NetApp® ONTAP® enterprise data management software unleashes new levels of simplicity, flexibility, and security to deliver powerful data management capabilities, proven storage efficiencies, and leading cloud integration to seamlessly manage all the data moving throughout your enterprise.
The ONTAP tools for VMware vSphere(OTV) is a robust virtual appliance that brings the best of NetApp® ONTAP® storage systems to VMware vSphere environments. It provides end-to-end life cycle management for datastores in VMware environments that use NetApp storage systems. It is a fully integrated and simple-to-use vCenter user interface that includes a VASA Provider and Storage Replication adapter along with a rich REST API extensibility for automation workflows. This helps simplify storage and data management for VMware environments by enabling administrators to directly manage storage within the VMware vCenter.
In the latest release of OTV, there are a whole new set of advancements to cater to performance-intensive workloads through NVMe-oF vVols, tightened security of the OTV appliance and control plane communications from host to storage, and rich vSphere integration for the latest releases.
vSphere 8.0 Support
ONTAP Tools for VMware (OTV) 9.12 supports and interoperates with the latest VMware vSphere 8.x releases. This is enabled by an architectural enhancement through a remote plugin framework. OTV uses the remote plugin architecture to establish secure and isolated communication with the vCenter Server. This helps customers securely connect, manage and monitor their datastores through the ONTAP Tools interface within VMware vCenter. The following blog outlines the key enhancements of vSphere-8-update-1 - What's New
Enabling High-Performance Workloads
Starting with this release ONTAP Tools for VMware (OTV) supports NVMe-oF vVols. This is a new feature introduced by VMware Inc., with vSphere 8.0 release. This feature enables you to take advantage of the performance capabilities of NVMe-backed storage through granular policy-based management. vVols consumed through NVMe-FC are a perfect match, Jason Massae – Staff Technical Marketing Architect, VMware Inc. shares more insights about the benefits here - vVols with NVMe - A Perfect Match.
Security
ONTAP Tools for VMware 9.12 ensures the highest levels of security adherence conforming to industry standards. This includes Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA) support through vCenter, a security-hardened appliance, audit logging, granular access control and several more security enhancements. This helps administrators maintain compliance and secure the environment from the latest vulnerabilities.
Quick Resync
The Quick Resync feature is an optional Storage Replication Adapter (SRA) capability. Quick resync when enabled, does not preserve the storage efficiency of any new data over the wire and on the destination, thus reducing the storage efficiency overhead within the overall resync time. This allows customers to have more flexibility with data resynchronization options in Disaster Recovery scenarios. After resynchronization is complete, normal storage efficiency background processes can restore lost savings.
Conclusion
ONTAP Tools for VMware vSphere is a key storage integration platform for VMware vSphere 8. With an Automation-enabled framework, it focuses on bringing the best of enterprise-class storage to vSphere. The newest release unleashes great new capabilities, higher levels of performance and a secure platform for storage data management in a vSphere Environment. All this while ensuring the life of a vSphere admin is made easy for Day-to-Day storage lifecycle management.
Additional Information and Resources
Documentation set - https://docs.netapp.com/us-en/ontap-tools-vmware-vsphere/index.html
Release Notes: https://library.netapp.com/ecm/ecm_download_file/ECMLP2885833