ONTAP 9.7 New Feature: S3 Server for Object Access

/ Justin Parisi

Recently, on the Tech ONTAP podcast, we invited John Lantz to tell us all about FabricPool updates in ONTAP 9.7. While on the podcast, he dropped a gem about S3 object support in ONTAP 9.7 as well. He was kind enough to guest-author a post on it…

Image result for mr potato head bucket

S3 in ONTAP? Preview it now in ONTAP 9.7

ONTAP has supported file storage since 1992; and block storage since 2002. Many customers’ favorite ONTAP feature is unified storage in mixed NAS/SAN environments. NAS? Check. SAN? Check. What ONTAP couldn’t do was objects.

Customers were not left out in the cold, as NetApp has an excellent object storage solution in StorageGRID. And with FabricPool functionality in ONTAP, cold data can be tiered to StorageGRID and other object storage. Unfortunately, applications designed exclusively to leverage the S3 protocol could not be used in ONTAP … until now.

Why S3?

With the huge growth in the generation of object data, particularly with IoT devices, autonomous vehicles, and emerging 5G technology, we’re seeing increasing demand for ONTAP to support S3 as an additional option for scale-out storage, in addition to classic file-based protocols like NFS and SMB.

Many customers are looking for an efficient solution that works with their existing ONTAP environments and integrates seamlessly with the NetApp portfolio to bring object data collected at the Edge back to the Core or to the Cloud. ONTAP Select, our software-defined instantiation of ONTAP, can be deployed almost anywhere … imagine the possibilities now that it supports S3. Deploy ONTAP almost anywhere, collect objects via S3, and then centralize those objects into a globally-distributed StorageGRID environment or major cloud providers.

Public Preview

ONTAP S3 is being released as a Public Preview in ONTAP 9.7 GA, available now.

A Public Preview is an advanced release of a new feature or function. It provides basic functionality and runs on stable code. It is designed so customers can start playing with the functionality and thinking about how it might make sense for workloads in their environments.

A Public Preview is not ready for production workloads or critical data.

For example, the Public Preview of ONTAP S3 does not support functionality essential for production environments like:

  • ONTAP System Manager
  • TLS encryption
  • Multiple buckets
  • FabricPool
  • SnapMirror

Most importantly, a Public Preview is intended to generate feedback. What works well? What doesn’t? What is missing?

Feedback is essential and will guide the prioritization of requirements necessary for production workloads and the ONTAP team is team is closely monitoring usage via Active IQ.

Although not intended for production workloads, NetApp Support is ready to assist with ONTAP S3 configuration and troubleshooting questions.

StorageGRID: NetApp’s solution for object storage

StorageGRID is, and will remain, NetApp’s flagship solution for object storage. IDC MarketScape recently named NetApp a Leader in the latest report, IDC MarketScape: Worldwide Object-Based Storage 2019 Vendor Assessment. ONTAP S3 complements StorageGRID by providing an ingest and pre-processing point on the Edge, helping customers build an extended data fabric for object data, demonstrating yet again the power of NetApp’s industry-leading data management solution portfolio.

We are testing integration between ONTAP and StorageGRID using NetApp Cloud Sync and will share details as soon as possible.

Getting started

Like other protocols (FC, iSCSI, NFS, NVMe_oF, SMB), S3 requires a license to be installed before it can be used in ONTAP. A free evaluation license can be obtained on the NetApp’s Evaluation Central site.

After the license has been installed, (system license add <license-code>) getting an object store up and running is a simple, three step process:

  1. Add the object store to an SVM.
vserver object-store-server create -vserver <name> -object-store-server <name>
  1. Create a bucket to store the object data in.
vserver object-store-server bucket create -vserver <name> -bucket <name> -size <size>

The bucket is built on FlexGroup technology, supporting 50 billion files per HA pair, and capacities of 20PB+. Buckets use FlexGroup elastic sizing.

  1. In order to permission buckets for use only by authorized clients, user authorization will need to be added to buckets. To add users to the bucket:
vserver object-store-server user create -vserver <name> -user <name>

To view the user’s access key and secret key:

object-store-server user show

ONTAP 9.7 and beyond

By introducing ONTAP S3 as a Public Preview in ONTAP 9.7 GA, NetApp once again asserts its dominance in data management, providing an unparalleled unified architecture and pushing the market with industry leading technology solutions for the data fabric.

8 thoughts on “ONTAP 9.7 New Feature: S3 Server for Object Access”

  1. This announcement came way after ONTAP 9.7RC1 was released and it was not in the release notes before, it was updated recently… makes me wonder what other features are new or changed in ONTAP 9.7 and not documented.

    Up until 9.1 or 9.2, every new or changed feature was decribed in the release notes, but after that the release notes became more and more vague and incomplete. It started with the removal of the IP-FastPath feature, which gave a lot of headaches to a lot of people (including NetApp Support) because it was not known or documented. And a lot of other less known features followed. That’s a real shame, NetApp.

    And now, surprise! We have S3 support. Not described at first, but NetApp finally decided to do it anyway. What other surprises are we in for with 9.7?

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    • This new feature was at risk of not making it into 9.7 at all and is a public preview, meaning it’s not intended for production workloads yet. We’ve had other features make it into ONTAP and not the release notes, such as FlexGroup volumes in ONTAP 9.0.

      What other less known features have been removed? IP fastpath was one example, but what other ones?

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      • It’s not specifically about removed features, it is about that it was not specified in the release notes. Some other things that are not in the 9.7 release notes right now:
        – New adapter support: X1148A, X1151A for the AFF A400, X1122A for several AFF and FAS models,
        – New cluster interconnect switch support: Broadcom BES-53248, Cisco Nexus 92300YC, both for AFF A400, Cisco Nexus 3132QV for ONTAP way before 9.7 is not mentioned either
        – Metrocluster ATTO Bridge inline monitoring and firmware updates

        The list is probably longer but this what I can find in 30 minutes. These are all reasons for customers to upgrade to the latest ONTAP version, and the information just cannot be found in one place, you have to dig through a lot of manuals, TRs and Field Portal material.

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  4. The link for an evaluation site doesn’t work and I can’t find anything else that seems similar, is there somewhere else we can go for a license? I’ve been redirected to use our reseller, but we don’t have one as our appliance is a VM purchased with PAYGO licensing in AWS.

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