ONTAP Discussions

OnTAP 9.11.1 Issues

TMADOCTHOMAS
5,925 Views

This is the next post in an ongoing series, tracking major issues with the System Manager GUI that began with 9.8. There were incremental improvements in 9.9.1 and 9.10.1. I've now upgraded to 9.11.1 and while there is one area of major improvement (Snapmirror job creation) - it still isn't fully back to pre-9.8 functionality and thus I still can't use the GUI. This is a list of issues I still have with 9.11.1, most of which are unchanged from 9.9.1. Starting to think this is a lost cause when so few fixes have been added in four versions, but at least there are a few and maybe there will be more.

 

Several months ago, I spent days rewriting all of our documentation to instruct fellow admins to use the command line rather than the GUI to perform basic tasks, and unfortunately that still needs to be the case at this point.

 

  • SnapMirror Job Creation – vast improvement over 9.10.1, but still can’t set the target volume’s size, autosize settings, or percent-snapshot-space amounts
  • Aggregate Percent Full – restore the % full column in the Aggregate (i.e. “Tier”) list. It was so easy for 10+ years to just glance and know % full for each aggregate, and now you have to eyeball it and guess. I use this stat frequently. I can get it from ActiveIQ Unified Manager but would like to have it here also. To me this is very basic. It’s a storage product and you want to know the % of storage used!
  • Volume Percent Full – at least the Volume list can add a Percent Full column back, but you have to do it every time. There’s no way to save a view. Would request either restoring the column permanently or at least allowing us to save a view. I use the % full column frequently. Again, this is as basic as it gets for a storage product!
  • Volume Resize Autosize Amount – previously, going back 10+ years, when you resize a volume the autosize amount automatically adjusts to 20% of the new volume size. In the new GUI, the autosize amount doesn’t change. You have to pull out the Calculator and manually recalculate it. Considering we have autosize turned on for EVERY VOLUME, this is a major pain point considering the fact that resizing is the most common task we perform on a weekly basis.
  • Subnets - restore the ability to manage subnets in the GUI.
  • Efficiency Details – cannot view compression and deduplication job status and statistics on a per volume basis. I used this constantly pre-9.8. Command line commands for this are not clear and easy post-9.8.
  • Efficiency Policies
    • Non-AFF Systems – when editing a volume to change the efficiency policy, you don't see the list of policies available at the cluster level. The only choices are Default and None. Previously, all cluster and SVM level policies were shown as options. We have always configured our policies at the cluster level and used them across SVMs, so this is another case of having to go to the command prompt.
    • AFF Systems – even worse, there is no option to configure efficiency settings on AFF systems. While we leave the auto policy on most volumes, we’ve discovered that adding scheduled efficiency on NFS datastores and a few other volume types provides additional savings beyond inline/auto, so we would like the ability to schedule this to remain available. The only option available is the very confusing "Enable Higher Storage Efficiency" option.
  • Creating Volumes in an SVM Hosting iSCSI LUNs - restore the ability to create volumes in an SVM hosting iSCSI LUNs in System Manager. To put it mildly, this is an extremely basic capability :). Volumes should always be created separately from LUNs, because LUNs should be created in SnapCenter, not System Manager (in 99% of cases).
  • LUN Display in SAN Initiator Groups - restore the LUN ID column to the list of LUNs when you click a SAN Initiator Group. Also, fix the list of LUNs so complete LUN names appear instead of each one being truncated, with no ability to resize a column to see the entire LUN name.
  • Fix the Following Issues in the LUN Creation Wizard
    • The volume and LUN are created with the same size, leaving no space in the volume for snapshots.
    • No option to change autosize / autodelete options until after the fact. I strongly dislike the default options.
    • The phrase "Name Prefix" makes no sense. Should just be "Name".
    • Under initiator group, why isn't there an option to create a new initiator group that isn't part of an existing initiator group? That's what I would need over half of the time, and it's not an option.
    • The Enable SnapMirror functionality is awful. You have to choose the "Asynchronous and Synchronous policies could not be retrieved" "policy" to even see that you have the option of choosing the correct destination cluster and SVM. Significantly worse is that the drop-down protection policy list doesn't include custom policies. We use a custom policy for EVERY SnapMirror job, making this wizard useless.
  • Event Log
    • You only get the full text of an event when you point to it, in a tool-tip format. Expanding it doesn’t give you the full text either. It is critical to be able to select/copy/paste events so they can be sent word for word to NetApp Support and searched on Google.
    • Warnings don't automatically clear after 24 hours like they used to. I have one warning from a volume move that I cancelled a couple of days ago, and it's still here. This will obscure my noticing of any new warnings going forward.
    • When trying to filter the Events Log to show more details about the warning message, I noticed that there is no Warning severity level to filter with! It says "Warning" on the front page and on the top of the Events page, but when you filter the only options are Emergency, Alert, and Error.
1 ACCEPTED SOLUTION

gautreau
5,515 Views

Thank you for taking the time to give us your feedback. Here is a list of how we are addressing your concerns. 

The following features were introduced / reintroduced in 9.12.1:

 • Volume percent full - The column selections are now preserved. 

• Volume resize - Auto size amount.

• Subnets - The ability to manage this was reintroduced in System Manager in 9.12.1

• LUN creation wizard - Name prefix is now called just ‘name’.

• You only get the full text of an event when you point to it, in a tool-tip format. - You can now view the full text of an event by expanding it.

• Plus many more More to come in the next version of ONTAP!

 

Other comments:

• SnapMirror job creation - Destination volume is a mirror of the source in terms of size, autosize and snapshot %. As source volume grows so will the destination on update.

• Efficiency details - Showing the compression/deduplication job status is not planned for System Manager

• Efficiency policies - AFF Systems - Storage efficiencies are managed automatically for AFF systems except the option to turn on temperature sensitive storage efficiency (TSSE).

• Creating volumes in SAN SVM - This is by design. What are you looking to control here? The name of the LUNs?

• LUN ID display in initiator group - This is acknowledged, and we will target a later release.

• LUN creation Wizard - Initiator group. Under More options choose “Host Initiators” to create a new initiator group

• LUN creation wizard - Auto size/autodelete options - Some less used options have been left out in the create workflow by design to keep the workflow simple.

• LUN creation wizard - Enable SnapMirror - Under more options, this is fixed in 9.11.1 and backported to previous releases as well. Custom policies are now available in SM. The policies are shown only after the destination SVM selection for performance reasons.

 

Potentially Open Support Case:

• Event Log - Warnings should get cleared after 24 hours. If not happening for a particular warning, then a support case should be created.

 

Again, Thank you for your feedback, we appreciate it and will continue to make the experience better!

Tim Gautreau - Manageability TME

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10 REPLIES 10

jcolonfzenpr
5,758 Views

For this and many other reasons, all my existing clients switched to the orange provider...

Jonathan Colón | Blog | Linkedin

TMADOCTHOMAS
5,715 Views

I'm afraid I don't know what that means.

TMADOCTHOMAS
5,607 Views

One addendum I forgot to add above. A new Resize option was added in (I think) 9.10.1 but we don't use it because...

 

Volume Resize - this option doesn't allow you to reset the autosize limit. We use autogrow on every volume so this means I have to tell admins not to use the resize option to resize a volume, but rather to use the Edit option, and then manually calculate the autosize increase.

RossC
5,592 Views

HI @TMADOCTHOMAS 

 

Thanks for taking the time to share your specific and well explained constructive feedback. 

 

We've shared it with the folks from the product management team so they are aware. 

 

Thanks again for contributing to this community and sharing your experience.

TMADOCTHOMAS
5,543 Views

Thanks @RossC ! I mentioned to someone else that I prefer to focus on the positives 🙂 - NetApp has great products ... they are extremely resilient ... I was just frustrated by the lost productivity in administering them due to the change in the GUI. Hopefully things can continue to improve. I should probably do a similar post for SnapCenter to spotlight about 10 issues I've been tracking for 4 versions now...

gautreau
5,516 Views

Thank you for taking the time to give us your feedback. Here is a list of how we are addressing your concerns. 

The following features were introduced / reintroduced in 9.12.1:

 • Volume percent full - The column selections are now preserved. 

• Volume resize - Auto size amount.

• Subnets - The ability to manage this was reintroduced in System Manager in 9.12.1

• LUN creation wizard - Name prefix is now called just ‘name’.

• You only get the full text of an event when you point to it, in a tool-tip format. - You can now view the full text of an event by expanding it.

• Plus many more More to come in the next version of ONTAP!

 

Other comments:

• SnapMirror job creation - Destination volume is a mirror of the source in terms of size, autosize and snapshot %. As source volume grows so will the destination on update.

• Efficiency details - Showing the compression/deduplication job status is not planned for System Manager

• Efficiency policies - AFF Systems - Storage efficiencies are managed automatically for AFF systems except the option to turn on temperature sensitive storage efficiency (TSSE).

• Creating volumes in SAN SVM - This is by design. What are you looking to control here? The name of the LUNs?

• LUN ID display in initiator group - This is acknowledged, and we will target a later release.

• LUN creation Wizard - Initiator group. Under More options choose “Host Initiators” to create a new initiator group

• LUN creation wizard - Auto size/autodelete options - Some less used options have been left out in the create workflow by design to keep the workflow simple.

• LUN creation wizard - Enable SnapMirror - Under more options, this is fixed in 9.11.1 and backported to previous releases as well. Custom policies are now available in SM. The policies are shown only after the destination SVM selection for performance reasons.

 

Potentially Open Support Case:

• Event Log - Warnings should get cleared after 24 hours. If not happening for a particular warning, then a support case should be created.

 

Again, Thank you for your feedback, we appreciate it and will continue to make the experience better!

Tim Gautreau - Manageability TME

TMADOCTHOMAS
5,508 Views

Wow, thank you Tim! That is great to see that some of these issues are being resolved in 9.12.1. We will likely upgrade sometime this summer (we usually wait for several patches first). I have comments / questions on several of your points:

 

  • SnapMirror job creation - Destination volume is a mirror of the source in terms of size, autosize and snapshot %. As source volume grows so will the destination on update. That is a HUGE win! I will have to experiment with this.
  • Efficiency details - Showing the compression/deduplication job status is not planned for System Manager. Okay, thank you. Very disappointed this isn't being added back. Is there a single command that can provide the exact same information that had been in the GUI previously? I've not found one.
  • Efficiency policies - AFF systems - Storage efficiencies are managed automatically for AFF systems except the option to turn on temperature sensitive storage efficiency (TSSE). Not familiar with TSSE although it sounds interesting. We have efficiency policies on datastore volumes because we discovered they do get additional savings if run separately from the automatic efficiency. I just looked at one volume and it ran last night for 30 minutes and saved us a few hundred GB of additional space. Not sure why you are saying TSSE is the only option? We apply policies just as we always have.
  • Creating volumes in SAN SVM - This is by design. What are you looking to control here? The name of the LUNs? I shared this in detail with several NetApp admins in a call our rep put together about a year ago, and they concurred with my point. NetApp best practices indicates we should create volumes that will contain LUNs as a separate step, and then create the LUNs in SnapCenter (or at least has been the recommendation for years). Now we can't do that in System Manager and have to create the volumes at the command line.
  • LUN creation Wizard - Initiator group. Under More options choose “Host Initiators” to create a new initiator group Okay thank you, I will check that

Thanks again for taking the time to outline a detailed reply. It is great to know some of these are getting resolved!

Drew_C
5,488 Views

As a supplement to all of the 9.12 updates mentioned above, I think it's relevant to share the YouTube link to the NetApp ONAIR live-stream covering the updates that made it into the release. This episode is a popular one!

👉 ONTAP 9.12 Updates with Keith Aasen | NetApp ONAIR 👈

Community Manager \\ NetApp

TMADOCTHOMAS
5,434 Views

Nice, thank you @Drew_C ! Look forward to watching that.

TMADOCTHOMAS
4,327 Views

@gautreau , thank you again for the tip on SnapMirror changes. You had said "Destination volume is a mirror of the source in terms of size, autosize and snapshot %. As source volume grows so will the destination on update." I finally got around to testing this today with the simulator as my snapmirror destination. I found this to be partly but not totally correct. I may be doing something "wrong" in the GUI. The destination volume that was created did in fact have the same autosize (grow only) and snapshot % (0) settings as the source. However, the volume size did not match. I've noticed that over the past few years, if you use the GUI the destination volume isn't the same as the source - it's sized to be just slightly more than the amount of data in the volume. Any ideas?

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