New Articles and Resources articles in NetApp Community

Active IQ now has unified Digital Advisor and Discovery Dashboard watchlists

bretta — Thu, 08 Apr 2021 15:45:26 GMT

Active IQ now has unified Digital Advisor and Discovery Dashboard watchlists

You may have noticed a new look and feel to Active IQ this morning. Previously Digital Advisor custom dashboards and Discovery Dashboard watchlists were two separate things that couldn’t be mixed or shared between DA and DD. As of this morning, they are now unified. This allows you to create and maintain your watchlists in one place.

There are, however, a few important things to note about this:

If you had a default Discovery Dashboard watchlist and did not have a default Digital Advisor custom dashboard, you’ll notice that your default DD watchlist is now your default in DA also. If you want to change this, click on the word “Watchlists” on the left navigation menu where you’ll see that you can change this with the stars on the left (see screenshot below).
Discovery Dashboard has a lot more options for creating interesting watchlists. Some of those are not yet supported in Digital Advisor: Sales Rep, Partner, and Location (Region and Sales District). Digital Advisor supports Customer, Site, Group, and Serial Number. On the watchlist screen, you’ll see which one you can open each in (see screenshot below).
Since Discovery Dashboard is for pre-sales, NetApp and partners have access to it. Customers can only use Digital Advisor. This is not a change, but a reminder. Partners are also going to see this integration, but customers will only see a new look on the left side and new watchlist dialogs

Brett Albertson

Principal Technical Marketing Engineer

SAN Info PowerShell Script

mcgue — Sat, 14 Nov 2020 00:11:51 GMT

Purpose

Performs a variety of checks against an ONTAP SAN based system and returns the results in an Excel spreadsheet. Following are the checks involved.

Compare the initiators defined in each igroup against the actual logged in initiators on each node.
Show total number of initiators per LIF.
Gather FCP adapter details that might have a best practice impact.
Compare selective LUN mapping reporting-nodes against the hosting HA pair, other nodes in the cluster, and nodes no longer in the cluster.

Requirements

NetApp PowerShell Toolki - https://mysupport.netapp.com/site/tools/tool-eula/powershell-toolkit
ImportExcel Module - https://github.com/dfinke/ImportExcel
ONTAP 9.x cluster

Script Information

Save script as SANInfo.ps1
Learn more about the script with the following:
get-help .\SANInfo.ps1 -Detailed
The script only performs read operations against the cluster to collect data.

Active IQ Classic Retirement

bretta — Fri, 30 Oct 2020 18:13:31 GMT

In mid-Nov 2020, we will fully transition to the new Active IQ Digital Advisor and Active IQ “Classic” will be retired. Active IQ Digital Advisor, which has been available for months, redesigns the customer experience and makes it even easier to take proactive actions that maintain your NetApp system’s health, security, and availability. You can learn more about the evolution of Active IQ and the new release in this blog.

Many new features have been added to Active IQ Digital Advisor which never existed in Active IQ Classic such as:

Custom Dashboards
Automated “Fix It” actions including automated firmware upgrades using custom Ansible playbooks
Health Check Assessments
Wellness Review Subscription
Config Drift
Valuable Insights
Planning Widget

For a detailed list of items that will not be available in Active IQ Digital Advisor which were available in Active IQ Classic, see the “Known Limitations” page in our documentation.

Please email ng-activeiq-feedback@netapp.com with feedback, comments, or questions.

NetApp SANtricity VASA Provider

cwenzlic — Fri, 18 Sep 2020 18:31:38 GMT

NetApp SANtricity VASA Provider

VMware APIs for Storage Awareness

Overview:

About VASA Provider:

VMware vSphere Storage APIs for Storage Awareness enables unprecedented coordination between vSphere/vCenter and storage arrays. It provides built-in storage insight in vCenter to support intelligent VM storage provisioning, bolster storage troubleshooting and enable new DRS-related use cases for storage. NetApp supports vSphere Storage APIs for Storage Awareness via the plug-in, or “provider”, downloadable from this webpage. This provider is compatible with vSphere/vCenter and supports storage array makes and models list as described on the VMware Compatibility Guide.

What's New in This Version:

NetApp VASA Provider for E-Series now provides thin provisioned volume capability in addition to the existing capabilities. This version also supports firmware up to 08.20.

Overview of NetApp VASA Provider for E-Series:

NetApp VASA Provider for E-Series is a software component that supports the VMware® VASA (vStorage APIs for Storage Awareness) framework, first introduced in vSphere™ 5. It acts as an information pipeline between NetApp storage systems and vCenter™ Server, enabling you to monitor relevant storage system status by collecting data such as the following:

Storage system topology
LUN and volume attributes
Events and alarms

NetApp supports vSphere Storage APIs for Storage Awareness via the plug-in, or “provider”, downloadable from this webpage. This provider is compatible with vSphere/vCenter and supports storage array makes and models list as described on the VMware Compatibility Guide.

Note: For more information about NetApp VASA Provider for E-Series architecture, see the NetApp VASA Provider for E-Series User Guide.

System Requirements:

NetApp VASA Provider for E-Series is supported on specific releases of VMware vSphere, ESX®, and E-Series firmware. See the NetApp Interoperability Matrix for the latest information about detailed requirements and supported configurations.

Operating Systems

You can install the VASA Provider on the following operating systems (OSs):

Windows Server 2003, service pack 2, 32-bit and 64-bit
Windows Server 2008 and 2008 R2, 64-bit
Windows Server 2012 and 2012 R2, 64-bit

Applications

The VASA Provider supports vSphere versions 5.0, 5.1, 5.5, 6.0.

The NetApp E-Series VASA Provider Array Manager is compatible with Microsoft Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox, and Google Chrome browsers.

Storage Array Firmware Version Matrix

Array Model	07.84	07.86	08.10	08.20
E26xx	X	X	X	X
E27xx			X	X
E54xx	X	X	X	X
E55xx			X	X
EF540	X	X	X	X
EF550			X	X

Obtaining Installation Instructions:

The NetApp VASA E-Series User Guide provides instructions for installing the NetApp VASA Provider for E-Series on a Windows® Server system.

Important Links:

Download the provider from the NetApp Support Site (NSS)

Download Installation Guide and other important documents

Download the provider from the VMware VASA Download Site

PDF Preview: UZ Leuven Chooses Clustered Data ONTAP for Superior Data Management and Availability

Tech_OnTap — Fri, 18 Sep 2020 18:31:36 GMT

A major Belgian academic hospital standardized on clustered Data ONTAP for all data storage needs. Learn why the IT team made this decision, how they are upgrading from 7-mode, and the resulting benefits.

NetApp Extends Certification Expiration Dates by 6 Months

Beinhorn — Wed, 08 Apr 2020 18:57:28 GMT

As the world responds to the COVID-19 pandemic, our top priority is supporting our employees, partners, and customers who are faced daily with new challenges. NetApp University is extending the expiration date for all certifications set to expire in the year 2020 (January 1 to December 31, 2020) by 6 months (180 days). The extension will automatically be applied to your CertMetrics account which you can view/access through CertCenter. This does not require any action on your part.

For example, if your certification expired in February 2020, that certification status will no longer show as expired and you have been granted until July 2020 to re-up your credential. If you have a certification that is set to expire on December 31, 2020, the new expiration date will be set to April 2021.

NetApp University has partnered with PearsonVUE to make remote testing through OnVUE available so that our users are able to take their certification exams from their home or office locations using a remote proctor.

We hope that this will help you on your certification journey during this challenging time! Please take advantage of our full portfolio of free online training as you prepare to successfully take your certification exams. You can find more information on NetApp certifications, including recommended preparation, on the NetApp University Certification page.

The New Support Site is Live!

Drew_C — Fri, 27 Mar 2020 21:42:07 GMT

We're excited to announce that the new NetApp Support Site has launched!

Try it now, or read our FAQ to learn about the new features and get assistance if needed.

Enjoy!

-NetApp Digital Support Team

NetApp’s Response to COVID-19

Drew_C — Tue, 24 Mar 2020 15:57:37 GMT

NetApp's response to COVID-19, including an FAQ, can be found here. The FAQ can be accessed directly at this link.

Thanks, and stay safe!

-Drew

FAQ | New Knowledge Base Site

Drew_C — Thu, 19 Mar 2020 06:28:41 GMT

When will the new site be launched?
The new site will be live in a couple of months. The specific date hasn't been determined yet.

What will be different in the new site? 
We are redesigning the site to provide our customers with an efficient and improved knowledge base. To enhance the findability of articles, we have made our database lean by retaining only the most used and most relevant content.

Does this mean that some of the old content may not be available in the new database?
Yes, there is a possibility that you might not find some of the old or less-frequently used content in the database.

How did you determine what content to make available in the new database?
Based on our site usage data and recommendation from our experts, we are moving only our top-valued and top-rated articles into our new database.

Please subscribe to updates on this topic, as we will be updating its content as more information is available.

For any other queries, you may reach out to ng-kb-feedback@netapp.com.

-NetApp Digital Support Team

Help us test the NEW NetApp Support Site (BETA)!

Drew_C — Thu, 05 Mar 2020 20:08:16 GMT

Try the New BETA Support Site and Provide Your Feedback!

Please keep in mind the site is still in beta testing and may be missing some functionality prior to official launch.

Key Features:

Dashboard Personalization – turn on or off your preferred widgets on the Dashboard.
Assisted Support Pane – central location on the right side of every page with easy access to Elio, chat, create a case, or phone contact information.
Products – select a product under Products > All Products and view documentation, downloads, tools, and more related to a specific NetApp product
Tools – check out our redesigned tools page with a new, simplified user interface.
Favoriting – new favoriting features are available for you to "favorite" products or owned systems throughout the site.
Case creation – the technical case creation process has a revised, simpler and streamlined workflow.
Mobile Responsive Design – the entire site is now mobile responsive! Engage on the support site on your preferred device – mobile, tablet, or desktop.

Thank you for trying the site- we appreciate your input!

-NetApp Digital Support Team

How to diagnose port issues in Clustered Data ONTAP

Nithya — Tue, 12 May 2020 00:35:30 GMT

This article describes the procedure that should be performed to diagnose port issues in Clustered Data ONTAP.

https://kb.netapp.com/Advice_and_Troubleshooting/Data_Storage_Software/ONTAP_OS/How_to_diagnose_port_issues_in_Clustered_Data_ONTAP

Note: If you are unable to view the entire content of this article please log in to kb.netapp.com

How to identify a failed disk prior to replacement

Nithya — Mon, 27 Jul 2020 07:26:00 GMT

How to identify a failed disk prior to replacement

https://kb.netapp.com/Advice_and_Troubleshooting%2FData_Storage_Systems%2FFAS_Systems%2FHow_to_identify_a_failed_disk_prior_to_replacement

Note: If you are unable to view the entire content of this article please log in to kb.netapp.com

Performance First Failure Data Collection for clustered Data ONTAP 8.3 and later

Nithya — Tue, 12 May 2020 00:40:32 GMT

Performance Archives: Performance First Failure Data Collection for clustered Data ONTAP 8.3 and later

https://kb.netapp.com/Advice_and_Troubleshooting/Data_Storage_Software/ONTAP_OS/Performance_Archives%3A_Performance_first_failure_data_collection_for_Clustered_Data_ONTAP_8.3_and_later

Note: If you are unable to view the entire content of this article please log in to kb.netapp.com

How Data ONTAP Upgrade Advisor helps to perform a Data ONTAP upgrade or revert to an earlier version

Nithya — Tue, 12 May 2020 03:25:38 GMT

How Data ONTAP Upgrade Advisor helps to perform a Data ONTAP upgrade or revert to an earlier version?

https://kb.netapp.com/Advice_and_Troubleshooting/Data_Storage_Software/ONTAP_OS/How_Data_ONTAP_Upgrade_Advisor_helps_to_perform_a_Data_ONTAP_upgrade_or_revert_to_an_earlier_version%3F

Note: If you are unable to view the entire content of this article please log in to kb.netapp.com

Troubleshooting Workflow: Procedure to troubleshoot fault LEDs on various platforms

Nithya — Tue, 12 May 2020 03:32:53 GMT

Procedure to troubleshoot fault LEDs on various platforms

https://kb.netapp.com/Advice_and_Troubleshooting/Data_Storage_Systems/FAS_Systems/Procedure_to_troubleshoot_fault_LEDs_on_various_platforms

Note: If you are unable to view the entire content of this article please log in to kb.netapp.com

How to remove and replace a data disk that is about to fail

Nithya — Tue, 12 May 2020 03:42:09 GMT

This article describes the procedure that should be followed to remove a data disk that is about to fail.

https://kb.netapp.com/Advice_and_Troubleshooting/Data_Storage_Software/ONTAP_OS/How_to_remove_and_replace_a_data_disk_that_is_about_to_fail

Note: If you are unable to view the entire content of this article please log in to kb.netapp.com

AutoSupport Message: PWRFLT Power Supply messages

Nithya — Tue, 12 May 2020 03:51:09 GMT

AutoSupport Message: PWRFLT Power Supply messages

https://kb.netapp.com/Advice_and_Troubleshooting/Data_Storage_Software/ONTAP_OS/AutoSupport_Message%3A_PWRFLT_Power_Supply_messages

Note: If you are unable to view the entire content of this article please log in to kb.netapp.com

How to manually collect logs and copy files from a clustered Data ONTAP storage system

Nithya — Tue, 12 May 2020 03:58:12 GMT

This article describes the methods to collect logs and copy it from clustered Data ONTAP node(s).

https://kb.netapp.com/Advice_and_Troubleshooting/Data_Storage_Software/ONTAP_OS/How_to_manually_collect_logs_and_copy_files_from_a_clustered_Data_ONTAP_storage_system

Note: If you are unable to view the entire content of this article please log in to kb.netapp.com

How to increase the maximum number of volume inodes or files

Nithya — Tue, 12 May 2020 04:18:21 GMT

This article describes the procedure to increase the maximum number of volume inodes or files.

https://kb.netapp.com/Advice_and_Troubleshooting/Data_Storage_Software/ONTAP_OS/How_to_increase_the_maximum_number_of_volume_inodes_or_files

Note: If you are unable to view the entire content of this article please log in to kb.netapp.com

AutoSupport Message: Chassis Power Supply Degraded

Nithya — Tue, 12 May 2020 06:47:20 GMT

AutoSupport Message: Chassis Power Supply Degraded

https://kb.netapp.com/Advice_and_Troubleshooting/Data_Storage_Software/ONTAP_OS/AutoSupport_Message%3A_Chassis_Power_Supply_Degraded

Note: If you are unable to view the entire content of this article please log in to kb.netapp.com

Top 10 clustered Data ONTAP upgrade issues

Nithya — Fri, 25 Oct 2019 08:08:06 GMT

Top 10 clustered Data ONTAP upgrade issues

https://kb.netapp.com/app/answers/answer_view/a_id/1001633

Note: If you are unable to view the entire content of this article please log in to kb.netapp.com

How to collect a Perfstat from clustered Data ONTAP systems using the Perfstat GUI

Nithya — Wed, 13 May 2020 05:56:32 GMT

This document provides information about the Perfstat 8.4 GUI tool and the procedure that should be followed to collect performance data using the tool.

https://kb.netapp.com/Advice_and_Troubleshooting/Data_Storage_Software/ONTAP_OS/How_to_collect_a_Perfstat_from_clustered_Data_ONTAP_systems_using_the_Perfstat_GUI

Note: If you are unable to view the entire content of this article please log in to kb.netapp.com

NetApp Insight-2019

RajeshPanda — Tue, 22 Oct 2019 06:47:41 GMT

BUILD YOUR DATA FABRIC

NETAPP INSIGHT 2019 • OCTOBER 28-30MANDALAY BAY, LAS VEGAS

Hear from experts on how to fuel data-driven innovation on the world’s biggest clouds. Learn how industry leaders modernize IT. Engage in immersive breakout sessions, certifications, and our hands-on labs. Dive into the technology that drives your business forward at NetApp INSIGHT™ 2019.

Announcement: NetApp’s Digital Support Team is here for assistance

RajeshPanda — Tue, 22 Oct 2019 06:38:30 GMT

NetApp’s Digital Support is here for assistance. Follow us for support-related information, latest articles, learning videos, product info & tech tips.

Start with Self-Support

Guided Problem Solving
Guided access to curated content to troubleshoot installation, configuration, and commonly reported problems
Product Documentation
Your single stop for all product documentation. Find. Read. Download.
Knowledgebase
Technical articles by experts. And follow us on Twitter and Facebook for support-related information
Knowledgebase - TV
Videos for heavily used Knowledgebase articles - helpful for identified problems
AutoSupport
Take action on an alert or perform normal maintenance

What is a Service Processor and how do I use it?

Nithya — Wed, 13 May 2020 06:02:40 GMT

What is a Service Processor and how do I use it?

https://kb.netapp.com/Advice_and_Troubleshooting/Data_Storage_Systems/FAS_Systems/What_is_a_Service_Processor_and_how_do_I_use_it%3F

Note: If you are unable to view the entire content of this article please log in to kb.netapp.com

FAQ: Power supply issues

Nithya — Mon, 21 Oct 2019 09:28:07 GMT

Power supply issues on NetApp storage systems

https://kb.netapp.com/app/answers/answer_view/a_id/1001362

Note: If you are unable to view the entire content of this article please log in to kb.netapp.com

OnCommand Insight displays incorrect ‘Array Name’ for EMC Clariion and VNX Block arrays

RajeshPanda — Sun, 14 Apr 2019 17:35:30 GMT

OnCommand Insight Server displays EMC Clariion and VNX Block Array names incorrectly within the Web User Interface.
OnCommand Data WareHouse / IBM Cognos reports also display the EMC Clariion and VNX Block Array names incorrectly.

KB Article: https://kb.netapp.com/app/answers/answer_view/a_id/1087049?linkId=100000005808100

Video: Selective LUN mapping

RajeshPanda — Sun, 14 Apr 2019 17:32:31 GMT

FAQ: Selective LUN mapping

How to force vCenter to reload VSC/VASA GUI flash data for vSphere Web Client

RajeshPanda — Sun, 14 Apr 2019 17:24:20 GMT

When Virtual Storage Console (VSC) and VASA Provider are registered to vCenter, UI (user interface) extensions are pulled to vSphere. These UI extensions represent the framework that VSC and VASA Provider use to display data.

When new versions of VSC or VASA Provider are released they may be bundled with new UI extensions. During the upgrade process, VSC does not have the ability to delete the old UI extensions off of the vCenter server. These files must be removed manually. If old UI extensions are not removed then a conflict may arise which can cause display issues with the plugin.

During a upgrade of VSC or VASA Provider, it is highly recommended that the old UI extensions be removed.

How to increase the maximum number of volume inodes or files

RajeshPanda — Tue, 02 Apr 2019 05:58:16 GMT

Follow are KB Article: https://kb.netapp.com/app/answers/answer_view/a_id/1030589/loc/en_US?linkId=100000005668876 to know "How to increase the maximum number of volume inodes or files"

Configure SVM Disaster Recovery(DR) using OnCommand System Manager 9.5

RajeshPanda — Wed, 27 Mar 2019 05:53:41 GMT

With OnCommand System Manager 9.5, Configure SVM level Disaster Recovery with few clicks. Watch the demo to understand , how user can initiate SVM DR, and supported operations.

FabricPool using OnCommand System Manager 9.5

RajeshPanda — Wed, 27 Mar 2019 05:51:34 GMT

FabricPool feature allows user to seamlessly tier the inactive data reported in internal tier to supported cloud tier. Watch the demo to understand the FabricPool feature support to configure the cloud tier using System Manager 9.5.

NVMe enhancements in OnCommand System Manager 9.5

RajeshPanda — Wed, 27 Mar 2019 05:50:30 GMT

NVMe protocol configuration and management got enhanced with System Manager 9.5. Watch the demo to understand how end-users can configure NVMe protocol, map namespaces to host and get the performance statistics for the workload generated using System Manager 9.5.

OnCommand System Manager 9.5 | SnapMirror Synchronous

RajeshPanda — Wed, 27 Mar 2019 05:49:27 GMT

With ONTAP 9.5, SnapMirror Synchronous allows user to replicate volume level data at ZERO RPO. Watch the demo to understand how users can configure SnapMirror Synchronous relationship in few clicks using OnCommand System Manager 9.5.

Simplified Unified Manager Events for your Modern Datacenter

RajeshPanda — Wed, 27 Mar 2019 05:47:29 GMT

Unified Manager provides you various ways to consume vital information on ONTAP systems thereby helping you to run modern day datacenter smoothly. The demonstration covers how you can use native events, subscribe ONTAP events directly or even consume event APIs to integrate with your centralized monitoring solutions.

Intelligent monitoring and alerting of cloud connected ONTAP with Unified Manager

RajeshPanda — Wed, 27 Mar 2019 05:46:22 GMT

Use Unified Manager as your perfect ally monitoring cloud connected ONTAP. In this demo, you will learn how to use Unified Manager’s built-in analytics to predict cold data and configure auto-tiering; plan and upgrade ONTAP versions that support cloud tiering using Unified Manager’s recommendations even for lower versions of ONTAP that does not have FabricPool capability.

Monitoring of Volume Granular Zero RPO replication using Unified Manager

RajeshPanda — Wed, 27 Mar 2019 05:45:07 GMT

Monitoring of Volume Granular Zero RPO replication using Unified Manager Description: Get benefitted with Unified Manager’s simplified monitoring solution for mission critical protection relationships at volume granular level. Upgrade to Unified Manager 9.5 and ONTAP 9.5 soon if you have not already!

Integrate Enterprise Reporting Tools with Unified Manager Database – Create Fancy Reports

RajeshPanda — Wed, 27 Mar 2019 05:43:49 GMT

In this demo you will see how you can use Tableau, an enterprise reporting software to connect to Unified Manager’s read-only database in order to create content rich reports and charts for capturing capacity, performance or health data of your ONTAP systems.

How to manually send AutoSupport files to NetApp

RajeshPanda — Wed, 27 Mar 2019 05:40:20 GMT

go throuhg the below article to learn how to manually send AutoSupport files to netapp

KB Article:https://kb.netapp.com/app/answers/answer_view/a_id/1036282/loc/en_US

How to enable and configure OnCommand Insight (OCI) AutoSupports

RajeshPanda — Tue, 26 Mar 2019 05:04:39 GMT

This video describes how to perform the following actions related to OnCommand Insight AutoSupports:
•   How to enable OnCommand Insight (OCI) Autosupports (ASUP).
•   How to Include or Exclude “Logs” and/or “Performance Data” from OnCommand Insight (OCI) AutoSupports (ASUP).
•   How to change the AutoSupport send Protocol to:
o   HTTP
o   HTTPS
o   FTP
o   Email
•   How to modify AutoSupport size limitations for email.

For more information view the KB Article:https://kb.netapp.com/app/answers/answer_view/a_id/1086481

Procedure for graceful shutdown and power up of a storage system during scheduled power outage

RajeshPanda — Tue, 26 Mar 2019 04:24:40 GMT

What is the procedure for graceful shutdown and power up of a storage system during scheduled power outage? To know the Answer view our KB: https://kb.netapp.com/app/answers/answer_view/a_id/1003836?linkId=100000005574698

Solidfire HCI: How to upgrade vSphere from 6.0U3a to 6.5U1

RajeshPanda — Mon, 04 Mar 2019 05:10:56 GMT

NetApp Cloud Volumes for Google Cloud

LeoD — Mon, 04 Jun 2018 21:48:10 GMT

We're officially partnering with Google Cloud to bring Cloud Volumes to Google Cloud Platform. Here's George Kurian, NetApp CEO, and Diane Greene, Google Cloud CEO, to discuss the new partnership.

NetApp AFF A800 All-Flash Array

LeoD — Thu, 10 May 2018 16:01:49 GMT

The NetApp AFF A800 is the world's first end to end FC-NVMe solution. Storage efficiency (dedupe, compression and compaction that yields an effective ratio of 4.72:1 or 2PB in 2RU - not including snapshots and thin provisioning), extreme performance (1,100,000 IOPS @ 500us) and non-disruptive scale (up to 24 PB and 11,400,000 IOPS).

What are NVMe and SCM?

LeoD — Wed, 09 May 2018 19:23:33 GMT

Do you know what NVMe is? What about SCM? Here's Jeff Baxter to explain the two terms & how it ties back to the AFF A800 & ONTAP 9.4.

What's New in ONTAP 9.4?

LeoD — Thu, 10 May 2018 21:53:06 GMT

Want to know what's new in ONTAP 9.4? Here's Justin Parisi to breakdown all the updates including FabricPool, NVMe & much more!

What is Active IQ?

sudiph — Tue, 27 Feb 2018 18:06:47 GMT

See a quick video to understand what is Active IQ and value it brings to you while managing your NetApp products.

Active IQ Risk Mitigation Overview Video

sudiph — Wed, 21 Feb 2018 18:37:11 GMT

See how Active IQ predictive analytics can help mitigate your system risks.

Active IQ Overview Video

sudiph — Tue, 20 Feb 2018 23:27:55 GMT

See a short overview video of Active IQ and its predictive analytics features.

Guided Cluster Setup Templates

qw — Tue, 06 Feb 2018 06:18:44 GMT

With System Manager 9.1, User can setup the cluster using Guided Cluster setup. User can set up the cluster either by manually entering the values or by using the template file.

Template file download link for Guided cluster Setup available in ONTAP releases 9.1, 9.2, and 9.3.
Please find templates for Guided Cluster setup in this link

How to login to System Manager using Active Directory groups

qw — Thu, 04 Jan 2018 17:50:29 GMT

User can add Active Directory(AD) groups via CLI and login to OnCommand System Manager with a user account which is part of this AD group using AD/username & credentials

Steps:

The security login create command creates a login method for the management utility.

Add application type as ontapi (for executing ZAPI) and http (for web service requests)
For System Manager, role can be admin or read-only, custom roles are not supported.
authentication method as domain

1.a) Security login create command example, with AD group name as smqa-tme and AD as smqa

security login create -user-or-group-name smqa\smqa-qa -application ontapi -authentication-method domain -role admin
security login create -user-or-group-name smqa\smqa-qa -application http -authentication-method domain -role admin

Use security login show command to view the output

F8080-32-22-25::> security login show -user-or-group-name smqa\*

Vserver: F8080-32-22-25

Second

User/Group Authentication Acct Authentication

Name Application Method Role Name Locked Method

-------------- ----------- ------------- ---------------- ------ --------------

smqa\smqa-tme http domain admin - none

smqa\smqa-tme ontapi domain admin - none

smqa\smqa-tme ssh domain admin - none

3 entries were displayed.

Log in to OnCommand System Manager with active directory username and credentials. In this example: Nikhil has been added as a user to group smqa-qa and the Active directory is smqa.

Username: Smqa/Nikhil password : relevant passowrd

Figure 1 Login to System Manager via AD\username

Nikhil can login to System Manager , Nikhil will have admin access as a user who is part of AD group , smqa-qa.

Navigate to Settings in top right corner followed by Users, added AD group from CLI can be viewed from System Manager

Figure 2: Settings>Users

FabricPool Aggregates: End-to-End Provisioning, Monitoring and Management with OnCommand Software

Dhiman — Wed, 06 Sep 2017 22:22:12 GMT

NetApp brings in an innovation in Flash storage systems, the Fabric Pool aggregates. With FabricPool aggregates, you can move your cold data to external, less expensive storage solutions available today.

What is a FabricPool Aggregate?

FabricPool is an all SSD aggregate that has an external capacity tier attached to it. Data that is written to the SSD aggregates is called as Performance tier and backup and/or snapshots that is moved to Amazon S3 or Netapp StorageGrid Webscale is called as Capacity Tier.

Why do you need FabricPool Aggregate?

FabricPool technology brings in a pool of advantages:

The setup is simple with little policy management and tiering
Provides you with secure channels for the data in flight with significant savings in Total Cost of Ownership
Transparent to existing applications making your data Hybrid cloud ready!

How does FabricPool work?

You can attach capacity tiers to SSD aggregates and set tiering policies on the SSD volumes. Currently supported tiering policies are:

Snapshot-only which is the default
Backup – Data is tired to the capacity tier as snapmiror/snapvault destinations
None

Provisioning FabricPool Aggregate(s)

OnCommand System Manager provides you a guided setup to create and configure FabricPool aggregates. Attach your External Capacity Tier to the Performance Tier; setup tiering policies in few simple steps using the System Manager GUI. For more detailed information, follow the link

Manage and Monitor FabricPool Environment(s)

Using OnCommand Unified Manager 7.2, you can manage and monitor FabricPool environments:

Oversee External Capacity Tier usage
Visualize detailed view of Capacity consumption in both the tiers.
Setup alerts for availability and capacity of your External Capacity tier
Generate report on consumption metrics of both the tiers.

We recommend you to watch FabricPool Monitoring using OnCommand Unified Manager video, posted on youtube here

RBAC User Creator tool for VSC, VASA Provider and Storage Replication Adapter 7.0 for VMware vSphere

ashruthi — Thu, 03 Aug 2017 13:43:17 GMT

Introduction

The RBAC User Creator for ONTAP® tool is a C# application that enables you to create RBAC users within ONTAP.
The list of privileges created are stored in an XML (ontapPrivs.xml) file. The XML file enables you to gather the following information:

1. You can verify the privileges of the new user created by RBAC User Creator tool.
2. You can add privileges or products later without the need to recompile the application.

The RBAC User Creator tool is a framework where all the products and the privileges for those products are listed in the XML file. You can easily add support for another product or product version by updating the information in the XML file.

RBAC User Creator tool for Virtual Storage Console, VASA Provider, and Storage Replication Adapter 7.0

This article describes how to use the RBAC User Creator tool for Virtual Storage Console, VASA Provider, and Storage Replication Adapter 7.0 for VMware vSphere. You can use the tool to create users for the below functionalities:

1. Virtual Storage Console
2. Virtual Storage Console and VASA Provider
3. Virtual Storage Console and Storage Replication Adapter
4. Virtual Storage Console, VASA Provider and Storage Replication Adapter

Please note that VSC, VASA Provider, and SRA 7.0 supports ONTAP versions 9.0 onwards only.

Once you have downloaded and installed the RBAC User Creator tool from the ToolChest, you will need to perform the below steps to provide support for VSC, VASA Provider and SRA 7.0.

Step 1: Replace XML for VSC, VASA Provider and SRA 7.0 support

To enable support for VSC, VASA Provider and SRA 7.0, please perform the following:

1. Download and keep a copy of the ontapPrivs.xml file (attached below).
2. Access the install directory of the RBAC User Creator tool.
This information is provided during installation. For example:- The default path would be: C:\Program Files (x86)\NetApp\RBAC User Creator
3. Replace the existing ontapPrivs.xml file with the downloaded .xml file.
4. Restart the RBAC User Creator tool.

You can start using the RBAC User Creator tool to create new roles and users.

Step 2: Setting up user names and privileges

You can create ONTAP user names with the privileges required for VSC, VASA Provider and SRA.

1. Enter the name of the admin user and IP of the storage system for which you want to create the user.
2. Click LOGIN .
The tool determines the controller type.
3. As the storage system is running ONTAP, the list of SVMs are displayed.
RBAC User Creator supports creating users on the Cluster-Admin SVM as well as on Data SVMs. Select the appropriate SVM from the drop-down list.
4. Select the product and product version depending on your requirements.
• For 7.0, you must select product as “VSC, VASA Provider and SRA”.
• If you wish to use only VSC, you must select product version as “VSC 7.0”.
• If you wish to use VASA Provider along with VSC, then you must select the product version as “VSC and VASA Provider 7.0”.
• If you wish to use SRA along with VSC, then you must select the product version as “VSC and SRA 7.0”.
• If you wish to use all three, VSC, VASA Provider and SRA, then you must select the product version as “VSC, VASA Provider and SRA 7.0”.
5. Select all the ONTAP privilege roles that apply.
RBAC User Creator tool merges all the privileges from the selected roles and combines them in a sorted list.
6. Enter a name for the role, user, and password, and then click Submit.
NOTE: RBAC User Creator requires admin storage credentials for creating new user names.

Step 3: Adding storage systems

1. Log in into your VSC, VASA Provider and SRA plugin from the vCenter.
2. Add the storage system using the new username and password.

Known issues

While providing a role name, do not provide any names that begin with “vsadmin”. This will prevent creating any new roles or users.

Downloading and using RBAC User Creator

Refer to the following link for details regarding download and usage of RBAC User Creator tool:
How to use the RBAC User Creator for ONTAP

Resources

Download RBAC User Creator for ONTAP

Copy Data Management in Hybrid Cloud with NetApp SnapCenter

Ebin_SME_ORACLE — Thu, 27 Jul 2017 12:53:02 GMT

Introduction

Cloud is a major disruptor in the storage market, and to counter this, most infrastructure verticals within the data center are undergoing a rapid evolution. Although cloud affords flexibility, it lacks the security offered by on-premise storage and proves costly when the data and its copies (Copy Data) grow over a period. NetApp Data Fabric, NetApp’s offering in hybrid cloud along with its Copy Data Management solution, can address these customer data challenges in simple and cost-effective manner. NetApp SnapCenter is the next generation copy data management software that automates and simplifies the manual, complex and time-consuming processes associated with the backup, recovery, and cloning of the application workloads across the Data Fabric within a single pane of glass management.

Let’s explore few of the hybrid cloud models and how NetApp SnapCenter helps in protecting those applications at various Copy data infrastructures.

Model 1: NPS (NetApp Private storage) for Cloud solution consists of a NetApp FAS or FlexArray™ storage system, co-located in an Equinix data center, and directly connected with a service provider’s cloud compute using a dedicated, high-bandwidth, low-latency network connection. In this Example, NPS is used as a SnapMirror destination and compute is leveraged directly from the AWS Cloud. SnapCenter is used to take Backups, replicate local copies to NPS and finally Clone DEV/Test to the cloud. A good thing about this model is that you can connect to many cloud and switch cloud at any time with data control.

Model 2: Software defined ONTAP is directly deployed on the AWS Cloud as a SnapMirror/DR destination for the Local Datacenter. SnapCenter has a similar role like model 1 however the only difference is that both the secondary replicated storage and compute exist in the same cloud.

In this example, we have listed only the essential steps with Oracle database as a reference for Backup and Clone operation. The configuration steps are similar for other database workloads.

Register the storage with SnapCenter: The On-Premise storage SVMs along with other SnapMirror destinations like NetApp Private storage SVMs, ONTAP Cloud SVMs are supposed to be registered with SnapCenter.

Backup policies: A new backup policy is created with SnapMirror checkbox enabled. During backup, SnapCenter imports the existing protection relationships and helps to replicate the Snapshot copy from primary storage to NPS /ONTAP Cloud storage.

Create Backups: Once the Backup policy is created, it must be attached to a specific resource/Database. To trigger an On-demand backup the user must click on Backup now button and associate the newly created policy with the resource.

Each job is tracked by its job id and can be monitored in the monitor page.

Copy Infrastructure Topology: Once the backup gets completed, the topology view is updated with the latest number of backups at all the copy infrastructures. To access the backup details or to perform any operations for a specific backup, DBA must select any of these copy destination and click the backups row to list down the details. The below snippet shows the details of backup present in the NetApp Private storage.

Clone DEV/Test to the Cloud: The first step is to bring up a RHEL compute instance in AWS and get it registered with the SnapCenter.

Once the AWS host is registered with SnapCenter, select a backup from AWS destination (Vault) and click on the clone button to invoke the clone wizard.

The Clone wizard will prompt for the Clone DB settings (Clone SID, Location for Mounts, DB parameters).

Choose AWS RHEL host from the Clone host drop-down and submit the job.

Once the Clone job is successful, the resources page gets updated with an entry for the clone DB. From the below snippet, TESTERP is a new Clone DB running in a AWS RHEL instance.

The topology view of the Production DB also gets updated with the new clone details as shown below.

Thus, SnapCenter helps to create, manage and track multiple copies at various copy infrastructures in Hybrid Cloud .

Storage space savings:

The last and the most interesting aspect of Copy Data Management is in showing a significant space savings in the overall storage consumption even after having multiple copies. In SnapCenter, NetApp Flexclone technology is fundamentally used behind every Read-Writable copies and the overall storage space savings is tracked in the dashboard against each plugin. As shown in the snippet, After running 19 similar Clones/Copies of the same production database (approx. 460G), SnapCenter had shown a tremendous space savings of overall 95%, thus making it a compelling solution for the hybrid cloud.

Query Graphite DB using Powershell

skellner — Tue, 11 Apr 2017 16:58:19 GMT

Recently I came across querying the graphite db of a customer to get raw performance data. Formerly the customer regularly gathered the data for its 7mode systems about the cifs and nfs iops in a particular time frame from Performance Advisor. The data is used to check the amount of IOPS for each controller. For cDOT there is currently no report and the raw data from OPM is not detailed enough. So the aim was to extract the raw data from its graphite / grafana source where all cDOT Systems are monitored with a minute interval.

So I wrote two functions to get the data from the graphite db and convert it into a custom powershell object. The resulting object can then easily be converted to a csv file by piping the output to the export-csv cmdlet for example. However, the custom object can be used for any other further development in powershell.

Thought I'd share these functions as someone else might have the need to query the graphite db from powershell. The first function invokes a web request to get the raw data from the database in json format. The second function converts the json output into a custom powershell object.

There are parameters for the graphite db query function to specify the target and from and until dates. For further details please see the comment-based help in the powershell code.

For the complete documentation of the graphite api please see

http://graphite.readthedocs.io/en/latest/render_api.html

If you save the attached text file as .psm1 file you can easily use the functions by importing the module with the import-module cmdlet.

Happy powershell scripting!

How Symlinks boost productivity!

gasslmi — Mon, 03 Apr 2017 11:19:38 GMT

Almost every Company has different Departments, most of the Departments have their own folder in the central file share. In the folder of the Departments you find a lot of different subfolders...

I will show you, how Symlinks can boost up your productivity with a global matrix view!

NetApp Mod Squad Program

alissa — Mon, 27 Feb 2017 16:05:39 GMT

Join the Mod Squad!

We are excited to announce a new program on the Community called 'The Mod Squad'! This program brings together the most passionate, engaged and knowledgable members and recognizes them as trusted advisors within the community.

The Mod Squad enriches the overall community member experience by granting Squad members special platform privleges to increase answered posts, accepted solutions and overall engagement.

Opportunities:

Guest blogging (includes promoting your personal blogs)
Participate in upcoming podcasts
Help shape the community experience including the Mod Squad Program evolution
Speaking engagements at events
Special access to exclusive meetings and information

Special Permissions:

Ability to move threads
Mark answers as Accepted Solutions
Access to other Mod Squad members and the Community Team via a private board
Nominate other Mod Squad candidates

Other Benefits:

Promoted “Mod Squad” identification on the Community
Rank badge to immediately identify you as a Moderator
Member highlight in Mod Squad article & blog
Personal and professional branding opportunities
Social promotions through twitter
Perspective from the moderators (hot topics, what people are talking about)
Awesome Stickers and if you’re able to attend, NetApp Insight Badges/flags

Interested in joining?

Believe you’re a good fit for the program? Nominate yourself here. Nominees will be chosen by the Community Team and if chosen, will be sent an email invitation.

Community Supported Developer Tools

peluso — Mon, 06 Feb 2017 22:33:33 GMT

See the latest tools designed and created for you...the developer.

How to Use RBAC User Creator tool for Storage Replication Adapter 4.0

ashruthi — Tue, 31 Jan 2017 15:55:27 GMT

Introduction

The RBAC User Creator for ONTAP® tool is a C# application that enables you to create RBAC usernames within ONTAP. You can use the RBAC User Creator tool to create users in both 7-mode and ONTAP environments.

The list of privileges created are stored in an XML (ontapPrivs.xml) file. The XML file enables you to gather the following information:

1. You can verify the privileges of the new user created by RBAC User Creator tool.
2. You can add privileges or products later without the need to recompile the application.

RBAC User Creator tool for Storage Replication Adapter 4.0

The RBAC User Creator tool is enhanced to allow creating new roles and users required for Storage Replication Adapter (SRA) 4.0 by adding additional information in the XML file.

Please note that Storage Replication Adapter (SRA) 4.0 supports ONTAP versions 8.3.2 onwards only.

Once you have downloaded and installed the RBAC User Creator tool from the ToolChest, you will need to perform the below steps to provide support for SRA 4.0.

Step 1: Replace XML for SRA 4.0 support

To enable support for SRA 4.0, please perform the following:

You can start using the RBAC User Creator tool to create new roles and users.

Step 2: Setting up user names and privileges

You can create ONTAP user names with all the privileges required for SRA.

1. Enter the name of the root or admin user and IP of the storage system for which you want to create the user.
2. Click LOGIN .
The tool determines the controller type.
3. As the storage system is running ONTAP, the list of SVMs are displayed.
RBAC User Creator supports creating users on the Cluster-Admin SVM as well as on Data SVMs. Select the appropriate SVM from the drop-down list.
4. Select the product and product version.
For SRA 4.0, you must select product as “SRA for VMware SRM” and product version as “SRA 4.0 for VMware SRM”.
5. Select the ONTAP privilege role as “NAS/SAN Role”.
RBAC User Creator tool merges all the privileges from the selected roles and combines them in a sorted list.
6. Enter a name for the role , user, and password, and then click Submit.
NOTE: RBAC User Creator requires root or admin storage credentials for creating new user names.

Step 3: Adding storage systems

1. Log in into your SRA 4.0 system.
2. Add the storage system using the new username and password.

Known issues

While providing a role name, do not provide any names that begin with “vsadmin”. This will prevent creating any new roles or users.

Downloading and using RBAC User Creator

Refer to the following link for details regarding download and usage of RBAC User Creator tool:

How to use the RBAC User Creator for ONTAP

Resources

Download RBAC User Creator for ONTAP

NetApp OneCollect: The tool for easy, consolidated diagnostic data collection

uttamd — Tue, 14 Mar 2017 14:16:01 GMT

We are pleased to announce the Beta Release of version 1.0 of NetApp® OneCollect

NetApp OneCollect is a data collection tool, under development, that collects data from ONTAP, E-Series, Solid Fire, various operating system hosts and switches. OneCollect tool can be used by Customers, Partners and employees users. The collected data is used for troubleshooting, solution validation, migration and upgrade assessments. This data will be stored in ASUP and presented for use by various other tools like SmartSolve, ConfigAdvisor and Unified Parser.

E-series loss FC connectivity after starting reconstruction process by changing the fail disk

VarunLuthra — Wed, 22 Feb 2017 16:33:40 GMT

E-series loss FC connectivity after starting reconstruction process by changing the fail disk

Tech OnTap Newsletter October 2016

Tech_OnTap — Thu, 27 Oct 2016 16:46:34 GMT

5 things I learned at NetApp Insight

Highlights from Las Vegas you also can experience in Berlin.

LEARN MORE

FabricPool technology preview

Building a bridge from the all-flash data center to the clouds

LEARN MORE

ONTAP Select

A Software-Defined platform for your private cloud

LEARN MORE

Ask the Experts

What can I do with a Data Fabric?

LEARN MORE

More Tech ONTAP

Tech ONTAP Podcast: Security and storage

Fujitsu's Cloud Service K5 and the NetApp Data Fabric

NetApp provides storage infrastructure for API:World Hackathon competition

Learn from industry experts in our "Step Up With Flash" webcast

Five Things I Learned at NetApp Insight 2016

Tech_OnTap — Wed, 26 Oct 2016 20:44:19 GMT

October 2016

Larry Freeman
Senior Technologist
NetApp

This year's NetApp Insight® technical conference in Las Vegas was rich with information. With over 400 sessions, keynotes, and labs, no matter what area of interest you have in enterprise data management, there was ample opportunity to expand your knowledge base. Here are some highlights I took away from this year's conference:

1. Data is the currency of the digital economy.

In his keynote address, CEO George Kurian highlighted two necessities of today's businesses: the discipline to make mature parts of the business more efficient, and the flexibility to capitalize on emerging business segments. This will require, he explained, a digital transformation, in which IT streamlines existing operations, while creating a real-time operating environment where businesses can gain insight and quickly respond to customer requirements, thus creating a new digital economy. George highlighted three areas where NetApp is assisting customers in their digital transformation: the removal of inefficient data silos, modular storage that bridges the gap between on-premises and cloud storage, and replacing hard disk drives with high-performance solid-state storage.

2. NetApp is all in with all flash.

Over 50 breakout sessions were held at Insight on the topic of NetApp® flash storage. If there were ever any doubts about NetApp's commitment to this technology, they were erased during this event. As Technical Marketing Engineer Melissa Palmer explained, NetApp all-flash AFA A700 is first to market with 32Gb Fibre Channel and 40Gb Ethernet. With NetApp all-flash storage grouped with Cisco Nexus 9000s and UCS servers in a FlexPod® configuration, Melissa was clearly pumped: "We're just going to have FlexPods that are going to fly—they are going to be the fastest thing on the market!"

3. Hybrid clouds are becoming a prerequisite for business.

Included in Insight 2016 was the Cloud Strategy Forum, with over 10 hours of discerning discussion by NetApp executives, customers, and partners as they explored the state of hybrid cloud adoption in production workloads today. A key topic was how organizations are taking advantage of a hybrid cloud approach to managing applications and data by using a consistent and uniform process. As Jonathan Kissane, NetApp chief strategy officer, explained, "Hybrid cloud customers today want to have agility and innovation, but they want to be able to run their day-to-day operations cost-effectively and with a clear conscience that they are controlling and managing access to data in a way that's not jeopardizing the business."

4. The Data Fabric is no longer a concept.

Two years ago at Insight, NetApp announced its vision of a Data Fabric—a method of connecting disparate endpoints with a common storage platform. Last year's Insight brought this vision to reality with an early suite of products designed to quickly and easily move data from on-premises to the cloud, and from cloud to cloud. This year, the discussion has moved to implementing a Data Fabric, with an ever-expanding product lineup with increased Data Fabric functionality in NetApp ONTAP® 9, ONTAP Cloud, ONTAP Select, NetApp Private Storage, SolidFire®, AltaVault™, StorageGRID®, Cloud Sync service, and OnCommand®. As NetApp cofounder Dave Hitz commented, "When people experience Amazon, or Google, or Azure, they are changed . . . they like to rent it, not buy it . . . then they come back and they say how can I have that on-prem?" With a clear vision, and a growing portfolio, NetApp is poised to help you build the Data Fabric that is right for you.

5. The competitive landscape has changed.

EMC has been swallowed by Dell, with several years of restructuring ahead. HP, IBM, and Hitachi Data Systems continue down the road of siloed, monolithic storage with diminishing popularity. Startups such as Pure, Nimble, and Nutanix have lost their sparkle and settled into their respective niches. NetApp, the only remaining major independent data storage provider, has continued to forge a path of innovation with breakthrough technologies in the areas of clustered storage, software-defined storage, flash storage, and hybrid cloud integration—all leading to the Data Fabric. As things around us have changed, one thing has remained constant: that organizations worldwide can continue to count on NetApp for industry-leading software, systems, and services to manage and store their data, whether on-premises or in the cloud.

Many of the technical sessions from Las Vegas will be repeated at NetApp Insight Berlin on November 14–17, along with new keynote speakers and even more product announcements. If you are considering attending this conference but haven't registered yet, I'd encourage you to do it now!

Software-Defined Storage with ONTAP Select

Tech_OnTap — Wed, 26 Oct 2016 20:44:00 GMT

October 2016

Tudor Pascu
Technical Marketing Engineer
NetApp

My name is Tudor Pascu, and I work for NetApp as a technical marketing engineer in our New York City office. In my job, I am responsible for providing education and best practices for our products. Recently, at the NetApp Insight® conference, I presented a technical deep-dive session for our new software-defined storage (SDS) product, NetApp® ONTAP® Select. In this article, I will describe some of the key points of ONTAP Select.

ONTAP Select: What is it?

Many people wish that they could have cloudlike agility in the comfort of their own data center. These people typically are familiar with public cloud storage and appreciate how they can quickly spin up resources; add capacity in small, inexpensive increments; and leverage existing server, storage, and networking gear as their needs dictate. ONTAP Select was designed with those people in mind.

ONTAP Select is also a part of the Data Fabric enabled by NetApp, which means that it can quickly communicate with and transfer data between other storage endpoints across the fabric. These endpoints include those constructed by using ONTAP, ONTAP Cloud, or NetApp Private Storage, with other platforms to come. With this diverse set of storage architectures built on a common fabric, data is available at the right time, in the right location.

A closer look at ONTAP Select

ONTAP Select is the NetApp ONTAP based software-only platform for the private cloud. ONTAP Select uses commodity servers with direct-attached storage (DAS), but adds the enterprise data management services that ONTAP is famous for. ONTAP Select supports both block and file protocols (NFS, SMB/CIFS, and iSCSI) and is licensed in 1TB increments. There are two types of licenses, a standard license that supports HDDs only and a premium license that supports both HDDs and SSDs.

ONTAP Select is installed on VMware hypervisors, specifically vSphere 5.5 and vSphere 6.0 Enterprise/Enterprise Plus. For full redundancy, ONTAP Select is configured as a 4-node cluster (2 HA pairs), which provides <60-second failover during planned or unplanned outages. Each node supports up to 100TB of storage capacity, or 400TB per cluster (4 x 100TB). Nodes in an HA pair must have the same capacity, but in a 4-node configuration, the HA pairs can have different capacities. The ONTAP Select standard license (available now) supports from 8 to 24 internal HDDs per node, and the premium license (available by year-end) also includes support for 4 to 24 SSDs.

Key to its integration with the Data Fabric, ONTAP Select is compatible with NetApp’s management suite. This suite includes NetApp OnCommand® Insight, OnCommand Performance Manager, OnCommand System Manager, OnCommand Workflow Automation (WFA), SnapMirror®, SnapVault®, SnapManager®, and SnapCenter® technologies. ONTAP Select contains its own setup GUI, called Deploy. Deploy also supports the CLI and REST API for easy scripting and integration with the client’s existing automation infrastructure or with NetApp WFA.

The server hardware requirements for ONTAP Select are an Intel Xeon (Haswell) CPU with 4 cores and 16GB RAM for the standard license. The premium license requires either 4 cores with 16GB RAM or 8 cores with 64GB RAM. For performance and local resiliency, each server should have a RAID controller. RAID 5 or RAID 6 configurations are supported for the local drives, and it is important to note that ONTAP Select does not introduce any additional RAID/parity overhead at the software layer. Because each ONTAP Select node is part of a cluster, the minimum network requirements are 2 x 10Gb to handle the intracluster traffic without adding latency.

After the servers have been configured and ONTAP Select has been installed by using Deploy, each HA pair acts just like a traditional NetApp FAS controller pair, which includes full takeover and giveback capabilities. And because ONTAP Select operates as a cluster, one HA pair could contain SSDs and another HA pair could contain HDDs, utilizing the vol move command for real-time and nondisruptive movement of data between the pairs to meet SLAs.

Summary

Sometimes, you just don’t have the time or the money to order and deploy new hardware to capitalize on a new idea or to begin a new proof of concept. Because ONTAP Select is a software solution, you can purchase and deploy it in less than a day by using existing servers and get new projects up and running quickly. And, because it’s a connected point within the Data Fabric, data can be quickly moved to and from ONTAP Select systems for a truly agile infrastructure.

In this article, I have summarized some of the key points of ONTAP Select. For more information, check out these resources:

ONTAP Select product page

ONTAP Select configuration and best practices

Ask the Experts: What Can I Do with a Data Fabric?

Tech_OnTap — Wed, 26 Oct 2016 20:43:47 GMT

October 2016

Jim Lyons
Senior Marketing Manager
NetApp

The Data Fabric was unveiled in 2014 as a vision for managing data across hybrid cloud environments. Since that time, NetApp has released new products and solutions that have moved the Data Fabric from vision to reality. So, perhaps the best way to answer the question of "What can I do with a Data Fabric?" is to share the latest technology demonstrations from one of our leading experts: Joe CaraDonna, Senior Technical Director, Data Fabric Services.

Automatically tier cold data from SAN & NAS to the cloud

What if you could automatically offload cold data from your all-flash storage tier to AWS or on-premises object storage, freeing up more room for critical workloads? Watch this demo for a sneak peek into the future.
NetApp FabricPool demo (4:56)

Use cloud-based big data analytics with your on-site datastores

Seamlessly synchronize your on-premises datastores with AWS S3 and leverage AWS Elastic MapReduce (EMR) and other analytics tools to gain new insights. This demo illustrates the concept with a use case that features a NASA Mars Rover and the NetApp® Data Fabric Cloud Sync service.
Data Fabric Cloud Sync Service (7:54)

Backup and restore Snapshot® copies across multiple clouds

This demo features a SnapMirror®-enabled AltaVault® backup appliance. It shows how SnapCenter® software can be used to manage backups and restores across multiple cloud platforms and introduces a new searchable file catalog.
NetApp Backup to Public and Private Clouds (8:56)

Learn More

Check out these resources or join us at Insight Berlin, November 14 – 17, 2016 to learn more.

Fujitsu’s Cloud Service K5 and NetApp’s Data Fabric

Tech_OnTap — Wed, 26 Oct 2016 20:43:37 GMT

October 2016

By Tech ONTAP Staff

At NetApp Insight® Las Vegas 2016, we sat down with Barry Malyon, Fujitsu's CTO for Cloud Services. Fujitsu, a premium sponsor at this year's conference, described its Fujitsu Cloud Service K5 during its keynote session.

In our discussion with Barry, he noted that K5 is available in the United Kingdom and Japan, with delivery in the United States expected by spring 2017. He also highlighted a few features of K5 that help make this Fujitsu cloud-service offering so compelling. These features include the use of Fujitsu's MetaArc platform, K5's integration with OpenStack, the various deployment modes available for K5 installations, and the overarching management and orchestration role played by Fujitsu Cloud Services Manager. Barry then shared how the Cloud Service K5 uses NetApp's Data Fabric as a key component in its foundation.

A Smart Path to Hybrid IT

Before jumping straight into K5, it is important to know a little bit about MetaArc, Fujitsu's digital business platform. MetaArc is Fujitsu's gateway that lets customers transform their environments into a hybrid IT landscape. This landscape can include a mix of cloud services, centrally managed, right alongside the customer's on-premises and traditional IT environment.

K5 is Fujitsu's OpenStack cloud. It is also the underpinning of MetaArc. Powered by NetApp's Data Fabric, Cloud Service K5 is a global cloud that is available around the world 24/7. As Barry explained, one of K5's key differentiators is that it provides a choice of four different deployment modes: public cloud, virtual private hosted, dedicated, and dedicated on the premises.

There is also a fifth deployment mode, integrated with the Fujitsu PRIMEFLEX family, that also uses OpenStack for Cloud. PRIMEFLEX deployments are fully configured-and-tested rack solutions with exactly the same architecture as that of K5.

Cloud Service Management Across Both Public and Private Clouds

When it comes to intercloud management and orchestration, K5 uses a cloud management platform called Fujitsu Cloud Service Manager (FCSM). Within the FCSM management layer, customers can manage and orchestrate across hyperscale clouds as well as Fujitsu's private clouds. FCSM enables all of these resources to be pulled into a single, global portal for the customer.

As Barry explained, "Within that FCSM layer, there's a marketplace or catalog of services and blueprints we can provide for the customer. When we deploy K5, part of the up-front consulting is to work with the customer to do those initial blueprints and images. Then, through the lifecycle, the customer can create blueprints and images and put them into their particular marketplace. Or, we can do that for them as part of the managed service."

Using FCSM, customers have the ability to orchestrate and manage workloads across different K5 deployments. For example, a customer might have a private dedicated version of K5 in their data center. Through the portal, they would then also be able to orchestrate and manage workloads on public clouds in the region where they reside or in one of the other available regions. Customers can perform their application testing and DevOps on the public version of K5. Then they can move it, easily and seamlessly, across to their private version of K5. Doing so is possible because the architecture is exactly the same on both sides.

Because of K5's data portability, customers won't have to perform DevOps on the public version, then have to retest that application on a different infrastructure when moving it into production.

The NetApp Connection

According to Barry, "From a NetApp perspective, an absolutely crucial key to the success of the K5 platform is that we're using NetApp within it. It's all the same architecture, which makes it universal since it's all built on ONTAP and the Data Fabric from NetApp [using NetApp FAS and ONTAP® Cloud]."

The implementation of Fujitsu's Cloud Service K5 has exactly the type of architecture that NetApp envisioned for the Data Fabric: a hybrid cloud in which all of the data management capabilities within it are consistent, connected, and form a coherent, integrated, and compatible system. In essence, the fabric joins on-premises equipment with numerous public clouds. Congratulations go to Barry and the entire Fujitsu cloud team for incorporating this vision in their offering for their customers.

Before we wrapped up our interview, we asked Barry what he liked most about coming to NetApp Insight. He said, "The favorite part for me in coming here is the ability to network. We're a huge partner with NetApp. I talk to a number of NetApp people on the phone on a daily basis and also other partners that work with NetApp. So, it's a great opportunity to do the networking and meet up with people face to face."

We agree wholeheartedly!

PDF Preview: Five Things I Learned at NetApp Insight 2016

Tech_OnTap — Wed, 26 Oct 2016 20:52:48 GMT

PDF Preview: Software-Defined Storage with ONTAP Select

Tech_OnTap — Wed, 26 Oct 2016 20:53:37 GMT

PDF Preview: Ask the Experts: What Can I Do with a Data Fabric?

Tech_OnTap — Wed, 26 Oct 2016 20:54:49 GMT

PDF Preview: Fujitsu’s Cloud Service K5 and NetApp’s Data Fabric

Tech_OnTap — Wed, 26 Oct 2016 20:54:08 GMT

Tech OnTap Newsletter September 2016

Tech_OnTap — Thu, 27 Oct 2016 15:09:09 GMT

New E2800, SANtricity deliver simple and affordable performance

Turbocharge access to your data and increase its value.

LEARN MORE

Comparing NetApp with new EMC and Dell Technologies

Who is providing clarity and timetables for customers and partners?

LEARN MORE

Ask the Experts

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A Hitchhiker’s Guide to NetApp Insight

Find out what you need to know before heading to Las Vegas.

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A Hitchhiker’s Guide to NetApp Insight

Tech_OnTap — Wed, 21 Sep 2016 19:11:34 GMT

September 2016

Greetings to everyone attending NetApp Insight in Las Vegas September 26 - 29! To help you navigate the NetApp Insight event, we’ve assembled some things to know before you go. And if all else fails, just remember the words inscribed in large, friendly letters on the front cover of “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy”: DON’T PANIC.

Planning Ahead to Hit the Highlights

NetApp Insight is overflowing with keynotes, breakout sessions, hands-on labs, certification testing—not to mention meals, breaks, and special social events.

Don’t get overwhelmed by trying to do too much, or just arriving and hoping to find your way around. Also, some sessions and activities require advance reservations. Planning ahead will help you decide how to prioritize where you spend your time. For instance, you might want to:

Hear first-hand from NetApp’s CEO, key executives, customers and industry leaders how data has become the currency of the digital economy—and how the hybrid cloud and the Data Fabric are driving IT transformations. (Day 1 General Session)
Find out where the data management industry is headed, as told by the founders of NetApp and SolidFire. (Day 3 General Session)
Focus on innovation, digital transformation and cloud implementation during the series of sessions that make up this year’s Cloud Strategy Forum.
See NetApp partner solutions in action in the Solutions Keynote Theater.
Get certified for free in any of the full suite of our industry-recognized certification exams.
If you’re already a NetApp Certified user, partake in an exclusive Greet & Geek event
Visit the Insight Central solutions expo, which runs throughout Insight. Browse exhibits, participate in hands-on labs, network with colleagues and learn from technology experts.
Meet in person with NetApp executives and technical subject matter experts to discuss your business challenge
Connect with colleagues during Birds of a Feather sessions.

To find out details of the NetApp Insight schedule, and to book your conference sessions and activities, download the Schedule Builder for NetApp Insight Las Vegas onto your desktop or mobile device via the NetApp Insight 2016 mobile app. Get the mobile app by going to your app store and searching for “NetApp Insight 2016” to download the app for free. Oh, and you might even win a prize for using the mobile app.

Registration and Name Badges

Planet-hopping galactic hitchhikers might not use travel documents, but the world of NetApp Insight requires official registration. You must show valid photo ID to collect your name badge.

From there, your name badge becomes your passport to everything that happens at Insight. Wear your name badge with pride everywhere you go throughout the conference, including the Appreciation Event at the Mandalay Bay Beach. No badge? No entrance to the convention center or Mandalay Bay Beach.

Don’t Forget the Fun

In “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy,” the planet Earth as a destination was deemed “mostly harmless.” NetApp Insight as a destination can surely out-perform that admittedly low bar.

We’re not sure what other planets do for fun, but here are some of the alternatives you’ll find on the NetApp Insight schedule:

Be sure to attend our exclusive Island Beach Party/Appreciation Event (sponsored by Cisco and Fujitsu) at the Mandalay Bay Beach on Wednesday evening. Change into tropical attire, kick off your flip-flops, and walk barefoot in the sand or wade into the waves with a cool beverage in hand—while reveling in a special concert courtesy of multi-platinum selling recording artist Andy Grammer. Plus, dinner will be served.
NOTE: This private event is for registered NetApp Insight attendees and their guests only (attendees can purchase a maximum of two guest passes at a cost of $195 per pass). Remember to wear your name badge to gain access to the Mandalay Bay Beach.
Enjoy a change of pace at the Insight Central solutions expo by visiting the Intel Recharge Lounge, VMware Video Lounge or the Indulge & Delight Theater—including a scotch tasting sponsored by Amazon Web Services or an afternoon treat of delicious gourmet donuts sponsored by Microsoft. Check the schedule for details on places and times.
Lunch is included as part of the Insight event. Check out the hot buffet every day in Insight Central, or select from grab-and-go options in the conference center’s level 2 and 3 foyers.
Also each day of the conference, a light continental breakfast will be provided in the conference center. And light snacks and refreshments will be available in the morning and afternoon.
On Monday evening, the NetApp A-Team is hosting an open house with Beer & Bacon. Here’s your chance to hobnob with A-Team members—or find out why they advocate for NetApp.
Also on Monday evening, join NetApp VP of Cloud Operations Dona Munsch at the Women in Technology Social, with hors d’oeuvres and hosted beer, wine and other beverages.
Attend the Pump It Up networking reception on Tuesday evening, sponsored by CDW, Intel and Veeam. Light fare will be available
On Thursday, the final day of NetApp Insight, gather for some final snacks and swigs: Bloody Marys and sliders sponsored by CenturyLink; beer and tater tots sponsored by Varonis; and tequila with chips and salsa sponsored by Tata Consultancy Services.

What to Pack

Attire for NetApp Insight is business casual for all business meetings. For the Appreciation Event on Wednesday evening at Mandalay Bay Beach, we recommend casual attire suitable for a beach environment. Think shorts and flip-flops.

As for the weather to expect, Las Vegas is known for its hot summers and moderate winters. Average September temperatures range from a low of 66°F (19°C) to a high of 93°F (34°C). Although September can post some high daytime temperatures, we recommend that you bring a sweater or jacket for evening outdoor activities and for the air-conditioned indoor activities.

Souvenirs

Every good travel adventure deserves some souvenirs to share with the folks back home. Fortunately, you won’t have to wander through the strange lands of Las Vegas looking for swag. Visit the NetApp Gear Store to purchase NetApp apparel, electronics, sports accessories and more. For a special memento, stop by the gear store on Tuesday between 1-2 pm for the Dave Hitz book signing.

Some Other Important Details

Location: NetApp Insight takes place at:
South Convention Center
Mandalay Bay Resort & Casino
3950 Las Vegas Boulevard South
Las Vegas, Nevada 89119
Accommodations: A limited number of rooms might still be available at the Delano in the discounted NetApp Insight block. If you haven’t reserved hotel accommodations, book your room today!
Transportation: You must provide your own transportation to and from the NetApp Insight event. Taxis are widely available at both Las Vegas McCarran Airport and Mandalay Bay, and they will cost approximately $15 each way.
Air travel: Check with your airline and the TSA website for details about luggage allowances, what can and can’t be packed in checked and carry-on luggage, and the kinds of ID you’ll need to carry to board your flights.

What, You Still Have Questions?

That’s OK, we probably have answers. Visit the NetApp Insight website or email us at insight@netapp.com.

Or you might seek out a copy of “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.” It won’t actually help you navigate the NetApp Insight experience, but you will learn the Answer to the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe and Everything. (Spoiler alert: It’s 42.)

Ask the Experts: NetApp PowerShell Questions

Tech_OnTap — Wed, 21 Sep 2016 19:11:29 GMT

September 2016

PowerShell technical questions are regularly asked and answered on the NetApp® Community site. In this month’s Ask the Experts, we provide pointers to information for using PowerShell across the NetApp portfolio: All-Flash FAS (AFF) and FAS systems with ONTAP®, E-Series systems with the SANtricity® OS and SolidFire® systems with Element OS.

The ONTAP PowerShell module contains over 2000 cmdlets, enabling the storage administration of ONTAP-powered systems via the NetApp Manageability SDK (sometimes referred to as ZAPI).
The SANtricity PowerShell module contains over 200 cmdlets, enabling the storage administration of NetApp E-Series storage systems and EF-Series all-flash arrays.
SolidFire PowerShell Tools provide a collection of scripts, functions, and examples for operations such as snapshot scheduling, remote logging, bulk volume tasks, and more.

Where Can I Find NetApp PowerShell Toolkits?

The NetApp PowerShell Toolkit 4.2 unified the majority of NetApp’s PowerShell modules into a single package; it supports ONTAP running on FAS, AFF, commodity hardware – or the cloud – and SANtricity (running on E-Series storage systems and EF-series all-flash arrays).

The unified toolkit provides complete API coverage to ONTAP 9.0 and is backward compatible with previous ONTAP releases as well. It also enables end-to-end automation and storage management for ONTAP Select running on commodity hardware and ONTAP Cloud instances running on a public cloud service. The 4.2 release supports Microsoft Windows Server 2016 in addition to previously supported versions of Windows (Windows Server 2008 R2 and 2012 R2, and Windows 7, 8 and later).

You can download the NetApp Unified Toolkit from the NetApp support site (registration required).

SolidFire PowerShell Tools are available separately via the SolidFire GitHub site.

Getting Started

For help getting started, check out these blog posts and videos:

PowerShell-related Sessions at NetApp Insight 2016

If you plan to attend the Insight Conference in Las Vegas (Sept 26-29) or Berlin (Nov 14-17), be sure to check out these sessions:

PDF Preview: A Hitchhiker’s Guide to NetApp Insight

Tech_OnTap — Wed, 21 Sep 2016 19:11:23 GMT

PDF Preview: Ask the Experts: NetApp PowerShell Questions

Tech_OnTap — Wed, 21 Sep 2016 19:11:17 GMT

Developer Community Help and Resources

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The world of DevOps is growing and changing shaping everyday. Stay up-to-date and connected to our growing DevOps community.

Tech OnTap Newsletter July / August 2016

Tech_OnTap — Fri, 26 Aug 2016 18:22:27 GMT

Sharpen Your Skills At Insight 2016

Our popular tech sessions help you keep pace with IT trends.

LEARN MORE

Data Compaction Deep Dive

Look inside NetApp's new inline efficiency feature and how it works.

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Ask the Experts

How can I monitor storage performance with Graphite and Grafana?

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PDF Preview: A Look Inside NetApp Inline Data Compaction

Tech_OnTap — Thu, 18 Aug 2016 22:37:55 GMT

In NetApp ONTAP 9 we added a storage efficiency feature called inline data compaction. Learn how it works in NetApp Tech ONTAP.

PDF Preview: Are Your Tech Skills Keeping Pace with These IT Trends?

Tech_OnTap — Thu, 18 Aug 2016 22:37:49 GMT

IT trends such as Converged Infrastructure, full-stack automation and cloud services will be covered at NetApp Insight. Learn more in NetApp TechONTAP.

Are Your Tech Skills Keeping Pace with These IT Trends?

Tech_OnTap — Thu, 18 Aug 2016 22:37:44 GMT

July / August 2016

Jim Lyons
Senior Technology Writer
NetApp

Some of the biggest trends in IT will be covered at the upcoming NetApp Insight technical conferences in Las Vegas and Berlin, including all-flash storage, converged infrastructure, full-stack automation, and integration with public cloud services. Each of these trends is redefining the role of storage specialists within IT organizations, and the pressure to keep pace can be intense.

This quote from a recent survey of IT managers illustrates one of the many challenges storage teams are now facing:

“Hyper converged and converged designs are driving a need for a wide range of skill sets across our infrastructure team. Because of this, I'm starting to combine my server, storage, and virtualization teams into a single group.”

The annual NetApp Insight conference is the perfect place to stay current with industry trends and sharpen your technical skills through a combination of classroom sessions, technical case studies, hands-on labs, and certification opportunities.

With that in mind, here’s a short list of some of the technical sessions available to those seeking to become “full-stack experts,” pulled from over 300 sessions and break-out events featured in the Insight 2016 event catalog.

Flash Storage (45 sessions)

Flash-Driven Cloud Architectures: NetApp SolidFire in the Data Center
This session compares and contrasts competitive all-flash and hyper-converged architectures to the unique SolidFire scale-out cloud architecture.
What's New: All Flash FAS and FAS Controller Hardware and Connectivity
This session covers the technologies used in new All Flash FAS and FAS hardware including the processing subsystem, high-performance input/output connectivity, SAS3 storage and supported configuration options. We will highlight key NetApp® ONTAP® 9 features related to these platforms, along with performance guidance.
Deep Dive on Current and Future Flash Technology
This session will take an in-depth look at current and future flash technologies. We'll discuss flash technologies on the market today, with an in-depth overview of the factors affecting endurance in today's solid-state drive offerings. We'll then move on to discuss industry trends, including recent marketplace changes for both 3D NAND and storage-class memory.

Virtualization (21 sessions)

VMware vSphere Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery in the Data Fabric
In this session, we examine several use cases that range from private cloud continuous availability with vSphere Metro Storage Cluster, to hybrid cloud disaster recovery with VMware Site Recovery Manager.
Hands-On Lab: Virtual Storage Console and VASA Provider for VMware vSphere
This lab explores virtual machine functions like backup, restore and clone, as well as datastore provisioning from VMware vCenter using the NetApp Virtual Storage Console for VMware vSphere. The lab also covers VMware Storage APIs for Storage Awareness (VASA), integration with NetApp SnapCenter and VMware Virtual Volumes (VVOLs) running on NetApp storage.
VMware on NetApp ONTAP 9: New Tricks and Best Practice Update
Back by popular demand, this session will discuss the new and updated features of NetApp ONTAP® 9 as they apply to VMware vSphere environments.

Converged Infrastructure (15 Sessions)

Storage and Compute Service Design on NetApp FlexPod
This session begins with a reference design for standard storage service levels using a FlexPod converged infrastructure running NetApp ONTAP. We’ll review a unique method for managing service levels using a key storage metric. Next, we’ll show you how to apply service design to the virtual server layer to create predictable service levels. Finally, we’ll show how to manage storage QoS at scale.
Starting Small with FlexPod Express for Remote Offices and Data Center Deployments
In this session, we discuss the FlexPod Express architectures, design considerations and implementation, use cases and workloads that are being deployed on this converged infrastructure. The session will also present how FlexPod Express can be managed with a single pane of glass using Cisco UCS Director.
Hands-On Lab: FlexPod Infrastructure Automation
Learn how to provision NetApp® FlexPod® converged infrastructure solutions in a matter of minutes by using FlexPod infrastructure automation. This lab demonstrates how a FlexPod can be provisioned from power on to a running FlexPod implementation, after providing just a few network parameters.

OpenStack (9 sessions)

OpenStack and NetApp in 2016: Primer, Overview and Roadmap
Two hours of all things OpenStack and NetApp covering all elements of our product portfolio, along with a discussion of our future development focus and forthcoming capabilities. No working knowledge of OpenStack is needed for this session.
Real OpenStack Deployments on NetApp: Customer Use Case Studies
In this session, we will discuss multiple real customer deployments and use cases, including infrastructure-as-a-service, database-as-a-service, and file services based on OpenStack Manilla.
Hands-On Lab: NetApp ONTAP Integration with OpenStack
This lab demonstrates how to use NetApp ONTAP with OpenStack. A basic OpenStack configuration is provided so you can gain an understanding of how ONTAP features such as FlexVol® volumes, support vector machines and logical interfaces relate to OpenStack storage services, including both the Cinder (block storage) and Manila (file storage) variety.

If you haven’t already registered for the 2016 conference, you can find detailed information here regarding the dates, rates, and venues.

Already registered? The Attendee Schedule Builder is now live! Be sure to set your own agenda since seats for the most popular sessions will fill up quickly.

A Look Inside NetApp Inline Data Compaction

Tech_OnTap — Thu, 18 Aug 2016 22:37:39 GMT

July / August 2016

Skip Shapiro
Technical Marketing Engineer, All Flash FAS and ONTAP Flash
NetApp

In NetApp® ONTAP® 9, we added a new storage efficiency feature called inline data compaction. Because this concept is new to most people, I thought I would take some time in this article to explain how compaction works and how it interacts with our other storage efficiency features.

Inline data compaction acts on data chronologically, that is, as the data arrives at the storage controller. While the data is still in the controller memory, we take data chunks that would each normally consume an entire 4KB block on physical storage and we compact the chunks. With compaction, more than one chunk fits into a single 4KB physical block. Think of it as a suitcase-packing, trunk-packing, knapsack-packing type of problem. We’re able to take I/Os that are probably padded with a lot of zeros, or empty space, remove the empty space, and take advantage of it. That’s what compaction does.

Inline data compaction occurs during the process of creating the ONTAP consistency point (CP) write. It’s like doing disassembly, part of the Tetris operation: I have these small I/Os. Can I quickly combine two or more of those I/Os into one physical box before I put it down on the storage media? Multiple patents have been filed for our inline data compaction. The method that we use is innovative. Compaction is enabled by default for NetApp All Flash FAS systems, and it’s an optional feature that you can turn on for FAS systems, with either HDD-only aggregates or NetApp Flash Pool™ aggregates. In either case, there is no additional cost for compaction; it’s in the core of ONTAP, just like compression and deduplication.

Compaction is an additive storage efficiency component. It’s orthogonal to deduplication and is very much a complement to inline adaptive compression. With inline adaptive compression, we create compression groups if the data is more than 50% compressible. After data is compressed, we look for opportunities to further compact compressed data by pairing multiple small chunks or large chunks with small chunks into a single physical block. Because it’s part of the CP process, compaction alone requires very little CPU overhead, 1% to 2% maximum. You shouldn’t ever be in a situation in which a controller with 1% to 2% additional CPU usage puts you over the top. In that case, the system’s already overloaded.

Although compression and compaction work very well together, it is not required that they operate together. A volume with many small files, for instance, might be a good candidate for compaction, but it wouldn’t benefit much from compression.

Logically, as data enters the storage controller, the following is how the storage efficiency process works (assuming that all efficiencies are enabled):

The first thing that happens is that we detect any blocks with all zeros in them. For those blocks, we write nothing, we just update metadata. Essentially these blocks are merely a reference count.
Next, we apply inline adaptive compression. This process is very efficient at determining whether the block is compressible by 50% or more. We don’t waste CPU cycles on trying to compress stuff by less than 49% (where we would get no compaction savings).
Then inline deduplication happens. This feature was introduced in ONTAP 8.3.2, in which only the data in memory was compared and deduplicated inline. With ONTAP 9.0, we expanded the size of the fingerprint hash store to include data that has been recently written to storage media. If you want to maximize the savings that result from deduplication, our best practice is to also do background (postprocess) deduplication on some schedule.
The last thing that we do is data compaction. Any data that was compressed by adaptive compression, or that has not been examined for compression, is eligible to be compacted. So, small, uncompressed files or data that is compressed by roughly 75% or more by inline adaptive compression is eligible. The compaction process pairs and fits two or more of those chunks into a single 4KB physical block before sending that block down to storage. The higher the compression rate is and the smaller the files are, the higher the compaction rate is. So, we can get a great multiplicative effect when combining small blocks, compression, and compaction.

You probably will not know what impact the compaction is going to have until you start to use it. Inline compaction is a heuristic process within a CP. It samples the first 100 I/Os that come in to see what the compaction rate is, then it applies that rate to the next 100 that come in. If the compaction rate changes upward, the process says, “Okay, I will assume a higher rate going forth.” If it’s getting a lower rate of compaction, it decreases the rate. When the next CP comes, the process starts all over again. It’s an iterative process that seeks the lowest CPU usage but the highest compaction rate.

Figure 1) NetApp inline storage efficiencies are applied as data moves through the ONTAP stack.

Source: NetApp, 2016

You could use inline data compaction alone (without compression or deduplication) if you wanted to. Let’s say that you had a small file environment only, that is, files that are on the order of 2KB or smaller. Those small files are not compressible, and it’s unlikely that you will see much in the way of deduplication savings. Inline data compaction, however, will result in space savings when two or more files can be stored in a 4KB physical block.

In terms of logical data replication, if the source and destination volumes have the same efficiency policies enabled, space savings are preserved, without any rehydration. An example is an All Flash FAS system with all storage efficiencies enabled—which is the default configuration—replicating to a FAS system that is being used as a NetApp SnapVault® destination. If you want to preserve the space savings from deduplication, adaptive compression, and inline data compaction, you must have all of those policies enabled on the destination system as well.

Conversely, if the destination FAS system has none of the space savings policies enabled and you’re replicating from an ONTAP 9 All Flash FAS system, the data is inflated when it is written to the destination. You have no compressed blocks, no deduplicated blocks, and no compacted data, either. So, if you want to preserve those space savings, source and destination volumes must have the same storage efficiency policies. By the way, our best practice is to enable all efficiencies on the destination volumes when replicating from an All Flash FAS source system; that way, you preserve the space savings on the destination.

To summarize, inline data compaction doesn’t alter logical data at all; we just figure out how to pack the data more efficiently. Unless you’re in an environment with all small files, the best way to think of compaction is as a multiplier on top of inline adaptive compression. If you have partially filled I/Os, that’s where compaction can help you. With low CPU overhead and more free space to store data, inline data compaction is a no-brainer for All Flash FAS systems.

Skip Shapiro is a NetApp Technical Marketing Engineer responsible for NetApp All Flash FAS, Flash Pool, and Flash Cache™ technology. Skip will deliver two technical sessions during the NetApp Insight® conference in Las Vegas and Berlin. For more information, see the following links:

NetApp Insight Las Vegas (September 26–29):
NetApp ONTAP 9: Predictable Performance in SLA-Driven Business Environments
All Flash FAS Technical Deep Dive

NetApp Insight Berlin (November 14–17):
NetApp ONTAP 9: Predictable Performance in SLA-Driven Business Environments
All Flash FAS Technical Deep Dive

PDF Preview: Ask the Experts: How Can I Monitor NetApp Storage Performance with Graphite & Grafana?

Tech_OnTap — Thu, 18 Aug 2016 22:37:19 GMT

In our new Ask the Experts column, we explain how to monitor NetApp data storage performance with Graphite and Grafana. NetApp TechOnTap.

Ask the Experts: How Can I Monitor NetApp Storage Performance with Graphite and Grafana?

Tech_OnTap — Thu, 18 Aug 2016 22:36:22 GMT

July / August 2016

Beginning this month, Tech OnTap highlights popular discussion threads appearing in the NetApp Technical Community. In this month’s discussion, Christopher Madden, NetApp IT enterprise architect, shares his Graphite/Grafana Quick Start Installation Guide and fields dozens of questions from community members.

As Christopher writes: “... NetApp Harvest is a data collector that fetches a wide set of performance metrics from NetApp cDOT and 7-mode storage systems, and capacity info from Unified Manager 6, and posts it to an open-source Graphite metrics server. It also imports 19 dashboards containing over 500 graphs into Grafana to make viewing it all a snap...” read the entire blog post.

For more information:

Video: NetApp Advanced Performance Monitoring

Download the Graphite/Grafana Quick Start Installation Guide

Or, to meet the experts in person, attend these Insight sessions at Las Vegas (Sept 26-29) or Berlin (Nov 14-17):

62051-2 - Open Source Monitoring Using Harvest, Graphite and Grafana

59851-2 - Monitoring Performance Using NetApp OnCommand Performance Manager and API Extensions

Tech OnTap Newsletter June 2016

Tech_OnTap — Wed, 08 Jun 2016 23:10:55 GMT

June 2016

EDITOR'S NOTE

It has been an exciting week at NetApp – with the introduction of ONTAP 9 and several new SolidFire offerings. This edition we take a look at the technology behind those announcements. ONTAP 9 is simply the best product NetApp has ever developed. From its flash and security features to efficiency tools such as data compaction, you’ll find a lot to like. We look at its new technology, support for 15 TB SSD drives, and more. We also take you behind the innovative new SolidFire capacity licensing model.

Thanks for being part of the ToT community.

— Stan Johnston, Managing Editor

Introducing ONTAP 9: How We Made It More Simple to Use
Jeff Baxter, Director of ONTAP Strategy and Analytics, NetApp

The beauty of our new ONTAP 9 software is that we didn’t simplify it by “dumbing down” the system.

View article

The Industry’s First All-Flash Array with 15 TB SSDs
Jim Lyons, Senior Technology Writer, NetApp

With the availability of 15 TB SSD drives and ONTAP 9 software, more applications can benefit from the performance, reliability, and operational simplicity of flash.

View article

SolidFire Capacity Licensing Plan Lets You FlashForward
James Whitemore, Chief Marketing Officer, SolidFire

With SolidFire's innovative new FlashForward Capacity Licensing, you can buy what you need when and where you need it. That lets you deliver shared IT Infrastructure at scale.

View article

ToT Podcast: An Overview of
ONTAP 9

Our podcast team is devoting the entire month to ONTAP 9. They start with an overview of its new and improved features – including compaction, RAID-TEC, on-box key management, improved usability, and much more.

Listen to podcast

Insight 2016 Super Saver Rate Ending

NetApp Insight™ is our annual technical conference in Las Vegas (Sept. 26–29) and Berlin (Nov. 14–7). Super Saver rates end June 15 for las Vegas and July 15 for Berlin.

Learn more

Services for Your ONTAP Transition

Get the expertise, proven methodologies, and best practices you need to get ONTAP up and running from day one.

Learn more

Get a Guaranteed 4:1 Increase in
Storage Capacity

Reduce your storage, costs and management time with our Flash 3-4-5 plan.

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The Industry’s First All-Flash Array with 15 TB SSDs

Tech_OnTap — Wed, 08 Jun 2016 23:08:49 GMT

June 2016

Jim Lyons
Senior Technology Writer
NetApp

Until recently, very few companies needed to store over one petabyte (PB) of data. Today, it's commonplace. Similarly, the high cost and limited capacity of flash-based drives often meant that SSDs were only used for the most performance-sensitive applications. Today, the prospect of hosting the majority of your business applications on all-flash storage is no longer considered far-fetched.

NetApp® customers are leading this trend, with 70% of All Flash FAS (AFF) users already running mixed SAN and NAS workloads in VMware environments. Now, with the availability of 15 TB SSD drives and ONTAP® 9 software, more applications can benefit from the performance, reliability, and operational simplicity of flash than ever before.

Welcome to the One Petabyte (2U) Flash Expansion Shelf

The 15TB high-capacity SSDs will expand the use cases for all-flash storage systems to include:

Space constrained data centers. The combination of 15TB SSDs and storage efficiencies means that you only need 2U to store what would take up to 32U using 2TB SATA disks, and also results in significant power and cooling savings.
Applications that require both low latency and high capacity. For example, an application that mines massive genomic data repositories in order to tailor treatment plans for patients with life-threatening conditions, where every second counts.
Mixed SAN and NAS environments that can benefit from all-flash ease-of-management, with ONTAP QoS features used to deliver performance where it’s needed the most.

The table below lists the usable and effective capacities for common configuration options.

Storage Shelves	Storage Configuration	Usable Capacity *	Total Effective Storage Capacity @ 4:1
1	12 x 15.3 TB SSDs	123 TB	492 TB
1	24 x 15.3 TB SSDs	289 TB	1,156 TB
2	36 x 15.3 TB SSDs	414 TB	1,656 TB
2	48 x 15.3 TB SSDs	580 TB	2,320 TB

*Based on root-data-data partitioning, RAID DP maximum group size of 23, and one spare partition per controller.

Usable capacity = the total storage available after accounting for RAID parity, spares, and reserves.
Total effective storage capacity = the amount of logical data that can be stored based on savings from storage efficiency technologies, including data compaction, compression, and deduplication.

Of course, other SSD drive capacities are also supported, including 400, 800, 1600 and 3800 GB varieties, and you can mix-and-match SSD capacities within aggregates, drive stacks, and clusters. NetApp storage experts can help you determine the best combination of performance and capacity for your own environment.

In case you’re wondering why the total effective storage capacity in the table shows a 4:1 ratio — it reflects our new effective capacity guarantee based on the savings expected from the default settings on an AFF system, which includes inline compaction, compression and deduplication. Because your mileage may vary, ONTAP 9 makes it easy to track your savings using the NetApp AutoSupport dashboard, which provides a view of the overall savings by cluster-node and identifies the contribution provided by different types of efficiency technologies.

Enterprise-Grade Data Management and Sub-millisecond Performance

The ability to lead the industry with 15TB SSD support is a testament to the software innovations available in ONTAP 9. Unlike companies that are developing proprietary hardware designs, NetApp uses off-the-shelf SSD drives and has enhanced the ONTAP operating system to deliver scalable sub-millisecond performance along with enterprise-grade data management features. For example, AFF systems running ONTAP 9 can deliver up to 60% more IOPS at less than 1ms latency, compared with ONTAP 8.3. Database benchmarking for AFF systems running ONTAP 9 provided the following results:

Oracle 12c OLTP testing with AFF 8008 EX

309K IOPS at 1ms latency with Inline efficiencies enabled
75% select, 25% update, 8KB I/O size

Microsoft SQL Server OLTP testing with AFF 8080 EX

339K IOPS at 1ms latency
90:10 read/write, 8KB average I/O size

The flexibility to mix-and match all-flash nodes with hybrid nodes in a scale-out cluster is yet another AFF advantage versus other all-flash solutions. Currently, 55% of AFF customers replicate their space-efficient flash snapshots to disk storage on a hybrid FAS system that is part of a common cluster.

Supported Configurations

Upon introduction, the new 15 TB SSDs are only supported on new AFF 8080 systems that run ONTAP 9 and which use our new 2U, DS224C 12gbps SAS disk shelves. Over time, support will be extended to additional platforms and configurations, including other AFF 8000 models, AFF MetroCluster, and FAS systems running ONTAP 9 software or later.

What’s Next?

Within the past year alone, SSD capacity points have increased over 10x, from 400GB to 4TB. Today, NetApp systems are available with 15TB SSDs that are 50% larger than the biggest hard disk drives, with effective capacities that further amplify the advantages of flash storage over disk. With 32TB SSD drives expected to arrive in 2017, and with flash component suppliers continuing to drive the price curve for SSDs lower, it’s only a matter of time until the all-flash data center becomes a reality.

Learn more about ONTAP 9 from Jay Subramanian, NetApp vice-president of ONTAP Product Management, by registering for this webcast on Tuesday June 21.

ONTAP 9: A New Kind of Toaster

Tech_OnTap — Fri, 10 Jun 2016 19:58:19 GMT

June 2016

Jeff Baxter
Director, Strategy and Analytics, ONTAP
NetApp

Whenever I run across a long-time NetApp user, they will often tell me about the good old days when "Network Appliance" held to a motto of Fast. Simple. Reliable. Back then, we sold NAS appliances that were so easy to use we informally called them "toasters."

As NetApp has grown, we've delivered on "Fast" beyond our wildest dreams, delivering AFF all-flash systems that can do hundreds of thousands of sub-millisecond Input/Output Instructions per Second (IOPS) with all the data management goodness ONTAP has always delivered. We've continued to deliver on "Reliable", with a consistent Five-9s and Six-9s of uptime as measured by our AutoSupport systems.

But as we grew from the basic toaster to an array of equipment that could fill a commercial kitchen, ready to serve any sort of storage through any protocol to any application, some of that "Simple" motto became just a bit tarnished. It's easy to be "simple" when all you do is sling NFS data to UNIX servers out of a storage box. But when you add more functionality than any other storage management software on the planet, sometimes a few too many knobs and levers get added.

ONTAP 9 is a huge step forward towards ONTAP reclaiming its mantle of "Simple". Our first goal in simplifying storage was to automate system setup and to pivot from rather arbitrary storage constructs like "aggregates" and "LUNs" into a focus on the demands and language of the applications.

My colleague Chris Gebhardt, one of our very best Technical Marketing Engineers, has prepared a video highlighting just how much easier ONTAP 9 makes it to deploy storage for your applications.

Our AFF systems with ONTAP 9 come preconfigured from the factory with their storage setup, network setup, and licenses installed, allowing for the entire system to be up and running in 10 minutes. As you'll see in Chris' video, OnCommand System Manager is the central point for simplified management. You can access System Manager just by pointing your web browser at the ONTAP storage cluster, no desktop clients or additional software is required.

Once System Manager is opened, if you are an experienced NetApp user, you'll notice that all the previous options are still available to create storage volumes and LUNs by hand. But, you'll also see a new "Application Provisioning" tab — the home to new options that allow for easy setup of Oracle databases (including RAC), SQL Server, Virtual Servers or Virtual Desktops, each for either SAN or NAS.

As I mentioned, we are focusing less on storage terms and more on application terms. For instance, when you go to set up an Oracle database, the System Manager GUI isn't asking for LUN size, or aggregate, or any other storage-specific terms. Instead you provide the database name, the database server, the datafile size, the redo log capacity, the archive log destination size, etc. Likewise, when setting up a virtual server infrastructure, we ask for the hypervisor, what you want to name the datastore(s), how many datastores you want, and at what size. For virtual desktops, we ask about your hypervisor, persistence model, number of desktops and average desktop size.

In all of these cases, we're speaking the language of the DBA or the Virtualization team. Increasingly, IT Generalists are forced to wear many hats, and we want to make it as easy as possible for application or database administrations to get what they need from an ONTAP 9 system without necessarily having to become a storage expert. Even for our storage experts, we believe we're delivering new value by being able to easily take requirements from their DBA or virtualization team and turn that into storage provisioned according to NetApp best practices through a single, simple, interface.

Finally, the beauty of ONTAP 9's simplicity is that we didn't do it by "dumbing down" the system. All the power and flexibility of ONTAP is still simmering beneath the surface. As the video shows, ONTAP still has the full System Manager GUI - in addition to all existing CLI instructions and a huge set of APIs with integration into PowerShell and other languages, just waiting for our power users.

The days of the simple NetApp two-slice toaster are well behind us. ONTAP data management software has grown increasingly more sophisticated as the needs of enterprise application infrastructures have grown more demanding. However, the basic idea of simplicity should never completely fade away, but instead should also evolve with the needs of users. I tend to think of ONTAP 9 as a newer model toaster, one that embraces diverse enterprise application environments without becoming so complex that it results in burnt toast!

PDF Preview: The Industry’s First All-Flash Array with 15 TB SSD

Tech_OnTap — Mon, 13 Jun 2016 22:33:08 GMT

With 15TB SSD drives and ONTAP 9 software, more applications can benefit from flash simplicity. Learn how in NetApp Tech ONTAP.

PDF Preview: ONTAP 9: A New Kind of Toaster

Tech_OnTap — Mon, 13 Jun 2016 22:33:18 GMT

The beauty of our new ONTAP 9 software is that we didn’t simplify it by “dumbing down” the system. Learn how in NetApp TechONTAP.

Tech OnTap Newsletter May 2016

Tech_OnTap — Wed, 11 May 2016 19:14:02 GMT

May 2016

EDITOR'S NOTE

Back in December, NetApp VP Lee Caswell called 2016 “The Year of Simplicity in IT.” He was incredibly accurate, and NetApp is proving it out. This month we look at how to simplify your storage configuration through clustered Data ONTAP automation. Our Storage Services team saved much time and reduced disruptions in the process. We also examine how to take the complexity out of flash decisions by prioritizing your workload applications, with a chart showing how our portfolio fits. And finally, Tim Russell, our VP of Product Management, discusses why a global ecosystem of security partners is vital to your IT strategy.

Thanks for being part of the ToT community.

— Stan Johnston, Managing Editor

ONTAP Automation: How to Do a 4-hour Configuration in 5 Minutes
Ezra Tingler, Senior Storage Engineer, NetApp

Our Storage Services team took on the challenge of automating the configuration process for clustered Data ONTAP. They saved time and reduced disruptions as a result.

View article

When Choosing the Right Flash System, Prioritize Your Application Needs
Larry Freeman, Senior Technologist, NetApp

NetApp’s flash storage solutions address the priorities a storage architect commonly encounters while constructing enterprise storage architectures. We examine it from a workload perspective.

View article

IT Strategy: Data Security Requires a Global Partner Ecosystem
Tim Russell, Vice President of Product Management, NetApp

Data security is no longer just an IT challenge. That's why NetApp lets you choose from a global ecosystem of security partners who integrate with NetApp technologies. Tim Russell explains why that is so important to your enterprise.

View article

ToT Podcast: Storage Service Design with Object Storage

This month we bring back the NetApp IT team to discuss how they are using object storage implementations to meet application service needs.

Listen to podcast

Insight 2016 Registration Opens for Las Vegas, Berlin

NetApp Insight™ is our annual technical conference for storage and data management professionals. Registration is now open for Las Vegas (Sept. 26-29) and Berlin (Nov. 14-17).

Learn more

NHN Entertainment Creates Adventure with Cloud Services

Do-Min Paik, IT Service CIO at NHN Entertainment, talks about how the largest PC and mobile game development company in South Korea is building on an innovative cloud platform for game developers worldwide.

Learn more

Tech Field Day Examines Contributions to OpenStack

John Griffith, Principal Software Engineer, discusses the contributions provided to OpenStack by NetApp and SolidFire during Tech Field Day Extra at OpenStack Summit Austin.

Watch video

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When Choosing the Right Flash System, Prioritize Your Application Needs

Tech_OnTap — Thu, 12 May 2016 12:27:43 GMT

May 2016

Larry Freeman
Senior Technologist
NetApp

The market for all-flash storage is changing rapidly. With the initial price differential versus disk, flash arrays were primarily deployed to solve performance problems for the most demanding applications. However, as prices drop and capacities rise, IT teams are discovering that flash offers significant value for a much wider variety of workloads and use cases.

NetApp offers a portfolio of all-flash products to cover this growing list of workloads. As such, choosing the best flash solution for a particular need requires some consideration. Many believe that the best way to approach a diverse flash portfolio is to understand it in terms of the priorities that each workload requires of the storage system, and the desired business outcomes.

Let’s look at flash from your workload perspective:

Source: NetApp, 2016

Your Application Priority is: Performance

When the utmost in application data performance is desired, architects often look at industry performance benchmarks to help determine which storage system to use. The Storage Performance Council’s SPC-1 benchmark simulates workloads from high-speed data applications such as OLTP and mission-critical database operations.

SPC-1 is often the first place looked to when determining one vendor’s performance against others. As demonstrated in SPC-1, the NetApp EF560 all-flash array was a top performer, processing 319,980 I/O operations per second (IOPS) under maximum load. In other words, a single EF560 processed over 1 billion operations per hour during the SPC-1 tests!

Your Application Priority is: Data Management

Experienced storage architects know that the underlying storage, powering their applications, can also help fix broken applications and make them run right when everything around them seems to go wrong. If enterprise application uptime and fault recovery is a primary concern, NetApp’s All-flash FAS (AFF) system is rich in management features that address these issues and help insure continuous operation.

One example of this is database corruption. When corruption occurs, rather than being catastrophic, it is more likely to be a problem that prevents access to a certain table within the database. With the NetApp AFF, DBAs can quickly pinpoint the problem by rolling back to earlier NetApp Snapshot® copies until they find a clean (uncorrupted) database copy. Once the clean copy is identified, a virtual clone is created using NetApp FlexClone®, where redo logs are applied to quickly bring the recovered DB up to date. This process can shave hours or even days from the typical time to recover from database application corruption.

Your Application Priority is: Handling Unpredictable Growth

Many enterprise applications do not require blazing speed, or tight application management, but have unpredictable growth, making it difficult for storage architects to accurately size them. An example of this type of application includes “big data” analytics warehouses. For enterprise applications with erratic growth, the NetApp SolidFire all-flash array provides a convenient solution. Once a SolidFire all-flash storage system is initially configured, its node-based cluster can be grown in a very granular fashion, adding server nodes with varying profiles of performance and capacity to keep incremental costs small and predictable. SolidFire was designed with next-generation applications in mind. Management overhead is minimal, and everything can be automated using well-documented APIs.

SolidFire resource pooling provides nondisruptive expansion across data center layers. Adding server nodes to the pool effectively expands CPU and memory along with storage capacity, and these resources can be scaled in or out to meet changing business demands.

Summary

NetApp’s flash storage solutions address the priorities a storage architect commonly encounters while constructing enterprise storage architectures. As discussed through the examples in this article, NetApp technologies allow IT organizations to satisfy diverse application requirements, while addressing enterprise business needs.

Larry Freeman, a frequent speaker and author, helps NetApp educate IT professionals in the latest trends, techniques, and best practices in data storage technology. Larry authored the book “Evolution of the Storage Brain” and is a regular blogger on the NetApp Community site.

ONTAP Automation: How to Do a 4-hour Configuration in 5 Minutes

Tech_OnTap — Wed, 11 May 2016 19:08:17 GMT

May 2016

Ezra Tingler
Senior Storage Engineer
NetApp

My name is Ezra Tingler, and I work in NetApp’s Customer-1 Storage Services organization. The Customer-1 Storage Services team is responsible for the architecture, procurement, deployment, and maintenance of the storage infrastructure that services all of our internal applications. The team is organized into service line owners, each of whom owns a particular aspect of our storage technologies. As expected, our storage infrastructure is built on the latest and greatest NetApp technologies. As a large consumer of NetApp technology, the Customer-1 Storage Services team also serves as a reference to external NetApp customers when it comes to showcasing the correct utilization of NetApp products.

On this team, I own the Storage Ecosystem Service line, which means I am responsible for storage hardware lifecycle management. My main goal is to ensure that our storage software and hardware creates a stable, functioning storage ecosystem from which other service lines and applications are provided data services. Currently, our team is migrating all data hosted on NetApp siloed storage (i.e. 7-mode) to clustered storage.

Challenge

As part of this migration project, I’ve been installing additional storage nodes and clusters. When I first started this project, the average configuration time for a high availability (HA) clustered controller pair was about four hours, spread out over two to three days. The four hours did not include the time needed to configure the cluster inter-connect switches or initialize disks; that took another two to twelve hours depending on disk type. Typical office interruptions added even more time as I had to figure out where I had left off and what I still needed to configure. This sporadic schedule resulted in missed deadlines and some configuration inconsistencies. I knew there had to be a better way to go about this project.

The Solution

I challenged myself to see if I could automate the storage configuration process to save time and reduce errors. Although I’m not a developer, I found it easy to write a configuration script using the NetApp Manageability Software Development Kit (NM SDK). I run my script once the disks are initialized, cluster setup is complete, and the cluster inter-connect switches are properly configured. All in all, the script configures 23 specific items:

Rename the cluster nodes
Rename the any existing interfaces to match the new node names
Cluster interfaces and node management interfaces
Rename the root aggregates to match the new node names
Install licenses
Configure the service processors
Set the flow control to none on all 10g ports
Create broadcast domains and assigns the proper ports
Create interface groups and add the correct ports
Create VLANs
Create failover groups and assign the correct ports
Create backup interfaces (intercluster)
Create user roles
Create users
Set the RAID scrub schedule
Create aggregates
Disable aggregate snapshots on all aggregates
Create cluster peers
Configure NTP
Configure SNMP
Configure CDP
Configure web services
Configure AutoSupport

As the script runs, it reads predefined configuration information from a file I create, and applies this configuration to the cluster nodes. The only thing I need to do before running the script is to edit the config file with unique information, such as node names, IP addresses, and password keys.

After using this script, I was amazed by the results. The four-hours it used to take has been reduced to about five minutes. Using the configuration script, I can now install 24 storage nodes in two hours rather than 96 hours, a time savings of 94 hours or 2 1/2 work weeks. Errors caused by interruptions have also been eliminated, and automating this process has freed up my time so that I can work on other projects.

If you are a storage admin, you can easily create your own configuration script using the SDK. I used a tool included in the SDK called Z-Explorer that contains a complete list of all ZAPI calls for the cluster. With Z-Explorer, most of the development work is done for you. It took me just a few weeks to fully automate my clustered storage builds. This KnowledgeBase article is a good place to start.

It was a fun project because I could write the script without feeling like I had to be a developer. I wrote the scripts in Perl, but the SDK works with almost any language you are familiar with. I also used the SDK online forum to get advice from others. People on this forum were always quick to answer my questions.

The Future

I’m now using the SDK to automate and streamline other storage tasks to save time and reduce errors. My next project is a quality assurance (QA) script that will login to a cluster and verify if nodes are properly configured per NetApp IT Standards and NetApp best practice guidelines. I plan to automate the cluster interconnect switch configuration in the same way as well as create an E-Series configuration script.

If you are interested in seeing the actual scripts, I am in the process of making them available on github.com. You can look for them here. In future TechOnTap newsletters, I’ll make sure to post the URL links once they are available. I’ll also be appearing on an upcoming Tech OnTap podcast to speak more about my automation process with other subject-matter experts from across the industry.

Ezra Tingler, Senior Storage Engineer at NetApp, has more than 20 years of experience in storage administration and UNIX systems.

PDF Preview: When Choosing the Right Flash System, Prioritize Your Application Needs

Tech_OnTap — Wed, 11 May 2016 19:14:31 GMT

Prioritize your IT workloads to choose the right flash storage system for your data center. Learn how in NetApp TechOnTap.

PDF Preview: ONTAP Automation: How to Do a 4-hour Configuration in 5 Minutes

Tech_OnTap — Wed, 11 May 2016 19:14:48 GMT

Automate the configuration processes for NetApp clustered Data ONTAP to save time and reduce disruptions. Tech OnTap shows you how.

How to Effectively Backup, Protect, Restore and Clone Oracle Databases Using SnapCenter 1.1

Ebin_SME_ORACLE — Wed, 27 Apr 2016 14:31:40 GMT

Introduction:

NetApp® SnapCenter is a centralized product suite that provides a single pane of glass management for a variety of applications, databases and hypervisors. Through SnapCenter, you can centrally deploy plug-ins to remote hosts, schedule and monitor backups, Clone, Restore and perform Backup verification operations. SnapCenter uses centralized role-based access control (RBAC) and offers reports and centralized dashboard across all plug-ins. The Plug-in for Oracle is a host-side component of the NetApp integrated storage solution offering application-aware backup management, restore, recovery, and Cloning of Oracle Database.

Let’s learn how to perform Data protection and management for Oracle databases using SnapCenter software.

Step1: Assuming that the SnapCenter software is already installed and following pre-requisites are performed by your Storage/Server administrators. This is a One-Time activity.

Register NetApp storage SVM’s
Register RUNAS credentials for all the Hosts to avoid the repeated use of credentials during workflows
Register your Linux Hosts to the SnapCenter server which auto installs Oracle plugins to these hosts and their clustered hosts (if any).
Auto-discover the Oracle databases in Inventory page.

Detailed steps for installation and configuration is mentioned below

Installation and Setup Guide

Step2: Create Backup Policies and Datasets for your Oracle databases [One-Time activity]

Open Policies tab and click Add
Provide policy name and select the scope of Backup
Choose Archivelog management or pruning [ if required]
Provide your Backup retention based on days or number
Choose secondary replication option such SnapVault /Mirror to archive your backups to a secondary destination for a longer retention
Provide any schedules [ If required ]
Click Finish and confirm the policies are created .
Open Datasets tab and click new backup dataset
Provide Dataset name and associate this dataset to a list of policies created earlier.
Select a given database that needs to be backed up. You can also group multiple databases in a single dataset and Click finish

Step 3: Take an Online/ Offline Backup of your Oracle database

Method 1-

Select a given Dataset and click Backup Now
Choose a given policy and click OK. The Backup takes few seconds to minutes to complete.
Track the job id in Monitor screen. You can track the progress of each Backup at the granular level
You can also view the logs or download them from Monitor page
If you have secondary replication enabled in the Backup policy , the Backup snapshots will get updated automatically to the secondary storage.

Method 2-

Choose a given and click Backup
Create your own dataset and click Ok. Check Monitor screen to track the progress of the backup.

Step 4: Create a clone of your Oracle database using a given Snapshot Oracle Backup

Open Inventory page , choose a given database and click clone backup
On the Clone wizard , Enter the Target SID name and choose a given backup from either primary or secondary replicated storage
Choose the host and the location where the cloned database to be staged
Provide Oracle Home settings
Choose recovery scope for the clone [ SCN , DATE AND TIME , No recovery]
Click finish and track the Job progress in Monitor screen.

Step 5: Perform a Restore/Recovery Operation for a given Pluggable database on a given Container database

Open Inventory page , choose a given database and click Restore
On the Restore wizard, choose a preferred backup for your restore operation.
Select the scope of restore [ datafiles , PDB tablespaces ,PDB ,Controlfiles ]
Select the Recovery scope as either All Logs or Date and Time or No recovery.
Enable the checkbox for database open option after recovery and click finish.
Track the progress in the Monitor screen

Step 6: Dashboard and Reports

Dashboards

To check the overall Dashboard of all the Jobs , Open Dashboard page and review the success , failure and warning counts for each jobs [ Backups ,restore, clone and secondary replication]
Check for Clone savings after each clone in GB /TB

Reports

Open reports page, use the filters for selecting the database, date and time and generate detailed reports for Backup, Clone and restore.

Resources:

Data Protection Guide for Oracle Databases Review the PDF to see command line syntaxes for the above jobs which would be more simple and comfortable to perform any automation task.

Video: How to integrate Performance Manager 2.1 with Unified Manager 6.4

yuvaraju — Tue, 19 Apr 2016 15:03:56 GMT

Introduction: Performance Manager 2.1 and Unified Manager 6.4 are closely integrated than in previous releases. The new integration method is known as a "full integration" connection. When using a full integration connection, the products share a management interface that provides:

a single URL to manage both products
a central dashboard to view both cluster health and performance attributes
a single location to configure clusters, users, and authentication settings
a favorites dashboard that provides access to storage objects that you reference frequently

Step 1: This video will tell you how to integrate Performance Manager 2.1 with Unified Manager 6.4 using full integration connection.

Step 2: Learn how the products share a common management interface to view cluster health and performance attributes as well as how to setup a favorite dashboard by watching this video.

How to Simplify Storage Provisioning Using OnCommand System Manager

gcheryl — Tue, 29 Mar 2016 14:51:32 GMT

Introduction:

Storage provisioning for application specific workloads can be a challenge because it consists of multiple ongoing activities to have an application host its data on the storage system. For example, if an Oracle administrator needs to install and configure his application using NFS protocol, he needs to reach out to the storage administrator who not only needs to provision storage volumes, but also ensure these volumes have the necessary storage efficiency best suited for his application.

OnCommand System Manager, the element management tool for clustered Data ONTAP (cDOT), simplifies application deployment by getting these workloads operational in as little as 15 minutes. The “Application Provisioning” feature for NetApp All Flash FAS (AFF) storage systems is now available with the OnCommand System Manager 8.3.2 GA release. System Manager provides a framework for template based configuration and provisioning, where storage volumes for the application can be provisioned with a single click. These storage volumes get provisioned based on best practices for the Oracle application, NFS protocol and storage system, thereby alleviating storage administrator's painstaking task of individual storage volume provisioning. It’s that simple!

Let’s learn how to provision storage for application specific workloads:

Step 1:
Once you successfully log in to System Manager, the newly enhanced dashboard shows you the overall health of your storage system at a glance. In a NAS-optimized cluster for AFF storage, you will now see “Application Provisioning” listed under Storage Virtual Machines as shown below:

Figure 1) Application Provisioning in OnCommand System Manager

Step 2:
You can provision storage based on Oracle application type, for a single instance or multiple instances, as shown in figures 2 and 3.

Figure 2) Application Provisioning for a single instance of Oracle

Figure 3) Application Provisioning for multiple instances (Oracle RAC)

Step 3:
Once you furnish the relevant details required for the Oracle application in the template and click on “Provision Storage”, System Manager will provide progress messages with details of the volumes provisioned and a summary of all the volumes created as a result, as shown below.

Figure 4) Volume Provisioning Summary

Other Resources:
Application Provisioning section in Cluster Management Using OnCommand System Manager.

Tech OnTap Newsletter March / April 2016

Tech_OnTap — Fri, 25 Mar 2016 18:22:41 GMT

March / April 2016

EDITOR'S NOTE

When NetApp announced it had acquired SolidFire in February, our team was excited and curious. That goes beyond their cutting-edge technology. From an outstanding leadership team and culture to a vision for the future of the digital enterprise, SolidFire is a great fit for NetApp. We asked SolidFire CEO Dave Wright to give our Tech OnTap readers a deep dive into their technology. You will be as impressed as we have been with the SolidFire all-flash storage architecture. This month we also take a close look at how to automate your hybrid cloud and how FlexPod can solve your SQL Server challenges. Kristina Brand and Abhi Thakur show you how Workflow Automation (WA) can help simplify processes. In addition, Larry Freeman examines how the Cisco-NetApp FlexPod solution can solve your challenges with Microsoft SQL Server workloads.

These are exciting times at NetApp. Thanks for being part of it.

— Stan Johnston, Guest Editor

SolidFire: Learn About All-Flash for the Next Generation Data Center
Dave Wright, SolidFire Founder, Vice President and GM

In February, NetApp completed its acquisition of SolidFire, a market leader in all-flash storage systems. Tech OnTap is pleased to welcome SolidFire founder Dave Wright to introduce our readers to their products and technology.

View article

Manage Workflows, Save Staff Time with Hybrid Cloud Automation
Kristina Brand, Senior Product Marketing Manager, NetApp
Abhi Thakur, Engineering Manager, NetApp

With more enterprises looking to leverage the hybrid cloud, automation can encompass workflows and application programming interfaces (APIs) for increased integration. Learn how OnCommand Workflow Automation (WFA) and other tools can help.

View article

Examine the FlexPod Performance Advantage for SQL Server
Larry Freeman, Senior Technologist, NetApp

The Cisco-NetApp FlexPod converged infrastructure has proven to be an ideal solution for performance-intensive workloads. We look at two key use cases that feature Microsoft SQL Server to highlight FlexPod performance characteristics in more detail.

View article

ToT Podcast: Infrastructure Automation with SolidFire Flash

This month we welcome Josh Atwell, Developer Advocate for SolidFire, to the podcast for a conversation about automation, APIs, PowerShell, and declarative state management.

Listen to podcast

FlexPod Advantage: Performance, Agility, Economics

For five years Cisco and NetApp have set the standard for flexible, converged infrastructures. Learn about the key attributes that set FlexPod apart from other full-stack IT solutions.

View paper

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SolidFire: All-Flash for the Next Generation Data Center

Tech_OnTap — Fri, 25 Mar 2016 18:22:31 GMT

March / April 2016

Additional SolidFire Resources

Videos, Blogs, and Articles

SolidFire and NetApp (Dave Wright, video)
SolidFire + NetApp = Unstoppable Force
SolidFire: The Perfect Addition to NetApp’s Flash Portfolio (Dave Hitz, blog)
NetApp and SolidFire: Flash to Meet All Your Data Management Needs (Lee Caswell, interview)
The Beginning of the End of the All-flash Array Market (Dave Wright, blog)

Podcasts

The Tech OnTap Podcast team has been working hard to bring you the latest on SolidFire:

Episode 25: NetApp has Acquired SolidFire (Andy Grimes)
Episode 26: SolidFire Deep Dive (Aaron Delp, Amy Lewis, Jeramiah Dooley, Andy Banta)
Episode 27: Infrastructure Automation (Josh Atwell)
Episode 28: SolidFire Virtualization (Aaron Patten)

Storage Field Day Videos

Dave Wright and the SolidFire team presented at Storage Field Day 5 including:

Ultimate Software Chooses SolidFire

Ultimate Software is a leading provider of human capital management (HCM) solutions delivered via Software as a Service (SaaS). More than 2,800 customers operating in 150 countries count on Ultimate’s UltiPro® suite.

Ultimate hast four main data centers in North America, built on a pod architecture with 200-500 customers per pod. Plagued by storage performance issues, Ultimate turned to SolidFire, originally purchasing five SF3010 nodes, and quickly adding 66 SF2405 nodes, with plans to purchase an additional 44 nodes.

In addition to performance, SolidFire was chosen for its security, availability, and integration with both OpenStack and VMware. Pods supported by SolidFire deliver 4x the performance, while QoS eliminates the noisy neighbor problems seen in other pods.

Read the Ultimate Software case study.

Dave Wright
SolidFire Founder, Vice President and GM

In February 2016 NetApp completed its acquisition of SolidFire, a market leader in all-flash storage systems built for the next-generation data center. Tech OnTap is pleased to welcome SolidFire founder, Dave Wright, to introduce our readers to this technology. Dave started SolidFire in 2010—the third company he founded—to build a unique flash storage architecture that delivers the performance, automation, and scale to advance the way the world uses the cloud.

Public-cloud architecture is making its way into enterprise and service provider data centers, creating a new set of challenges for administrators. To be successful with the cloud model—with dynamically allocated pools of compute, networking, and storage—infrastructure has to be extremely cost effective and deliver scalability, automation, and support for multi-tenancy and mixed workloads. These are the core principles of the SolidFire design.

If you're a long-time NetApp user, you'll be curious to know more about SolidFire. This article explains some of the technology choices that make its design different from other all-flash arrays.

Scale-Out, Shared Nothing Architecture

Most all-flash storage systems—including Pure and XtremIO—use a dual-controller design to protect against failure. Two controllers share access to a set of drives, and one controller takes over for the other in the event of a failure; data is protected with some type of RAID.

The SolidFire design takes a different approach, using a scale-out, shared nothing architecture. Each SolidFire node is a standard 1U x86 system with 10 internal MLC or TLC SSDs. Nodes are interconnected via 10GbE, and nothing is shared between nodes. Hosts access data via either iSCSI or Fibre Channel block protocols.

A SolidFire cluster starts with 4 nodes and can scale out incrementally to 100 nodes. Data is automatically distributed across all nodes in a cluster, so each additional node expands performance and capacity linearly. A storage volume is never constrained by the performance limits of a single controller.

Figure 1) SolidFire delivers linear scale-out of performance and capacity in a shared nothing design.

Source: SolidFire 2016

This approach has significant advantages:

Nondisruptive scale-out / scale-in. Add or remove nodes without disrupting service or compromising Quality of Service (QoS). Data is automatically redistributed in the background across all nodes, maintaining balance as the system grows.

Instant resource availability. Newly added storage resources are instantly available to every volume within the system, eliminating the need to reallocate volumes over new drives.

Ability to mix nodes. Some scale-out systems require nodes to be identical. SolidFire gives you the ability to mix nodes of different types and generations. A selection of performance and capacity points lets you scale to match your needs.

Simpler capacity planning. Because scale-out occurs in 1U increments, performance and capacity can be added in a very granular fashion. This eliminates reliance on multiyear capacity and performance projections. It also eliminates upfront over-provisioning, allowing you to take advantage of price reductions over time.

No forklift upgrades. New-generation nodes can simply be added to an existing cluster. When the time comes, old nodes can be removed and retired or repurposed. Compatibility between storage nodes is guaranteed. Each time you add a node, you are able to add the most up-to-date technology.

Data Assurance

To provide data redundancy, SolidFire maintains two copies of every data block on two separate nodes—a technology called Helix™ that is built into our Element OS operating software. This allows a cluster to sustain application performance after failures occur. It also takes away the need to have separate storage shelves with shared drive access, making the hardware less complex and less expensive. For instance, SolidFire uses single-attach SSDs instead of more expensive enterprise-grade, dual-attach SSDs.

The system self-heals quickly, reducing the risk that a second failure will occur before redundancy is restored. Because a cluster responds gracefully to nodes going offline, the feature also facilitates nondisruptive hardware and software upgrades.

Self-Healing from Failures

All resources in the system are always in the active pool; there is no need to have spare drives or spare nodes sitting idle in case of failure.

Drive failure. If a drive fails, the system automatically restores full redundancy by redistributing copies of data using a meshed rebuild process. There is no degraded mode operation and no performance penalty during a rebuild. The process typically completes in 5 minutes or less. Because of the speed with which full redundancy is restored, it provides a level of data protection that exceeds RAID-6 in a typical system.

Node failure. Because data copies are distributed on separate nodes, all data remains accessible if a node fails. Connections to the failed node are automatically redirected to other nodes. As with a drive failure, full redundancy is restored quickly and automatically by making sure there are two copies of each block.

No matter the failure mode—drive, node, backplane, network failure, software failure—the recovery process is the same. Because the recovery workload is distributed across all nodes in the cluster, redundancy is restored quickly, and no single node (or application workload) takes a performance hit. The more nodes in the cluster, the faster the activity occurs and the lower the overall impact.

Figure 2) After a node failure, data redundancy is restored by distributing new copies of all blocks from the failed node across the surviving nodes. Performance and capacity utilization increase evenly across all nodes.

Source: SolidFire 2016

Guaranteed Performance

To support mixed application workloads and multi-tenant environments on a single cluster, SolidFire provides guaranteed QoS. Unlike implementations that provide QoS on a best-effort basis, SolidFire is able to guarantee performance to each workload.

You can allocate performance and capacity independently for every volume in a system. When you create a volume, you simply set the desired size, and specify three QoS parameters: Min, Max, and Burst. If you change the settings on a volume, it will immediately start receiving service at the new levels.

The Min setting defines a minimum level of performance measured in IOPS (weighted by I/O size). The volume is guaranteed to deliver at least that level of performance under all circumstances. The Max setting defines how many IOPS a volume can consume. Because hard rate limits can create problems for applications—a transient VDI boot storm is a good example—there is also the Burst parameter. Applications build up credits when they run under their maximum limit, allowing them to burst for short periods when necessary.

Figure 3) Guaranteed QoS. The left side illustrates the effect of “noisy neighbors” with QoS disabled. A few poorly behaved workloads rob performance from everything else. On the right, the effect of enabling QoS with various settings for different workloads can be seen.

Source: SolidFire 2016

A study from Enterprise Strategy Group (ESG) estimates that SolidFire with guaranteed QoS can eliminate up to 93% of traditional storage-related issues—including problems caused by workload imbalances, monopolization of a fixed set of resources, insufficient resources in a pool, moving VMs, inefficient tiering, and controller bottlenecks. The study concluded that guaranteed QoS and automated load balancing allow an organization to consolidate a greater variety and volume of workloads on a single storage system. With traditional storage and no QoS, you would either spend more time addressing performance issues or over-provision storage arrays to minimize problems.

Automated Management

The SolidFire design eliminates much of the complexity that would otherwise complicate automation. Performance and capacity are global pools, and workloads are automatically distributed across the cluster. Provisioning is extremely simple, and many traditional storage tasks are eliminated such as:

Performance tuning and load balancing
Managing tiering, prioritization, or caching
Short stroking or over-provisioning
RAID group and spare drive management
Generational upgrades or platform migrations

Everything SolidFire does is exposed through a comprehensive REST-based API. Automation reduces the risk of human error associated with complex administrative tasks.

Figure 4) SolidFire REST API. The SolidFire REST API underpins all SolidFire management interfaces, plug-ins, and tools, and facilitates custom integrations.

Source: SolidFire 2016

The SolidFire API enables deep integration with management and orchestration platforms and supports the development of user-facing storage controls. It also enables rapid deployment of applications and services. All of SolidFire’s tools and all third-party integrations including those for VMware, OpenStack, and others are built using the API.

ESG makes the benefit of SolidFire automation clear, concluding that SolidFire helps administrators spin up virtual machines up to 81% faster and lowers operating expenses up to 67% versus traditional storage.

Inline Data Efficiency

SolidFire offers a variety of storage efficiency technologies, including global thin provisioning and space-efficient snapshots and clones. These are similar in principle to NetApp technologies you are probably already familiar with.

Combined with multilayer compression and global inline deduplication, these technologies increase the effective storage capacity of a SolidFire cluster.

Each SolidFire node includes a PCIe NVRAM card that serves as a write cache. When a host writes data, the write is divided into 4KB blocks that are immediately compressed and stored in NVRAM. Each compressed block is synchronously replicated to an additional storage node. An acknowledgement is returned after data has been stored in NVRAM on both nodes, so writes are extremely fast and performance is predictable.

Each compressed block is hashed using a secure crypto hash algorithm. The resulting value serves as a BlockID. The BlockID determines block placement, resulting in a content-addressed storage system similar to those used in leading object stores. The hash algorithm distributes blocks across all nodes in a random fashion that ensures an even distribution of load.

Based on the BlockID, the SolidFire Deduplication Block Service identifies blocks that have previously been written. If a block already exists, metadata is updated accordingly and the duplicate is discarded.

The deduplication process is in-line and global—deduplication happens across the entire cluster, not per volume or per node.

The combination of inline compression and global deduplication has substantial advantages:

Reduces drive wear: Repetitive writes are eliminated, increasing SSD life.
Increases system performance: System resource consumption is minimized.
Eliminates hot spots: Workloads are evenly distributed across entire clusters.

The inline compression algorithm was chosen based on speed. SolidFire also uses post-process compression in the background. A more computationally intense compression algorithm further optimizes storage capacity without impacting performance.

Complete Storage Capabilities

This article provides a foundation to help you begin to understand the unique aspects of SolidFire’s all-flash scale-out storage platform. While many of the key points have been touched on, you should know that SolidFire offers a comprehensive set of storage services:

Replication (synchronous / asynchronous)
Integrated cloud backup
Snapshots and clones
256-bit encryption-at-rest
Comprehensive logging
Cloud-based monitoring
Secure multi-tenancy
Simultaneous multiprotocol support (FC / iSCSI)
Deep integrations: VMware, OpenStack, CloudStack

To find out more about SolidFire, check out the resource list in the sidebar included with this article or visit solidfire.com.

Dave Wright left Stanford in 1998 to help start GameSpy Industries, where he led a team that created a backend infrastructure powering thousands of games and millions of gamers. He later served as Chief Architect for IGN after it acquired GameSpy.

In 2007 Dave founded Jungle Disk, a pioneer in cloud-based storage and backup. Rackspace acquired jungle Disk in 2008, and Dave worked closely with the Rackspace Cloud division to build a cloud platform that supported tens of thousands of customers. In December 2009, Dave left Rackspace to start SolidFire.

Manage Workflows, Save Staff Time with Hybrid Cloud Automation

Tech_OnTap — Fri, 25 Mar 2016 18:22:23 GMT

March / April 2016

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Explore OnCommand Data Management Portfolio at a Glance

The industry-leading NetApp OnCommand management software products simplify your data management, on premises and in the hybrid cloud. You gain greater control over your shared storage infrastructure, plus the visibility you need to achieve common data management across resources in the Data Fabric.

In addition to OnCommand System Manager, other products in the OnCommand portfolio include:

System Manager. Get simple element management for your NetApp FAS storage systems.
Unified Manager. Monitor the health of your NetApp clustered Data ONTAP storage environment.
Performance Manager. Analyze and optimize performance in your clustered Data ONTAP environment.
API Services. Integrate your NetApp storage data to streamline storage management processes, on premises and in the cloud.
Workflow Automation. Automate repeatable manual storage management processes.
Insight. Get storage resource management including capacity planning and advanced reporting for multivendor, large enterprise environments.
Cloud Manager. Streamline the deployment, management, and tracking of your hybrid cloud resources.

Kristina Brand
Senior Product Marketing Manager, NetApp

Abhi Thakur
Engineering Manager, NetApp

This article is the fourth in a four-part series focusing on NetApp storage management as an integral part of our Data Fabric story.

Think about your biggest concerns about storage management today. Are you most focused on managing data growth, while controlling costs? Are you planning a tech refresh and introducing automation? Are you moving to a hybrid cloud environment or planning to move to a cloud environment? Are you using an orchestrator and looking to extend automation capabilities into storage?

NetApp has a portfolio of management solutions to help you meet your particular business requirements. Now with more enterprises looking to leverage the hybrid cloud, automation is a must-have to manage workflows and save valuable IT staff time. Automation in the hybrid cloud can encompass workflows and application programming interfaces (APIs) for increased integration.

One way enterprises are leveraging automation is for disaster recovery. In this article, we focus on NetApp® OnCommand® Workflow Automation (WFA), the Storage Automation Store, and the OnCommand Cloud Manager Pack.

Automation

WFA provides the tools to automate common storage processes, including failover and recovery between two data centers in support of business critical applications. The tool orchestrates all the processes needed to switch between data centers for storage and virtual machines without the need for database and application synchronization.

WFA offers more than 60 workflows out of the box, plus the ability to create custom workflows easily using the Designer tab. Also, the NetApp Storage Automation Store is your source for readily available WFA workflows developed by NetApp and the developer community.

Figure 1) Workflows available in the NetApp Storage Automation Store

Source: NetApp, 2016

Note: NetApp support is available for NetApp-supported workflow packs only in the Automation Store. Support for community-generated packs is available only through community-based forums.

The OnCommand Cloud Manager Workflow Pack, available in the Storage Automation Store, lets you use WFA to deploy Cloud ONTAP™ software to different geographically located data centers using automation in AWS. It also allows you to manage multiple Cloud ONTAP instances on premises and in the cloud. You can use this pack to create, start, stop, and delete a Cloud ONTAP instance on premises, in NetApp Private Storage, in a hybrid cloud environment, or in AWS.

Saving Valuable IT Time

Another example use case for WFA comes from a global financial organization serving more than 125 million customers with a $4 billion IT budget. In 2014, the institution deployed NetApp OnCommand Insight to provide visibility across their infrastructure. With the new level of visibility, the company had better information upon which to base their critical storage decisions moving forward. The decision was also made to transition to the NetApp clustered Data ONTAP® OS globally and focus on deploying products for standardization and best practices—enabling them to respond better to scale, complexity, and growth across their three main global data centers and 23 other geographic locations.

The company worked with NetApp Professional Services to identify obstacles that were restricting them from offering new services without outstripping their IT department’s ability to deliver. The outcome was standardizing processes and best practices using WFA, based on the results of a one-month controlled internal pilot and proof of concept held at one of their European data centers. Time and motion studies conducted around storage tasks captured timeframes for all of the manual steps and costs including:

Determining which components of existing configurations broke from standards
Capturing current costs of providing individual services
Documenting individual processes and completion times and gathering requirements for storage requests
Detailing inventory skill sets required to support diverse storage configurations and provisioning processes (appropriate skills not available in a timely fashion in all geographical locations)

The next step was to implement WFA processes that demonstrate the time savings the organization could achieve via automation of storage workflows. The result was an average mean savings of approximately 45 minutes per request by using WFA, translating into 2 1/2 weeks full-time employee (FTE) savings per month, compared with the current manual processes used in the data center chosen for the pilot.

Of course, this use case is just one example. Savings will vary depending on factors that include the size of the organization, IT staffing, and infrastructure details.

APIs

WFA includes REST APIs to support workflow requirements that support third-party data center orchestration software and portals. Now, WFA allows external services to access resource collections including users and workflows to access filters, as well as finders through URI paths. The external services can use HTTP methods including GET, PUT, POST, and DELETE on these URIs to perform CRUD operations on the resources.

When building a workflow with the WFA REST APIs, you can perform several actions including:

Access workflow definitions and metadata.
Execute workflows and monitor their execution.
View users and roles and change passwords.
Execute and test resource selection filters.
Execute and test resource finders.
Manage credentials of storage or other data center objects.
View data sources and data source types.

Disaster Recovery

Automating disaster recovery (DR) as much as possible helps mitigate errors and lets staff focus on more critical incident management. While WFA isn’t a data protection solution, it’s designed to automate storage-centric workflows including data protection. You can use it to automate data protection processes you already have in place—such as SnapMirror®, SnapVault®, and MetroCluster™ software—to ensure you are adhering to your organization’s existing data protection best practices.

Many organizations are looking at the benefits of the cloud and choosing to start with data protection, so WFA can play a key role in automating data protection for DR. An added benefit of removing human intervention is that WFA provides a log of all workflows that have been executed and their status, which is a significant time saver for organizations that face yearly compliance audits. This same audit log also shows users that workflows are validated and error-free. An organization can also integrate the DR relationships and workflows into their current orchestrator and workflow tools using the REST APIs provided in WFA.

Learn More

To learn more about deploying automation in a hybrid cloud, visit the Storage Automation Store and review the OnCommand Cloud Manager Pack.

Kristina Brand, a NetApp senior product marketing manager, supports a number of OnCommand products including Unified Manager, Performance Manager, Workflow Automation, and API Services. She conducts product training sessions and meets with customers regularly, learning about their storage management challenges and educating them on solutions available to them.

Abhi Thakur has 18 years of experience in the software industry, starting as a developer. He is currently an engineering manager and has been with NetApp for over seven years. As part of his role, Abhi also manages patch releases and customer support interactions. Most recently he managed the development of OnCommand Workflow Automation, the Storage Automation Store, and OnCommand Unified Manager.

The FlexPod Performance Advantage for SQL Server

Tech_OnTap — Fri, 25 Mar 2016 18:22:16 GMT

March / April 2016

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Check out these technical resources to learn more:

NetApp All Flash FAS8080 EX Technical Report. Performance and server consolidation with Microsoft SQL Server 2014.
FlexPod Datacenter with NetApp All Flash FAS. Validated design with Cisco Application Centric Infrastructure and VMware vSphere.
FlexPod Performance and Load Test Report. FlexPod performance test report for the Iforium online gaming platform.
The FlexPod Advantage. This paper covers key attributes that set the FlexPod platform apart from other full-stack IT solutions.

Larry Freeman
Senior Technologist,
NetApp

Cisco and NetApp have teamed for more than five years developing FlexPod® converged infrastructure solutions—with more than 100 documented designs published so far. These solutions combine NetApp® storage systems, Cisco® Unified Computing System servers, and Cisco Nexus fabric switches into validated architectures. They provide a highly efficient operational model for thousands of workload deployments.

FlexPod has proven to be an ideal solution for performance-intensive workloads, such as databases, virtual desktops, and heavily consolidated virtual server workloads. To illustrate FlexPod performance characteristics in more detail, this article examines two use cases that feature Microsoft® SQL Server.

Twenty-Times Reduction in I/O Latency in HammerDB Tests

NetApp recently performed comparison tests using SQL Server 2014 and the open source HammerDB workload generator to simulate an OLTP environment, driven simultaneously from 10 database servers. These tests validated that a FlexPod configuration equipped with NetApp all-flash storage delivered superior performance and required fewer servers, storage devices, and network connection points than a traditional HDD-based system.

Initially, the SQL Server workload was directed to a legacy storage array containing 144 450GB 15K HDDs. The database load was increased until consistent read latencies of 20ms (the threshold of unacceptable performance) were observed. After this baseline performance was captured, identical database and HammerDB configurations were directed to a NetApp 8080 EX All Flash FAS (AFF) configured with 48 400GB SSDs.

The results were striking: 20-times reduction in I/O latencies, four-times improvement in storage IOPS, and four-times improvement in SQL Server CPU utilization. In addition, the performance headroom remaining on the AFF8080 EX would have enabled it to deliver further performance increases over and above what was observed in the comparison tests.

These tests demonstrate the massive performance advantages of FlexPod systems using all-flash arrays. The tests also demonstrate FlexPod systems’ potential to reduce the costs for associated server gear, network infrastructure, and per-CPU software licensing fees in SQL Server environments.

208% Faster SQL Server Response Time

Scalability Experts, a triple Gold Microsoft Partner, performed SQL Server 2014 load tests using a real-world online gaming workload from Iforium. The testers employed a FlexPod solution consisting of Cisco UCS blade servers, Cisco Nexus unified fabric switches, and a NetApp FAS8020 hybrid storage array configured with 48 600GB SAS HDDs and 1TB of NetApp Flash Cache® intelligent caching.

The testing took place over several weeks as "spins" of virtual slot machines were simulated using the Iforium software platform. During the tests, users were added in increments of 5,000 to 10,000, up to a maximum of 50,000 users. As the graph below indicates, the FlexPod system scaled linearly as more users came onto the platform, with no noticeable impact on response time for up to 30,000 users and 2,000 spins per second. The tests also showed that the FlexPod system could sustain burst rates of up to 50,000 users and nearly 3,000 spins per second, as might occur during a special gaming promotion.

Average spins per second is a central metric for the online gaming business, similar to the way that the number of transactions per second is a critical measure for other types of online retail companies. When Scalability Experts compared its results with SQL Server testing norms and Iforium’s prior workload experience, the company confirmed that the FlexPod configuration, with a relatively modest amount of flash acceleration, provided 208% faster SQL Server transaction response times. The configuration also provided 250% faster page response times, very sequential linear scalability, and a three-times overall performance improvement.

Test Your Own Applications on FlexPod

When optimizing performance, every microsecond counts. Contact your local NetApp representative or partner to request your own Proof of Concept test with an all-flash FlexPod solution.