Behind the Scenes: Episode 86 – Veeam 9.5 Update 2

Welcome to the Episode 86, part of the continuing series called “Behind the Scenes of the NetApp Tech ONTAP Podcast.”

We wrap up “Release Week” with an episode on Veeam’s new release with Veeam Technical Evangelist/NetApp A-Team member Michael Cade! (@michaelcade1)

Find out what new goodness is in Veeam’s latest release and get a rundown of what Veeam actually is. For the official blog:

https://newsroom.netapp.com/blogs/tech-ontap-podcast-episode-86-veeam-9-5-update-2/

Finding the Podcast

The podcast is all finished and up for listening. You can find it on iTunes or SoundCloud or by going to techontappodcast.com.

Also, if you don’t like using iTunes or SoundCloud, we just added the podcast to Stitcher.

http://www.stitcher.com/podcast/tech-ontap-podcast?refid=stpr

I also recently got asked how to leverage RSS for the podcast. You can do that here:

http://feeds.soundcloud.com/users/soundcloud:users:164421460/sounds.rss

You can listen here:

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New doc – Top Best Practices for FlexGroup volumes

When I wrote TR-4571: NetApp FlexGroup Volume Best Practices and Implementation Guide, I wanted to keep the document under 50 pages to be more manageable and digestible. 95 pages later, I realized there was so much good information to pass on to people about NetApp FlexGroup volumes that I wasn’t going to be able to condense a TR down effectively.

The TRs have been out for a while now, and I’m seeing that 95 pages might be a bit much for some people. Everyone’s busy! I was getting asked the same general questions about deploying FlexGroup volumes over and over and decided I needed to create a new, shorter best practices document that focused *only* on the most important, most frequently asked general best practices. It’s part TR, part FAQ. It’s more of an addendum, a sort of companion reader to TR-4571. And the best part?

It’s only FOUR PAGES LONG.

Check it out here:

http://www.netapp.com/us/media/tr-4571-a.pdf

ONTAP 9.1P3 is available!

ONTAP 9.1P3 is available for download today.

You can get it here:

mysupport.netapp.com/NOW/download/software/ontap/9.1P3

P-releases are patch releases and include bug fixes. Fixed in this release (since P2):

1015156	Storage controller disruption might occur when closing a CIFS session or a CIFS tree with large number of open files.
1028842	Storage system might experience a disruption under heavy load conditions
1032738	NDMP might fail to detect socket close condition causing the backup operations to enter into a hung state.
1036072	NA51 firmware release for 960 GB and 3.8 TB SSD series
1050210	New drive firmware to mitigate higher failure rate on a drive model
1055450	SnapMirror source system disrupts while pre-processing data to a format that can be understood by the destination system
1058975	SAN services disrupt in a two-node cluster when a node reboots while its partner is in a sustained taken-over state
1063710	Controller disruption occurs while processing read request in certain scenarios
1064449	‘total_ops’ and ‘other_ops’ counters for the system object are incorrect
1064560	Large file deletion or LUN unmap operations can stall on FlexClone volumes
1065209	Replay cache resources held up in reserves lead to EJUKEBOX errors for NFS clients
1068280	X1133A-R6 initiator port fails to discover FCP target devices
1069032	Unnecessary aggregate metadata reads might lead to long Consistency Points or WAFL Hung
1069555	Unnecessary aggregate metadata reads might lead to long consistency points or the file system disrupts
1070116	Driver code repeatedly generates the ‘Error: Failed to open NVRAM device 0’ error message in messages.log
867605	NDMP DAR restore using non-ASCII (UTF-8) doesn’t seem to work
981677	Ethernet interface on the UTA2 X1143-R6 adapter and onboard UTA2 ports might become unresponsive

 

ONTAP 9.1 is now generally available (GA)!

Back in October, ONTAP 9.1 RC1 was released. Tons of new features were added, which I covered in ONTAP 9.1 RC1 is now available!

Some of the major features included:

• Tons of brand new platforms
• NetApp FlexGroup (Generally available!) with Unified Manager and Performance Manager support! (9.1 RC2 brought SMB support) Check out the official NetApp blog on FlexGroup volumes here: https://newsroom.netapp.com/blogs/netapp-flexgroup-volumes-an-evolution-of-nas/
• NetApp Volume Encryption (NVE)
• SnapMirror to AltaVault/cloud
• 12 node SAN clusters
• Native Foreign LUN Import with AFF support (no PVR needed!)
• System Manager improvements (FlexGroup GUI, storage efficiency reporting, new cluster setup workflow)
• SAP HANA support for AFF templates
• Azure support for ONTAP cloud
• Trusted Platform Module
• 32GB FC
• SMB 3.1.1 AES-128-GCM encryption (~1.7 times faster than CCM in ONTAP 9.0!)
• 40GB Ethernet

Now, ONTAP 9.1 is officially GA. For information on what GA means:

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

You can find it here:

http://mysupport.netapp.com/NOW/download/software/ontap/9.1

Also, check out the documentation center:

docs.netapp.com/ontap-9/index.jsp

Happy upgrading!

If you’re interested in building your own ONTAP 9.x simulator, check out:

http://www.flackbox.com/netapp-simulator/

9.1RC2 is now available!

 

That’s right – release candidate 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

What’s new in ONTAP 9.1?

At a high level, ONTAP 9.1 brings:

• Tons of brand new platforms
• NetApp FlexGroup (Generally available!) with Unified Manager and Performance Manager support!
• NetApp Volume Encryption (NVE)
• SnapMirror to AltaVault/cloud (RC2)
• 12 node SAN clusters
• Native Foreign LUN Import with AFF support (no PVR needed!)
• System Manager improvements (FlexGroup GUI, storage efficiency reporting, new cluster setup workflow)
• SAP HANA support for AFF templates
• Azure support for ONTAP cloud
• Trusted Platform Module
• 32GB FC
• SMB 3.1.1 AES-128-GCM encryption (~1.7 times faster than CCM in ONTAP 9.0!)
• 40GB Ethernet

9.1RC2 specifically brings (outside of bug fixes):

• Support for the DS460C shelves
• Official support for backup of NAS to cloud via AltaVault (SnapMirror)
• SMB support for NetApp FlexGroup volumes

Happy upgrading!

For info about ONTAP 9.0, see:

ONTAP 9 RC1 is now available!

ONTAP 9.0 is now generally available (GA)!

 

BREAKING NEWS at #NetAppInsight – ONTAP VVol Support?

Along with the announcement that vSphere 6.5 went GA today, I’ve got some pretty cool news that I was just given permission to share, on the caveat that I can’t actually give the “when” portion of this…

VVols 1.0 is currently being qualified for ONTAP 9.1!

That’s right… Both SolidFire *and* ONTAP will have support for VVols. Somewhere, Pete Flecha (@vPedroArrow) is smiling.

If you have a vested interest in this news, please email me at whyistheinternetbroken@gmail.com or comment below with some contact information and I will pass the word on to the ONTAP team.

So, while you’re at NetApp Insight in Berlin, go find Pete at the VMware booth, or attend one of the VMware specific sessions:

• 60831-2: How Customers and Partners use NFS for Virtualization
• 62151-2 – VMware Horizon Portfolio on NetApp
• 61521-2 – VMware on NetApp ONTAP 9: New Tricks and Best Practice Update
• 61718-3 – Creating a Storage Portal Using VMware vRealize and NetApp
• 88633-2 Bridging the Gap: Networking for Storage and Virtualization Administrators
• 88644-2 – New Capabilities in NetApp ONTAP 9, Optimized for All-Flash Virtualized Workloads
• 61476-2 – VMware Virtual Volumes: Deploy, Implement and Troubleshoot

For NFS-specific information on vSphere 6.5, see:

vSphere 6.5: The NFS edition

For a rundown on the new ONTAP 9.1 features:

ONTAP 9.1 RC1 is now available!

ONTAP 9.1 RC1 is now available!

For info about ONTAP 9.0, see:

ONTAP 9 RC1 is now available!

ONTAP 9.0 is now generally available (GA)!

While many of the features of ONTAP 9.1 were announced at Insight 2016 in Las Vegas, the official release of the software wasn’t scheduled until the first week of October, which was the week after the conference.

For Insight Las Vegas highlights, see http://www.netapp-insight.com/las-vegas-highlights.

Get used to more features being released for ONTAP in the coming years. We’ve sped up the release cycle to get more cool stuff out faster!

But now, ONTAP 9.1 RC1 available!

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

What’s new in ONTAP 9.1?

At a high level, ONTAP 9.1 brings:

• Tons of brand new platforms
• NetApp FlexGroup (Generally available!) with Unified Manager and Performance Manager support!
• NetApp Volume Encryption (NVE)
• SnapMirror to AltaVault/cloud
• 12 node SAN clusters
• Native Foreign LUN Import with AFF support (no PVR needed!)
• System Manager improvements (FlexGroup GUI, storage efficiency reporting, new cluster setup workflow)
• SAP HANA support for AFF templates
• Azure support for ONTAP cloud
• Trusted Platform Module
• 32GB FC
• SMB 3.1.1 AES-128-GCM encryption (~1.7 times faster than CCM in ONTAP 9.0!)
• 40GB Ethernet

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

Happy upgrading!