You already have an EF-Series array in your data center and would like to make use of all it has to offer, with SANtricity OS 11.80 the possibilities have just expanded.
Data protection has been enhanced with the ability to asynchronously mirror from one EF-Series array to another when using an iSCSI or FC HIC. Mirror between the NVMe drives or between the SAS drives in the expansion shelves of the arrays. You can even mirror between the SAS expansion shelves of an EF-Series array and an E-Series array.
For more information on mirroring see: TR-4839: NetApp SANtricity Synchronous and Asynchronous Mirroring (11.62 and Later)
SANtricity OS 11.80 has also added the ability to create an SSD read cache of up to 8TB for use by volumes created on the HDD drives. Moving from a 5TB read cache to an 8TB one will allow for caching larger working sets so more data can be searched faster. NetApp StorageGRID uses the E-Series SSD read cache to read in the entire Cassandra database used for indexing objects, speeding up the search process to SSD speeds. In the case of the EF600, that means reading cached data at nearly one million IOPS instead of 20K IOPS on HDD drives.
Now you can purchase an EF-Series array without any NVMe SSD drives until you’re ready. Purchase the EF-Series controller shelf now without any NVMe drives and simply add expansion shelves with SAS drives, SSD or HDD. When you’re ready, add NVMe SSD drives.
SANtricity OS 11.80 also brings security improvements to E-Series and EF-Series arrays by strengthening digital signature methods for SANtricity OS Package to harden protection of digital assets.
For more information on EF-Series security see: TR-4712: NetApp SANtricity Management Security Feature Details and Configuration Guide.
Simple, reliable, affordable, and performant building blocks provide the fastest response times and consistent low-latency high throughput while dramatically reducing downtime. Mission-critical environments are built on EF-Series storage.
For more information about EF-Series arrays see:
The latest release of SANtricity OS can be downloaded from the NetApp support site.
