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System Manager 9.8 – New ONTAP Feature Integrations

YizhaoZ
NetApp
7,901 Views

In NetApp® ONTAP® System Manger 9.8, we integrated MetroCluster IP configurations and FSA (File System Analytics) features from the ONTAP 9.8 release. Let’s take a look at them together.

The MetroCluster configuration and setup was a daunting task in the past but now it has become so simple. The process has been streamlined and using the System Manager 9.8 UI, you can control and execute the process from a single place.

 

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FSA is a new feature in ONTAP 9.8, and you can access it within the Volumes -> Explorer tab UI within System Manager 9.8. It helps you to visualize file level access activities, and you can detect any anomaly right away for potential ransomware activities.

 

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In System Manager 9.8, one of the most asked questions is around NetApp Snapshot™ size display. You might have noticed from the Snapshot UI that the size information is not included in the new interface.

 

The most common reason to care about Snapshot copy sizes is when you need to delete some Snapshot copies to free up space in a volume. The calculations to determine how much space can be recovered by deleting particular Snapshot copies are time-consuming and can be complicated. And because the Snapshot size might lead administrators to inaccurate conclusions, System Manager 9.8 and the ONTAP 9.8 APIs no longer display the size of Snapshot copies. If you wish to see this information regarding the Snapshot copy sizes, you can use the CLI to extract this info.

 

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That’s it for now. Thank you for following this series of mini-blogs on System Manager 9.8, hopefully they were useful to you. Please do not hesitate to reach out to your account team if you ever run into additional questions or simply want to share your feedback with us.

 

Where can I learn more?

 

Please see a list of useful resources at this link.

Comments

JanWWW
Contributor

This is so ridiculous. Netapp is not trusting admins to understand implications of deduplication, compaction and snapshots sizing ! Viewing snapshot size gives a very quick overview and can pinpoint issues.  ONTAP is complex enough that no junior admins would touch it. I just can't believe this decision. It seems with every "upgrade" Ontap Manager is getting less and less logical or user friendly. Basically it sucks more and more ...

Sorry, just frustrated

YizhaoZ
NetApp

@JanWWW : Thank you for the feedback. I have sent you a DM to follow up.

TMADOCTHOMAS
Top Community Adviser

@JanWWW , could not possibly agree more, just from reading about some of these 9.8 design decisions. Although there are several very nice new features (network map, automatic firmware update, etc.), none of them are worth it if you are taking away basic core functionality.

 

Essentially, it sounds like 9.8 makes the GUI significantly less useful and you will have to go to the command line to perform tasks that you've done for over a decade via the GUI.

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