ONTAP Discussions

Can someone explain what this guy is talking about regarding cluster-mode only doing CIFS & NFS?

samtheadmin
2,859 Views

This was written in 2011 and I wanted to understand more about the history of Data ONTAP, and my google-fu lead me to that page.  However, he says this near the end:

 

"In 2003, NetApp acquired Spinnaker Networks, who made appliances running SpinFS, a distributed file system.   Subsequently, NetApp made separate clustered versions of Data ONTAP that were based on SpinFS and had little to do with “real” Data ONTAP.  These include Data ONTAP 7GX (“X” = cluster) and Data ONTAP 8 cluster-mode.  Cluster-mode only supports NAS protocols (NFS, CIFS), it doesn’t do block level protocols (iSCSI, FCP).  People running Cluster-Mode are typically doing lots of file shares or home directories across geographically dispersed filers., and is commonly used in high performance computing clusters."

 

Comments below are made well into 2014, but none clear it up for me.  CDOT most certainly supports iSCSI and FCP I thought (I admin a 7mode NetApp SAN myself, and have only read about CDOT), but correct me if I'm wrong.

 

Was there a time in the past that CDOT didn't do iSCSI/FCP?  What am I missing here?

 

Here is the page I am talking about.

1 REPLY 1

GidonMarcus
2,769 Views

Hi

 

Clustered Data ONTAP 8.1 was the first Clustered ONTAP to support FC and iSCSI. from the release notes:

 

"Data ONTAP 8.1 Cluster-Mode is a feature release that uniquely incorporates industry-leading unified architecture, nondisruptive operations, and storage efficiency in a scale-out architecture. Major features in this release include support for FC and iSCSI, support for storage efficiency features such as cloning, thin provisioning, deduplication and compression, and many other features and enhancements."

https://library.netapp.com/ecmdocs/ECMP1120728/html/frameset.html

 

Gidi

Gidi Marcus (Linkedin) - Storage and Microsoft technologies consultant - Hydro IT LTD - UK
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