Coffee breaks with REST - Episode #6: 5 magical features that make ONTAP storage automation simple!

qw — Wed, 04 Jun 2025 10:00:00 GMT

The previous blog post in this series looked at how private CLI passthrough can be leveraged in NetApp® ONTAP® REST. This post looks at 5 magical features that make your storage infrastructure automation so simple.

Magic 1: API call logs from System Manager

ONTAP System Manager displays the series of REST API calls made in the ONTAP System Manager API log. Users can leverage this API log to retrieve the specified workflow and use it in their automation scripts.

Watch the video Viewing Call logs in ONTAP System Manager

Magic 2: Programmatic way to find equivalents of ONTAPI calls and REST APIs

We have developed a tool to help our customers and partners transition from ONTAPI (ZAPI) to ONTAP REST API. This tool consists of three Python scripts, covering three different use cases.

The following table describes the scripts.

Note: Python 3.7 or later is required to run the scripts.

Script	Description
apache_scraper.py	Apache log scraper to find ONTAPIs (ZAPIs) called against ONTAP nodes
session_stats.py	Command line script to pull session statistics data from ONTAP
zapi_to_rest.py	Script to find equivalent REST details of ZAPI and attributes passed

You can download the ONTAPI Usage Reporting tool.

Read the previous post in the series, Episode #4, ONTAPI (ZAPI) reporting tool.

Magic 3: Private CLI passthrough

A CLI command can be executed as an ONTAP REST API call. Yes, it’s true.
Users can execute even advanced and diagnostic mode CLI commands to get advanced attributes per use cases. This option is also helpful for customers and partners to address the existing ONTAPI to REST APIs attribute-level gaps in completing their automation journey.

To learn more, read Using the private CLI passthrough with the ONTAP REST API.

Magic 4: Real-time performance metrics up to a year for numerous storage objects and protocols

ONTAP REST offers performance metrics such as IOPS, latency, and throughput for various storage objects such as storage virtual machines (SVMs), volumes, LUNs, qtrees, and protocols, and also at the cluster and individual node levels.

Performance metrics can be retrieved for hour, day, week, month, and up to a year.

Storage object or protocol	IOPS	Latency	Throughput	ONTAP release
Cloud volume	RWOT	RWOT	NA	9.7
LUN	RWOT	RWOT	RWOT	9.7
Aggregate	RWOT	RWOT	RWOT	9.7
SVM NFS protocol	RWOT	RWOT	RWT	9.7
SVM CIFS protocol	RWOT	RWOT	RWT	9.7
SVM FCP protocol	RWOT	RWOT	RWT	9.7
SVM iSCSI protocol	RWOT	RWOT	RWT	9.7
SVM NVMe protocol	RWOT	RWOT	RWT	9.7
Cluster	RWOT	RWOT	RWOT	9.6
Volume	RWOT	RWOT	RWOT	9.6
Ethernet port	NA	NA	RWT	9.8
FC port	RWOT	RWOT	RWT	9.8
IP interface	NA	NA	RWT	9.8
FC interface	RWOT	RWOT	RWT	9.8
NVMe namespace	RWOT	RWOT	RWOT	9.8
Qtree statistics	Raw RWOT	NA	Raw RWOT	9.8
Volume FlexCache®	RWOT	RWOT	RWT	9.8
Node – Processor utilization	Processor utilization as a numerical value

Magic 5: Python sample scripts, Ansible playbooks, and client library readily available to get started fast