Hi folks, Just a quick addendum: I've recently found out that there's another boot variable that takes precedent in setting the UID's. If you're looking to avoid UID conflicts, the best thing to do is set bootarg.nvram.sysid and SYS_SERIAL_NUM to the same value, and do this prior to first boot and initializing the disks. That prevents having to go through maintenance mode to reassign the disks. Other UID's may also be fixed and harder to change after the first complete boot. Also, the system ID format is a 10-digit number. The last two digits of the number need to be unique within the C-Mode cluster for the disk UID's to be unique. So one way to manage the values is to use the first 8 digits to represent the cluster, and the last two digits to represent the node. For example: 1111111101, 1111111102, ..., 2222222201, 2222222202, etc. To set the values, you'll need to enter: SIMLOADER> set bootarg.nvram.sysid=1111111101 SIMLOADER> set SYS_SERIAL_NUM=1111111101 SIMLOADER> boot Take care and hope that helps, Miroslav
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Hi Kostantin, Great write-up and explanation! The one thing I'd add is that if you make that serial number change in the SIMLOADER before first setting up the simulator, then it won't be necessary to go through the maintenance mode process to reassign the disks. The initial setup will use the serial number that's defined at the time. Lastly, we are planning to add functionality to automatically generate unique serial numbers for simulators in a future release of Data ONTAP. Take care, Miroslav
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Hi folks, The short answer is that the DOT8 simulator expects specific identification and behavior from the underlying virtual devices. If you can get KVM and Xen to provide virtual devices that look and act exactly like in VMware, then there's a good chance that it will work. I know that a bunch of people have tried with Hyper-V without much success. If you get simulator to boot and get configured in KVM, then that's already good progress. Does KVM provide options for fine-tuning the virtual NIC type? If so, perhaps by playing with those options you'll hit on a combination that works. The simulator engineering team has their hands full and isn't going to be doing any development and testing related to KVM and Xen any time soon, so it's entirely up to the KVM/Xen experts on this community to figure out what's possible. Take care and hope that helps, Miroslav
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Hi Daniel, I'll address your questions below, and have a couple of questions of my own: 1. I can say that we are definitely discussing increasing the capacity limit on the simulator to match modern capacities and requirements. I can't discuss discuss details or dates on this forum right now, but will say that making the simulator available with larger capacity will be tied to a future release of Data ONTAP. We are very unlikely to release an updated simulator off-cycle from Data ONTAP. Now for my question: I'm not familiar with the Celerra simulator; what are its capacity limits? That might help us better determine where we should move our limits. 2. The virtual NVRAM has been increased 1600% to a whopping 32MB. You can see some of that in some of the console messages when the simulator boots. I say "whopping" with a bit of humor, but that level of vNVRAM is sufficient for very decent performance from a simulator. While we haven't done a formal performance timing profile for the simulator, I doubt the vNVRAM is the bottleneck for the DOT8 sim. In my experience, the DOT8 simulator runs as fast as the disk on which the VM lives. When it's on an SSD, the simulator performance is very good. 3. I have some suggestions, but as you imply it would be much easier to do with increased capacity limits. We understand that, and wish to make the simulator a great tool for demonstrating, learning, and testing the entire solution as you described. For now, I would suggest: Run through the capacity increate process to max out the capacity on the simulator Do the calculations to see if using RAID4 would help relative to number of RAID groups and parity disks. Consider dumping everything into a single aggregate and maxing out the RAID group sizes. This goes against best practices for resiliency, but for the simulator that isn't a primary factor. If you don't need the extra snapshot reserve, consider turning it down to make more of the capacity available to the active volumes. Use the new DeDupe and Compression licenses to get more effective capacity out the volumes that you create. You may get a bit more capacity by putting everything into a single volume with dedupe and compression enabled, but that might not be what you want to test out and certainly isn't best practice for the solution areas you describe. If you know that dedupe or compression wouldn't work for your dataset, then consider splitting out that data into a separate volume and using the space efficiency features only on the data where they help. Thin provision everything you can and keep an eye on the actual free space in the aggregate(s). You may just need to create multiple POC simulated environments where you test only a portion of the entire solution set within each environment. Consider creating a VM team or vApp that you can clone or deploy from template to make that easier. So, what do you think? Take care, Miroslav
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Hi Daniel, To your direct question, the limitation of 56x1GB disks is still part of the Data ONTAP 8 simulator. We're working to increase this in the future, but any updates would need to be in concert with a new Data ONTAP release. We didn't have enough time to work through the processes needed to make that happen before the DOT8.0.1 code was locked down. As far as enhancements in the DOT8.0.1 simulator, there are two major ones that come to mind: Fixed the boot-time panic on AMD processors that happened with the original DOT8.0 simulator Added support and licenses for Deduplication and Compression There are a huge list of other bug fixes and enhancements that are part of Data ONTAP 8.0.1, but I'm not sure what most of those are. The best place to find out are the Data ONTAP 8.0.1 Release Notes. Take care and hope that helps, Miroslav
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Hi Daniel, folks, This doesn't completely address the topic, but we've had frequent requests to document the procedure for adding more simulated disks to the Data ONTAP 8 simulator. I've finally written up a document with the procedure: http://communities.netapp.com/docs/DOC-9579 Please let me know if you have any problems with the procedures! Take care, Miroslav
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Hi Bren, Greeat work and write-up! I added some comments on your blog with a couple of additional pointers and suggestions. Take care, Miroslav
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Hi ahorja.msufcu.org, Data ONTAP 8.0.1 (and earlier) contain some 3rd-party IP that contractually obliges us to limit distribution to existing customers and partners. So for now we need users to verify that they are existing customers or partners by authenticating via their NOW account to download the simulators. We're looking to change those limitations in future versions of Data ONTAP, but for the time being you need to have a NOW account associated with a current customer or partner.
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Hi Bren, Just to follow up, I noticed that there's a Cluster-Mode group on the Communities: http://communities.netapp.com/groups/cmode That might be a great place to get any help on C-Mode questions. Take care, Miroslav
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Hi Scott, Great point! I think it's possible to reconfigure the virtual networks to support jumboframes (at least in Windows), but by default the MTU should be set to 1500. It shouldn't matter for the simulator since we're not going to be breaking any speed records and the latency on the host-only virtual network should be very low. Take care, Miroslav
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Hi Bren, Good question. Here's my suggestion of the Top 10 things to try: Just go through the process of C-Mode setup and init. Create a cluster on one of the nodes and Join the second node to the cluster on the first node Create a new aggregate from the spare disks Create a new Vserver Configure the Vserver to serve data over NFS Play around with various Global Namespace capabilities: building hierarchical relationships between volume unmounting a volume to hide it from the namespace reconnecting the volume to a different spot in the namespace Move volumes between different aggregates and nodes Generate cross node traffic by mounting a network interface on one node, and doing IO to a volume that lives on the other node. Connect to the Cluster Element Manager (Web GUI), play around with it, and try monitoring the system using the Cluser View dashboard. See if you can identify the cross node traffic on the network links and aggregates when you do things like volume move or access the volume from a network interface on the other node. Use the C-Mode SnapMirror to create mirror volumes, replicate the volume to synchronize the mirror, and add a schedule to synchronize the mirrors on a regular basis. Most of these are relatively basic, but if you're new to Cluster-Mode it will be a great way to get more familiar. The documentation should help. I'm not sure if there's another Community for Cluster-Mode questions, but that would be a good place to follow up if you get stuck somewhere. Take care and hope that helps, Miroslav
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Hi folks,
I'm happy to announce that we have posted the simulator for Data ONTAP 8.0.1:
http://now.netapp.com/NOW/download/tools/simulator/ontap/8.0/
There are two zip files (one for 7-Mode and another for Cluster-Mode). We've also updated the licenses file to include licenses for deduplication and compression.
Couple of things to note:
the Data ONTAP version string inside the simulators says "Data ONTAP 8.0.1RC3X16" instead of just "Data ONTAP 8.0.1". The code is identical to the generally available release of Data ONTAP; the RC3X16 build is the build that GA is based on.
In order to create a Cluster-Mode cluster, you'll need to extract the contents of the zip file twice. Rename the first one something like "DOT801-Cm1", and the extract it again and rename it "DOT801-Cm2". Then run setup and init within each node, run cluster create in Cm1, and run cluster join in Cm2. For more information, please see the Cluster-Mode documentation available on the NOW site.
As always, this Community is the best place for questions and discussions related to the simulator. For more general questions about how to manage Data ONTAP appliances, there may be other forums which are more appropriate.
Thanks and take care,
Miroslav
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Hi, A number of people have tried porting the DOT8 simulator to Hyper-V without success. The key as we've recently realized is that the virtual hardware Hyper-V presents to Data ONTAP is different than what is presented by VMware. The DOT8 simulator doesn't currently have drivers for the Hyper-V virtualized hardware, so even if you translate the VMDK's to VHD's you'll run into a lack of drivers for basic hardware that will prevent you from booting successfully. I can't say if your error message is due to that or a disk translation issue. As far as I know, the ETA for Hyper-V support in the DOT8 simulator is over a year away. Right now your best bet would be to use one of the VMware products. Player is free and can run the DOT8 simulator well. Take care and hope that helps, Miroslav
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Hi Spence, Eugene, The Data ONTAP 8 Simulator *is* technically upgradable, but there currently is no image on NOW that can be used to upgrade it. When you try to download a new Data ONTAP image from NOW, the first step is to select the controller for which you're downloading the software (e.g., FAS2040, FAS3170, etc.). The simulator virtual machine is a platform, just like the different types of hardware platforms NetApp offers. So when you try to upgrade the simulator using using the image.tgz file from a different platform, the type checking might pass (it shouldn't and should tell you that the platform is incompatible), but the image itself isn't going to boot. There are too many platform-dependent drivers, optimizations, etc. for the same image to boot across such different platforms. The NetApp simulator team is discussing what it would take to add the simulator as a platform selection for Data ONTAP image download. Working through the process is always more complicated than one would think or imagine When we figure it out, we're unlikely to provide images for any older releases of Data ONTAP. For new version of Data ONTAP posted to NOW we should be able to include the simulator as a selectable platform. That said, I explicitly want to set the expectation that at this time there is no particular date or Data ONTAP release when this is going to happen. We're just starting to work on it NOW (pun intended). Take care and hope that helps, Miroslav
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Hi Daniel, To your SnapDrive question: I'm not 100% sure about this, but I think there are licensing and royalties to parties outside of NetApp tied to SD for Windows. So NetApp can't give away those licenses like we do with many of the other Simulator licenses. I'm not a lawyer, don't play one on TV, and haven't been directly involved with anything related to SD Windows royalties...this is just based on some hallway conversations and speculation on my part. Thanks everybody for writing up your reasons for needing more capacity on the simulator. Please keep the additional reasons coming if you have a particular use case, even if something similar has already been stated. Multiple requests for the same use case would help us guage demand and better prioritize. Thanks and take care, Miroslav
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Hi folks, So I'm wondering if the people who are having issues with the current disk limitations could write up a bit more detail about what they are trying to do and can't due to the limits: What use cases for the simulator are eliminated or made much more difficult due to the limitations? What capacity limits would be sufficient? If you needed to choose, would it be better to allow more disks or larger capacity disks? What would be a good mechanism to keep simulators from being used for production? If we can get enough useful feedback, then it'll be easier to make a case for changes in future versions of the simulator. Thanks and take care, Miroslav
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Hi nsitps1976, Educating NetApp users is a pretty high priority, and it's one of the main use cases for the simulator so that's already covered 🙂 In terms of adding disks to the simulator: it's possible but somewhat involved. The maximum number of disks that the simulator can see is 56, and the maximum simulated disk size for Data ONTAP 8.0 is 1GB. So the answer to your specific question is that you won't be able to add 100x1GB disks. Or you'll be able to add them, but Data ONTAP won't be able to see more than 56. I don't have time right now to write up the detailed steps, but the short version is: 1. unlock the diag user account and assign it a secure password (priv set advanced) 2. access the BSD shell 3. cd to /sim/dev 4. add /sim/bin/ to your path 5. use the makedisks command from /sim/bin to add the new disks 6. return to the Data ONTAP prompt and reboot 7. Assign all the new disks to the simulator The precise commands are a little different for 7-Mode and Cluster-Mode, but the general flow of the process is the same. Take care and hope that helps, Miroslav
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Hi nsitps1976, The current Data ONTAP 8.0 simulator does not yet include HA functionality, so you can't configure CF even with the license installed. The reason is that the Data ONTAP 8 simulator is a much more accurate representation of a physical system than the 7G simulator. To implement HA, you would need to have two virtual machines that both have shared access to a set of virtual disks and a mechanism to connect their simulated NVRAM cards. We are currently testing that capability for simulators, but it has not yet been released outside of NetApp. If HA capabilities between two Data ONTAP 8 Simulator VM's are important to you, could you please describe some of the reasons why and how you plan to use those capabilities in the simulator? Knowing the use cases will help us prioritize our work. Thanks and take care, Miroslav
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