NFS 4.1 multipathing

[FrankWest]

Hi,

during the RC stage of Ontap 9.12.1 it was mentioned that it finally supported NFS 4.1 multipathing. However, now that 9.12.1 has been released I can’t find NFS 4.1 multipathing support in the release notes.

Am I missing something?

[paul_stejskal · Accepted solution]

Please file a doc feedback. https://docs.netapp.com/us-en/ontap-cli-9121//vserver-nfs-modify.html#parameters it's here in 9.12. Not sure why it's not in the release notes.

[FrankWest]

Hi,

I got a reply from the documentation team. They state:

NFSv4.1 session trunking is expected to be released as a General Availability feature of ONTAP 9.12.1 in an upcoming patch release. The ONTAP 9 Release Notes will be updated to include this feature at that point.

[FrankWest]

I don’t know why this is marked as accepted solution, but according to Netapp it’s not in 9.12.1, it will be an available in a patch release later.

[FrankWest]

Hi,

Thanks, I submitted the feedback. But how about this:

https://kb.netapp.com/Advice_and_Troubleshooting/Data_Storage_Software/ONTAP_OS/ESXi_NFS4.1_VMDK_inaccessible_after_takeover#

is this still valid for 9.12.1? In here NetApp states you shouldn’t use NFS 4.1 with ESXi at the current time.

[FrankWest]

Ontap 9.13.1 is released today but I still can’t find anything about NFS 4.1 multipathing. Will this feature ever be released?

[OGill]

You sure that Session Trunking is not yet in ONTAP?

1. create 2x NFS-LIFs on one node
2. enable Session Trunking in ONTAP: vserver nfs modify -vserver [SVM] -v4.1-trunking enable
3. then mount from a host with max_connect=2
4. you can even combine it with nconnect=4

Still need to try it out, but I've seen docs (partner-facing) where this has been used (for AI workload from NVIDIA DGX combined with an AFF A800 and FlexGroups).

[FrankWest]

Hi,

well, according to the information in this thread it should be released in one of the upcoming patch releases of 9.12.1. Since then I watch the release notes for every release, but I can't find any info on sessiontrunking in there. Also the NFS documentation doesn't list it as an option and in the GUI of System Manager it's not available also, while iSCSI multipathing is available there.

[paul_stejskal]

@jtownsen  any ideas?

[heightsnj]

We have  gone through similar questions and experienced the same confusion,  but got no straight answer from NetApp. 

[FrankWest]

Unbelievable, isn't it? This was a highly anticipated feature during the 9.12 RC stage, but no word on it since.

[FrankWest]

Anyone? Still no information about this to be found.

[heightsnj]

For some reasons, NetApp didn't want to broadcast the feature, my feeling.

In any event, how much performance could be improved by using the new feature? This may be a real question. They seem to be hesitated to address. 

[FrankWest]

We now have iSCSI luns, but from vSphere management perspective we prefer to use NFS, but since that has no redundant links (we can't use trunking since our switches don't support cross stack LACP) we have to use multipathing. With iSCSI this works fine, but since NFS 4.1 also supports this, we want to use this highly anticipated feature. It was promoted by NetApp during the 9.12 testing phase as one of the top features, but now they have gone completely silent about this.

[heightsnj]

Are you already on 9.12? Have you thought of experimenting it? 

[FrankWest]

We are on 9.12, but in the documentation of NetApp nothing can be found on NFS v4.1 multipathing.

[ChanceBingen]

If you poke around the CLI you can see it's already in ONTAP. However, we are working with our partners to make sure the solution is as resilient as possible before approving it for production workloads. Part of that is that we haven't published the documentation on it yet.

A couple of things you can expect when it's ready:
1. Updates to the interop matrix to show which host operating systems are supported. There will be specific host operating system patch releases required, as well as specific ONTAP versions.

2. There will also be updated release notes and how-to documentation.

Likely we'll also have some other content as well.

Basically, we know customers want this feature very much, and given the demand, we didn't want to bring it to market before it was really ready.

[FrankWest]

I’m glad someone from Netapp finally responds to make things clear.

Any idea about a  timeframe?

[ChanceBingen]

There's not a lot I can say publicly, but it's not much longer.

The only thing I can definitely say at this point is to contact your NetApp or partner account team NDA presenter and they can give you a roadmap presentation.

[FrankWest]

Ok, thanks!

[FrankWest]

Any update on this? I can’t find any info on this if it’s been released,