We are pleased to announce the launch of SnapCenter 6.1, which introduces a range of advanced features designed to enhance our data protection capabilities in the areas of backup and disaster recovery. These enhancements will facilitate the broader adoption of our enterprise and cloud storage solutions.
What’s New in SnapCenter 6.1 - Key Features and Enhancements
NetApp All SAN Array (ASA r2) Support
Customers who have implemented SAP, Oracle, Microsoft, and other contemporary database applications on virtualized VMFS architectures backed by ASA r2 storage can now safeguard their data locally through Consistent Group (CG) snapshots, as well as remotely utilizing SnapMirror. This advancement will benefit all SAN customers in their adoption of ASA r2 storage solutions.
AWS ELB Support
Elastic Load Balancing (ELB) automatically distributes incoming application traffic across multiple targets in one or more Availability Zones (AZs). The integration of AWS Elastic Load Balancing (ELB) significantly enhances the high availability of SnapCenter environments, providing advantages to FSxN customers utilizing SnapCenter.
Ability to Choose iGroup during Clone of Oracle and SQL Databases
Before version 6.1, customers struggled to map clones of Oracle or SQL hosts to VMs across multiple ESXi hosts, making vMotion impossible. With version 6.1, customers can now select or create an iGroup within SnapCenter for including all hosts or multiple initiators. This enhancement allows seamless vMotion while maintaining clone functionality, benefiting numerous customers.
Improved Efficiency of Bulk Job Updates
The optimization of job update calls has resulted in a reduction of overall network calls by approximately 75%. This improvement alleviates the load on Internet Information Services (IIS), thereby enhancing scalability, concurrency, and overall system responsiveness. Large-scale SnapCenter clients are poised to benefit significantly from this enhancement.
Support for Tamper-Proof Snapshots (TPS) on ONTAP Secondary
Enterprise database customers can now lock snapshots on a non-SnapLock volume, including both primary and secondary storage, using different locking periods to enhance protection against ransomware attacks. This feature was previously limited to the primary storage volume, but with the release of version 6.1, support now extends to ONTAP secondary backups. Customers can now fully take advantage of TPS across both primary and secondary storage solutions.
Ability to Assign a Snapshot Label for Primary Snapshots
Customers can now assign SnapMirror labels to primary snapshots for remote replication, allowing them to offload snapshot replication responsibility from SnapCenter to ONTAP secondary systems. This can be done without enabling the SnapMirror or SnapVault option in the policy. This enhancement supports using SVM-DR capabilities with SnapCenter.
SnapCenter supports a variety of applications and protocols.
Summary
NetApp SnapCenter 6.1 brings a suite of advanced features to enhance data protection and ease customer adoption barriers. Key among these updates is the support for NetApp ASA A-Series for application-consistent local and remote snapshots. Customers using VMware VMFS datastores for SAP, Oracle, Microsoft, and other contemporary database applications on virtualized VMFS architectures backed by ASA A-Series storage can now safeguard their data locally.
Learn more here.
