topic Simulator and AFF personality, anyone? in Simulator Discussions

Simulator and AFF personality, anyone?

Sebastian_Goetze — Wed, 04 Jun 2025 12:55:58 GMT

Hi,

has anyone ever managed to give a 9.x Sim an AFF personality?

We want to "simulate" e.g. QoS settings (floors)... We're aware, that they won't "work", obviously, but it would be nice to be able to check the GUI and defaults of an AFF system (for training/course development).

Sebastian

NetApp Instructor

Re: Simulator and AFF personality, anyone?

AlexDawson — Sun, 27 Jan 2019 02:41:33 GMT

Hi there! I did some looking into this topic, and the internal documentation we have for the simulator, and it doesn't seem it is possible unfortunately. The only simulated SSDs are 500MB ones, and it looks like there is a variable beyond bootarg.init.flash_optimized that needs to be set which is locked out of the public builds of ONTAP.

I suggest providing feedback through the NetApp learning center that an AFF simulator may be useful, and they may be able to get it made available in a future release

https://community.netapp.com/t5/Developer-Network-Articles-and-Resources/Simulators-and-SSDs/ta-p/86888

https://community.netapp.com/t5/Simulator-Discussions/All-SSD-based-vsim/td-p/127047

Re: Simulator and AFF personality, anyone?

Blissitt — Mon, 22 Jul 2019 13:17:33 GMT

Hello Alex, and thank you for your answer above. I just now noticed ONTAP Select as an evaluation download option. (Maybe it's been there for a while, but I only just noticed it.) Is the picture any different with ONTP Select? I see the following in https://www.netapp.com/us/media/tr-4517.pdf :

"In ONTAP Select 9.5, an AFF-like personality is automatically enabled on new installations as long as the
following conditions are met: DAS storage with SSD drives and a Premium license."

If either of the evaluation experiences, Downloads : Product Evaluation : ONTAP Select or Downloads : Software : ONTAP Select (use in evaluation mode), offers a Premium license evaluation, would we be able to have the AFF personality to demo?

Re: Simulator and AFF personality, anyone?

AlexDawson — Fri, 09 Aug 2019 02:49:37 GMT

Hi there! Unfortunately I haven't been able to track down a definitive answer to that - if this isn't just an academic question, your best option is to engage with your account team and find out if you can get access to demo equipment to evaluate the flash benefits for ONTAP.

If you'd like me to put you in touch with your account team, please send me a PM or email to my first.last@netapp.com and I'll find them for you.