AIQUM long term support for legacy StorageServices API

BobG — Wed, 04 Jun 2025 09:45:32 GMT

Apologies in advance - the terminology herein gets confusing.

OCUM (and possibly DFM before that) had a concept of a "Storage Service" internally. With APIs you could define a "topology" consisting of ONTAP nodes, and then clusters and SVMs as primary, secondary, tertiary with named storage pools on each. A pool would be a list of aggregates. Once a topology was defined, you could define a "storage service policy" which would define how volumes would replicate from a primary to the indicated storage pools on the downstream nodes. Could be fan out, different numbers of copies/retentions on each, etc.

A storage service policy could then be used with a bunch of volumes to create a "storage service" - that is all the volumes assigned to the service would get the replication pattern assigned to the service based on the policy.

From that point, a single API call - "conform" - would take the original primary volumes, figure out what snapmirrors were needed and automatically create the snapmirrors to the target storage systems somewhere in the defined storage pools. If the topology pattern was ever updated, the "conform" call would create the snapmirrors needed to adjust the policy.

Then, another single call - "protection update" - would initiate all the snapmirror updates through the entire topology. Individual snapshots transferred as part of this topology could be uniquely tracked (and queried) for where they were for recovery purposes.

This particular API set had little, to my knowledge, actual documentation. The only reference I ever found was a TR (I think) related to OCUM 6.x APIs way back in the day, and I've never seen it updated.

This entire API set was targeted, so far as I know, to backup system vendors to automate through a single interface all the ONTAP operations needed to use snapshots as protection mechanisms. Reference the discussion threads on CommVault and AIQUM/OCUM operational compatibility and why CommVault is not supporting AIQUM 9.11+ right now. (Ref BURT 1549150).

[ Side note - I'd suggest anyone new starting with CV to manage snapshot backups on ONTAP seriously look at "OpenReplication" instead of AIQUM integration - especially due to the point of this post to come next. ]

Which bring me to the question... the REST API documentation makes no reference to StorageServices as had been provided in OCUM/AIQUM previously. Are the old StorageServices dead as a concept? Is there no intent to bring them forward into the REST API? If they are brought forward, will there be documentation to support them at some point? Or will the old documentation and traditional AIQUM API calls be required to use them.

To be clear - "StorageServices" are not Performance Service Levels as defined in SystemManager and AIQUM today. Performance Service Levels are the integration of what NSLM started off as being (NetApp Service Level Manager) before it was absorbed into AIQUM.

Thank you in advance for anyone who has good info on this topic.

Bob Greenwald

Re: AIQUM long term support for legacy StorageServices API

BobG — Thu, 31 Aug 2023 16:56:43 GMT

For reference - found again the developer's guide describing the capabilities above...

OnCommand® Unified Manager 6.1 API Developer's Guide (netapp.com)

To my knowledge as indicated it has never been updated past OCUM 6.1.

Re: AIQUM long term support for legacy StorageServices API

dawnr — Thu, 31 Aug 2023 19:09:34 GMT

Hi BobG,

The support issue with CommVault and AIQUM 9.11+ has been resolved, and CommVault should be supporting those versions if you have patched them. Please open a NetApp Support case if you need those patches and reference the below KB.
AIQUM 9.11 and 9.12 and 9.13 shows backup location update issue with Commvault aux copy jobs

Those StorageService APIs are still supported, but we don't really recommend calling them outside of a third party backup product like CommVault due to complexity. Historically, they're only used by themselves by Support to resolve some specific issues, which is probably why there's not a lot of documentation. It's meant to be behind the curtain.

As to your question, I don't know for sure that those specifically are scheduled to be converted to REST, but I do know we have plans to convert all of AIQUM's ZAPIs to REST, and that this is still in progress. I also have not heard that Support for CommVault was getting dropped, so I would tend to think they will be converted at some future date.

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AIQUM long term support for legacy StorageServices API

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Re: AIQUM long term support for legacy StorageServices API