TECH::What’s the latest ONTAP 8.3 release?

For cDOT 8.3.1 news, check out my other blog post.

The following covers the latest 8.3 patch release for the 8.3 flat version. I highly recommend going to the latest patch release of 8.3.1 instead.

UPDATE: 8.3P2 is now available!

8.3P2 can be found here:

http://mysupport.netapp.com/NOW/download/software/ontap/8.3P2

Some of the pertinent NAS related bug fixes include:

• NFS client mount hangs/access denied when using a Windows DNS server
• NFS users belonging to more than 256 groups might get access denied errors on multi-protocol workloads 
• High memory utilization in secd process
• Incorrect error code if a path component is not a directory on Windows
• Requests to connect to a CIFS share using NTLM with domain name longer than 15 characters fails 
• Error while saving documents scanned on Konica Minolta bizhub 423 MFP
• Domain look-up failure causes file creation/copy errors in certain cases

If you’re planning on doing a transition from 8.2.x 7-mode to cDOT, be sure to use 8.3P2

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Data ONTAP 8.3 was the first clustered Data ONTAP-only release delivered by NetApp – cloud-ready, with the closest feature parity ever in clustered Data ONTAP (cDOT) and richer feature sets than previous versions of cDOT. For more information on 8.3, check out the Top 5 Enhancements in Data ONTAP 8.3 and What’s New for NAS is Data ONTP 8.3.

Great. What’s a GA?

GA = General Availability

Prior to GA, 8.3 had two release candidate (RC) versions. RC versions have completed a rigorous set of internal NetApp tests and are are deemed ready for public consumption. Each release candidate would provide bug fixes that eventually lead up to the GA edition. Keep in mind that all release candidates are fully supported by NetApp, even if there is a GA version available. However, while RC is perfectly fine to run in production environments, GA is the recommended version of any ONTAP software release.

This NetApp page (requires NOW account) discusses the differences between the types of release in more detail:

NetApp Release Model (Post July 2010)

Awesome! Where can I get it?

The download page for the Data ONTAP 8.3 release can be found here:

http://mysupport.netapp.com/NOW/download/software/ontap/8.3/

For Data ONTAP 8.3 product documentation:

http://mysupport.netapp.com/documentation/docweb/index.html?productID=61999&language=en-US

For the Data ONTAP 8.3 express guides:

http://mysupport.netapp.com/documentation/docweb/index.html?productID=61885&language=en-US

Upgrade and enjoy!

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