ONTAP Discussions

Data ONTAP 8 coming soon.

netappnasadmin
2,546 Views

Data Ontap 8 finally on tap

NetApp chief financial officer Steve Gomo said Data Ontap 8 will be released in a few weeks. NetApp executives have said Ontap 8 would add the ability to scale out NetApp's network-attached storage (NAS) heads with technology the company acquired from Spinnaker Networks Inc. in 2003. Georgens also mentioned Ontap 8 several times on the call, and recent posts from one of NetApp's corporate bloggers led to speculation that Ontap 8 was imminent. Last July, NetApp officialssaid the new operating system would be released this calendar year.

3 REPLIES 3

ashishg
2,546 Views

That is correct.  Data ONTAP 8 is imminent in a few weeks.  It will be first unified code base offered by NetApp allowing customers to transition to the new platform.  Data ONTAP 8, as a platform for cloud, will extend workloads of all kinds, while still ensuring that customers who value all the goodness of Data ONTAP 7G and GX will be able to get that easily and seamlessly in Data ONTAP 8.  To ensure simple transition to the next generation, the first release of Data ONTAP 8, version 8.0 will be offered in two modes; 7-Mode and Cluster-mode.  The idea is to allow customers in the 7G environments to upgrade to Data ONTAP 8 in the the 8.0 release to the 7-Mode and similarly to Cluster-mode for the GX scenario.  This would get customers onboard the Data ONTAP 8 platform with ease. The two customer bases can take full advantage of all the features.  Data ONTAP 8 will deliver to the core of a shared virtualized environment focusing on continous operations, simple management and ensuring legacy investment protection.  It will truly enable customer to manage the transformations in their data centers.

radek_kubka
2,546 Views

OK, so are we here to discuss technical stuff, or is it a marketing forum?

I don't want to be too grumpy & I do appreciate Data ONTAP 8.0 will be a milestone release. However let's face the 'engineering' truth. Due to this dual-mode operation it will be an either/or choice: either multi-node clustering capabilities of GX mode, or 7G-specific features, like performance-efficient snapshots, A-SIS dedupe & few others - but not both at the same time.

So although I am sure Data ONTAP 8.0 will be great, we are talking about just a first step on a long road of full GX/7G integration.

Or I am missing something? (happy to hear if that's the case)

Kindest regards,
Radek

sshapiro
2,546 Views

The first release candidate of Data ONTAP 8.0 was posted on NOW over a year ago, 3 Sep 2009.  The release achieved GA status on 19 Mar 2010 and is currently running on more than 1000 systems.

Data ONTAP 8.0.1 - the first minor release on this code line - was first released on 3 Sep 2010 as RC1.  The RC2 version was released on 29 Oct 2010.  There are several hundred systems already running one of the 8.0.1 RC releases.

Data ONTAP 8 releases are a single operating system with two operating modes.  7-Mode is just like a Data ONTAP 7.3.x release and supports all the same management tools.  Customers can and have upgraded from Data ONTAP 7.3.x releases to Data ONTAP 8.0.x 7-Mode non-disruptively.  Cluster-Mode is the successor to Data ONTAP GX, with enhanced functionality and manageability.

You can learn more about Data ONTAP 8 in the Nov edition of Tech OnTap that is due to be published in the next day or two.

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