sometime between 9pm and 11pm, which has made for some pretty consistently tight deadlines. Tonight is a little earlier to finish, but I also need to get up for a very early flight.  If I’m going to be able to continue at a decent pace, I’m going to need to find earlier hours to work on things (earlier posts with earlier announcement tweets would undoubtedly garner a few more readers as well). More time for writing – and for sleeping – will hopefully contribute to better quality articles, too.

Traveling to Insight Berlin for this coming week will increase the pressures around time & sleeping, but I’m going to keep pushing for the full 30 days.


Other people, as you’ve probably noticed, are doing this same challenge and even doing it this same month.  The most vocal and consistent group is the Virtual Design Master (VDM) gang: Melissa Palmer (@vmiss33), Eric Wright (@discoposse), Jonathan Frappier (@jfrappier), Angelo Luciani (@AngeloLuciani), and the many others they’ve inspired (incited?) to do the same. Check out theTwitter stream for the #vDM30in30 hashtag and you’ll find a lot of good content to read and a lot of good people to follow.

 

NetApp Big Release Bundle – November 2014

Like a lot of companies, NetApp tends to release products at the same time, not least because many of them are dependent on one another for compatibility. While clustered Data ONTAP 8.3RC1 made the big news yesterday, there were several other important product updates:


OnCommand Unified Manager (OCUM) for Clustered Data ONTAP 6.2RC1

OCUM is a management tool with a web user interface that enables an infrastructure administrator to monitor and troubleshoot storage-related issues around data storage capacity, availability, performance, and protection.

OCUM has primarily been updated to support the latest Data ONTAP release, but there are several other key features:

  • MetroCluster integration, monitoring, and configuration
  • Monitoring specifically around all-SSD aggregates and All-Flash FAS systems
  • Support for installation on a Red Hat Enterprise Linux operating system (the last releases were only available as a VMware virtual appliance)
  • Integration with OnCommand Workflow Automation

OnCommand Workflow Automation (WFA) 3.0RC1

WFA is an automation and orchestration engine focused on handling storage management tasks, but which is easily extensible to other areas using PowerShell or Perl. It also integrates well with third-party products including VMware’s vCenter Orchestrator.

Key new features, beyond release compatibility, are:

  • Nesting of workflows: you can now use a workflow as a child of a parent workflow
  • IPv6 support
  • Access to the WFA database via PowerShell or Perl
  • Enhancements to the WFA REST APIs
  • Significant usability enhancements
    • Test button for custom finders and incremental finders
    • Floating action menu that is displayed for long period of time
    • Color-coded log messages for command testing that enables easy identification of information
    • Enhancements to tooltips
    • Progress bar for workflows and wait commands
    • Right-click menu to test filters, finders, commands, and functions from the respective list in Designer
    • Right-click menu to reset the scheme of a datasource from the list of datasources
    • Icon to assist insertion of approval points when designing a workflow

Data ONTAP Edge 8.3.130RC1

Data ONTAP Edge is an on-premises software-only instance of Data ONTAP 8.3 running as a VMware virtual appliance. Edge is designed for usecases like remote office/branch office (ROBO) where dedicated storage hardware may be unnecessary, but administrators still want to leverage existing tools and skillsets for storage services. It also allows these environments to take advantage of advanced storage features, including block-efficient replication to other offices or centralized datacenters for backup and/or disaster recovery.


System Setup 3.0

System Setup provides an easy, graphical user interface to quickly setup new Data ONTAP systems upon arrival into the customer’s environment without requiring extensive professional services. Modern entry-level FAS arrays (2200 and 2500 series) are supported when running in 7-mode, and many more models are supported when running clustered Data ONTAP (2200, 2500,  6200 and 8000 series platforms, along with 3220& 3250 arrays).


SnapDrive for Windows 7.1

SnapDrive provides extensive integration between an operating system (in this cases, Windows) and its connected FAS storage, and can act in conjunction with various SnapManagers to extend data management to the application layer. SnapDrive makes it easy for the server administrator to provision, de-provision, modify, protect, and replicate storage connected via multiple storage protocols.

Key new features, beyond release compatibility, are:

  • Several improvements around clones:
    • throttling of clone jobs if the process will otherwise negatively impact system performance
    • split clone capability
    • clones of clones
  • Easier thin provisioning of LUNs
  • Microsoft Failover Cluster enhancements
  • MetroCluster support

SnapManager for Microsoft Exchange 7.1

SnapManager for Exchange works with SnapDrive to provide data protection services and automation for Exchange databases including backup and restores, offloaded database validations, clones, and replication. Restores can be performed even at the object level using the integrated Single Mailbox Recovery (an inaccurate name now, given the ability to restore with much more granularity – down to an individual message, contact, attachment, etc. – than at the mailbox level.

Key new features, beyond release compatibility, are:

  • DAG reseeding
  • Role-base access control (RBAC)
  • Native SnapVault integration
  • MetroCluster support

SnapManager for Hyper-V 2.1

SnapManager for Hyper-V is a data protection management solution for Hyper-V virtual environments running on FAS storage arrays that provides both crash-consistent and application-consistent VM backups, as well as easy restoration of the VMs and monitoring of backup jobs.


OnCommand Cloud Manager (OCCM) 1.0

OCCM is a completely new product designed to manage both Cloud ONTAP  and NetApp Private Storage (NPS) systems.  Cloud ONTAP is a software-only instance of Data ONTAP 8.3 running in a public cloud (available today on Amazon Web Services) which provides all standard ONTAP services and features (minus some hardware-dependent ones like Fibre Channel) in an on-demand, pay-as-you-go model. NPS utilizes a NetApp FAS system(s) co-located in a datacenter with Direct Connect access to AWS, Azure, and/or SoftLayer to provide secure, private data storage to virtual machines running in a public cloud(s).


Clustered Data ONTAP 8.3RC1

Today NetApp released nine new or updated products for immediate download to customers, with the biggest one being our core product. This is another milestone release for Data ONTAP with major performance enhancements (significantly greater performance running on the same hardware platform) as well as significant new features. Every company likes to say that about every product release, of course, but here’s just a few of the improvements in 8.3 (in no particular order):

  • OnCommand System Manager is now on-box, built into the operating system to provide a web-based management GUI. A client install will still be available but is no longer required.
  • Automated nondisruptive upgrades (NDU): NDU has been core tenet of clustered Data ONTAP, and now it’s been improved to allow  automatic installation to each cluster node, validation of the cluster components, and either rolling or batch upgrades of all nodes in the cluster.
  • MetroCluster support for clustered Data ONTAP: previously, only 7-mode was available to provide customers with the zero RPO and near-zero RTO required for the most mission critical workloads and active/active data center configurations. Additional features have also been included in MetroCluster, the most significant of which is probably local high-availability (an HA pair at each site, not one HA pair split between sites).
  • IPspaces: this allows different tenants to utilize the same overlapping network addresses and subnets within the same cluster. In concert with this, each Storage Virtual Machine (SVM) now has its own distinct routing table.
  • Advanced disk partitioning (ADP):
    • Root-disk partitioning for entry-level (2200 and 2500 series) and All-Flash FAS systems which eliminates the need for dedicated root aggregates and increases the usable capacity available for customer data.
    • Flash Pool partitioning to allow SSDs to be shared across multiple aggregates and/or controllers for more efficient use of SSDs within the system.
  • Flash Pool now support compressed data for read operations.
  • Storage Encryption support for SSDs
  • Inline detection and elimination of blocks of zeros
  • Support for Dynamic Access Control (DAC) and central access policies for CIFS/SMB
  • Support for Storage-Level Access Guard an additional security setting at the volume-level which cannot be configured or revoked from a client, even by a system (Windows or UNIX) administrator. This is in addition to the standard file-level and share-level settings, as well as the new DAC.
  • The return of support for “showmount -e” for NFS environments and the use of Microsoft Management Console for share management for Windows environments.
  • Online migration of LUNs between volumes within a cluster. This is a really cool feature that deserves more attention.
  • Selective LUN Mapping (SLM) to reduce the number of paths visible to clients in larger cluster environments.
  • Over-the-wire compression support for both SnapMirror and SnapVault
  • Version-flexible replication: previously, SnapMirror replication required the destination to always be at the same Data ONTAP version level or higher than the source. Starting with 8.3 this is no longer the case and more complex replication topologies are now supported.
  • Cloud ONTAP for Amazon Web Services (AWS): a software-only storage appliance for the AWS cloud.

One thing that I have to point out: there is no version of Data ONTAP 7-mode for the 8.3 release.


Clustered Data ONTAP 8.3RC1 can be downloaded here: