ONTAP 9 is now available!

UPDATED: Changed title and links to 9.0, as it’s now GA. Check for the GA announcment here:

ONTAP 9.0 is now generally available (GA)!

All month long, the Tech ONTAP podcast has been featuring ONTAP 9 on the show to get people hyped up for the impending release.

Well, today’s the day.

ONTAP 9 is here!

That’s right – the next major release of ONTAP is now available. If you have concerns over the “RC” designation, allow me to recap what I mentioned in a previous blog post:

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.

For a more official take on it, see the NetApp link:

http://mysupport.netapp.com/NOW/products/ontap_releasemodel/post70.shtml

So, why do I need ONTAP 9?

I know what you’re thinking – “Why do I need ONTAP 9? I have a perfectly good working copy of 8.whatever running already.”

Well, honestly, if your version of ONTAP is working for you, super. Don’t change a thing. But, once you take a look at some of the feature enhancements we have in ONTAP 9, you might change your mind…

Features galore!

The list of features and improvements in ONTAP 9 is pretty impressive. It’s so impressive, in fact, that they re-branded ONTAP. (Ok that may be a bit of an exaggeration. We cover why we re-branded to ONTAP 9 in this podcast.)

The list includes:

• Support for 15TB SSD
• Inline data compaction
• SnapLock® software for data compliance
• RAID-TEC triple-parity protection
• Headroom for visibility of performance capacity
• MetroCluster enhancements (8 nodes!)
• Onboard key manager (Included for FREE)
• FlexGroups (PVR only in 9.0)
• Workgroup mode for CIFS/SMB
• LDAP Signing and Sealing for CIFS/SMB
• Kerberos 5p support
• AFF Simplicity templates
• SAN Optimized factory configurations
• Performance improvements
• ONTAP Select (4 nodes, HA failover, software defined storage!)
• Faster failover times
• Per-aggregate CPs
• Filehandle preservation for SVM DR – no more re-mounting after cutover!
• Volume rehost
• Global FIPS mode for FIPS compliance
• TLS 1.1/1.2 support
• Increased per-node LIF limits (cluster-wide limit remains)

That’s a lot of stuff!

If you have questions about any of the above, leave a comment and I’ll address them in a future blog post.

A few of the NetApp A-Team Members wrote up some blogs for the new stuff:

• Adam Bergh‘s take: http://thepartlycloudyblog.com/ontap9/
• Chris Maki‘s take: http://blog.iops.ca/?p=84
• Dave Morera‘s take: https://greatwhitetec.com/2016/05/31/first-look-at-ontap-9/