In this blog, we are excited to introduce our new interface features and enhancements in System Manager 9.9.1 that improve your System Manager user experience and support your efficiency initiatives, such as increasing productivity and reducing costs.
Provisioning enhancements
We added a capability in System Manager 9.9.1 that lets you choose where to place a volume in a specific local tier (previously called an aggregate) in a volume or a LUN provisioning workflow. For example, as shown in the following figure, you can add a volume by simply selecting More Options, changing the performance service level to Custom, selecting Manual placement, and choosing a specific local tier.
We also added a new field to the SMB configuration that enables you to specify the Organizational Unit within the active directory domain associated with the SMB server.
Networking enhancements
Our networking enhancements give you the capability to filter out the ports that are not at home in the Network Interfaces page and send all these ports to home by simply selecting the Send All Interfaces Home button.
SAN enhancements
System Manager 9.9.1 now supports nested initiator groups (igroups). This gives you the capability to create igroups that reference the initiators in a second igroup without having to configure the initiators. The parent igroup inherits the initiators of the child igroup or igroups. In addition, you can add aliases to iSCSI initiators for identification. With these enhancements in place, you can now map multiple LUNs to an igroup in a single task.
LIF creation enhancements
We have enhanced the LIF creation workflow to give you the capability to asymmetrically select ports on both controllers that you are using for LIF creation. By hovering over the port, as shown in the following figure, you can see additional information such as the port status and the number of LIFs that already exist on it. You can also disable an FC port from the GUI by using a toggle button for each port in the FC Ports page.
Capacity display enhancements
In System Manager 9.9.1, you can now see the physical used capacity and the logical used capacity at the cluster level as well as the local tier level. In addition, the physical used capacity is further broken down into the actual used and the reserved capacity. Similarly, the logical used capacity is broken down into the client data, NetApp® Snapshot™ copies, and clones.
Snapshot copy size enhancements
You can view the Snapshot copy size and the NetApp SnapMirror® label in the volume details page.
We have expanded the volume inventory by adding the following new capacity fields: Available, Available%, Used, and Used%. You can now sort and filter to find the volumes that are nearing capacity limit or underutilized and then take the appropriate actions.
EMS alert enhancements
In System Manager 9.9.1, we have brought the Event Management System (EMS) alerts to the dashboard under the newly enhanced health card. The health card now shows the EMS alerts count received within the previous 24 hours along with other errors and warnings, such as node or network port down and failed vol moves. By selecting these errors or warnings, you can access their respective pages for further diagnosis and action.
To learn more about System Manager 9.9.1, please visit this link for a list of helpful resources.
