ONTAP 9.4 Simulator Upgrade From 9.3

Download the ONTAP 9.4 Image from NetApp Support Site.

In this example, i had already installed configured with ONTAP 9.3 single node cluster.

Check the current ontap version.

Get the software image package from the web server.

Now you can login to System Manager and check the software image download status.

Successfully Package downloaded and processed.

Check with the cluster image repository.

Now you go update to ONTAP 9.4. This is the disruptive activity because of single node cluster.

Check the update progress.

Then it reboots automatically with new software image 9.4.

Cluster upgrade successfully completed.

Login and check the ONTAP version and update history.

ONTAP 9.4 New Features

NetApp ONTAP 9.4 New Features 

The new NetApp ONTAP 9.4 operating system for their FAS and AFF storage platforms has just been announced.

Brand new ONTAP hardware platforms are also available – the high-end All Flash FAS AFF A800, entry level AFF A220 and entry level hybrid flash FAS2700.

Feature enhancements to DPO systems:

Starting with ONTAP 9.4, systems with the DP_Optimized (DPO) license support SnapMirror backoff, cross-volume background deduplication, cross-volume inline deduplication, use of Snapshot  blocks as donors, and compaction.

Support for increased number of Snapshot copies in ONTAP 9.4

Beginning with ONTAP 9.4, a volume can contain up to 1023 Snapshot copies. A SnapMirror destination volume can contain up to 1019 Snapshot copies.

Support for creating aggregates based on storage recommendations

You can create an aggregate based on storage recommendations. System Manager analyzes the configuration of your storage system and provides storage recommendations such as the number of aggregates that can be created, the available nodes, and the available spare disks.

Enhancements to FabricPool-enabled aggregates

Beginning with System Manager 9.4, FabricPool-enabled aggregates have been enhanced to support more features.

FabricPool-enabled aggregates have been enhanced to support the following features and

functionalities:

• New UI navigation for the external capacity tier menu

• New “Auto” tiering policy

• Support for inactive (cold) data reporting

• Support for Microsoft Azure Blob storage external capacity tier

• More information in the capacity tab of the cluster dashboard

• Support for ONTAP Select

• Support for viewing external capacity tier, other than StorageGRID Webscale, Amazon AWS S3, and Microsoft Azure Blob storage, created using the command-line interface (CLI).

Enhancements for FabricPool functionality

In ONTAP 9.4, FabricPool adds several enhancements that help you manage storage tiers more efficiently.

The key enhancements for FabricPool include the following:

• Support for the auto tiering policy

The auto tiering policy moves cold user data in both the Snapshot copies and the active file

system to the capacity tier after the tiering minimum cooling period (31 days by default).

• Support for modifying the tiering minimum cooling period

You can change the tiering minimum cooling period on a volume that uses the snapshot-only or auto tiering policy.

• Support for Microsoft Azure Blob Storage for the cloud as the external capacity tier

• Inactive data reporting

Inactive data reporting enables you to see how much data in a volume is inactive, regardless of whether the aggregate is part of FabricPool. You need to explicitly enable the inactive data reporting functionality if the aggregate is not used for FabricPool.

Support for SMB multichannel protocol

Beginning with System Manager 9.4, you can enable the SMB protocol to establish multiple

channels between an SMB 3.0 session and transport connections, specifically for higher performance, fault tolerance, and resiliency.

Enhancements to FlexGroup volumes

Beginning with System Manager 9.4, FlexGroup volumes have been enhanced to support more features.

FlexGroup volumes include the following enhancements and new features:

• Support for advanced options such as volume encryption, storage efficiency, and QoS.

• Protect volumes

Features supported in ONTAP 9.4

Beginning with ONTAP 9.4, the following features are supported on FlexGroup volumes:

• FPolicy

• File auditing

• Throughput floor (QoS Min) and adaptive QoS for FlexGroup volumes

• Throughput ceiling (QoS Max) and throughput floor (QoS Min) for files in FlexGroup volumes

You can use the volume file modify command to manage the QoS policy group that is associated with a file.

Support for updating single-node clusters disruptively

Beginning with System Manager 9.4, you can update single-node clusters. Updating single-node cluster is disruptive, and client data will not be available while the update is in progress.

Support for NVMe protocol

ONTAP 9.4 introduces NVMe over Fibre Channel (NVMe/FC), a new block access protocol that serves blocks to the host in a similar manner to FCP and iSCSI.

NVMe/FC uses an NVMe command set instead of SCSI. The NVMe architecture, lean command set, and scalable sessions enable significant reduction in latency and increase in parallelism, making it well suited to low-latency and high-throughput applications such as in-memory databases, analytics, and more.

NVMe:

NVM Express (NVMe) or Non-Volatile Memory Host Controller Interface Specification (NVMHCIS) is an open logical device interface specification for accessing non-volatile storage media attached via a PCI Express (PCIe) bus. 

The acronym NVM stands for non-volatile memory, which is often NAND flash memory that comes in several physical form factors, including solid-state drives(SSDs), PCI Express (PCIe) add in cards and other forms such as an M.2 cards. 

NVM Express, as a logical device interface, has been designed from the ground up to capitalize on the low latency and internal parallelism of solid-state storage devices.

NVMeOF:

In September 2014, a standard for using NVMe over Fibre Channel (FC) was proposed. NVM Express over Fabrics (NVMeOF) is a communication protocol that allows one computer to access block-level storage devices attached to another computer via remote direct memory access, via FC or via TCP/IP. The standard for this protocol was published by NVM Express, Inc. in 2016.

Support for fast zeroing of drives

For systems that are freshly installed with ONTAP 9.4 or later or systems that are reinitialized with ONTAP 9.4 or later, drive zeroing takes place automatically and is complete in seconds.

This enhancement, called fast zeroing, greatly reduces the time it takes for system initialization, aggregate creation, or aggregate expansion. ONTAP automatically and quickly zeros drives. You no longer experience long wait times for drives to zero before provisioning. This enhancement is supported on both SSDs and HDDs.

SQL Server added to Application-Aware Data Management

Application-Aware Data Management was added in ONTAP 9 to simplify provisioning of particular workloads. Best practice settings for features such as QoS are automatically applied when you select the application type in the System Manager GUI. SQL has been added as an application type in ONTAP 9.4.

NetApp Fabric Pool Implementation and Management

NetApp brings in an innovation in Flash storage systems, the Fabric Pool aggregates. With FabricPool aggregates, you can move your cold data to external, less expensive storage solutions available today.

FabricPool is an all SSD aggregate that has an external capacity tier attached to it. Data that is written to the SSD aggregates is called as Performance tier and backup and/or snapshots that is moved to Amazon S3 or Netapp StorageGrid Webscale is called as Capacity Tier. 

FabricPool will be designed as an innovative technology that allows any workload (SAN or NAS) on an ONTAP system to keep hot data on all-Flash but tier inactive cold data off onto low-cost object storage, either on-premises or in the Cloud. This inactive data is often up to 80% of the overall storage footprint, leading to significant savings. 

You can attach capacity tiers to SSD aggregates and set tiering policies on the SSD volumes. Currently supported tiering policies are:

• Snapshot-only which is the default
• Backup – Data is tired to the capacity tier as snapmiror/snapvault destinations
• None

General considerations and requirements

• You must be running ONTAP 9.2 at the minimum to use FabricPool.
• You must be running ONTAP 9.4 or later releases for the following FabricPool functionality:
  • The auto tiering policy
    Specifying the tiering minimum cooling period
  • Inactive data reporting
  • Using Microsoft Azure Blob Storage for the cloud as the external capacity tier for FabricPool
  • Using FabricPool with ONTAP Select
• FabricPool supports the following platforms and aggregate types:
  • On AFF and FAS systems and ONTAP Select, you can use only all flash (all SSD) aggregates for FabricPool.
    You cannot use Flash Pool aggregates (which contain both SSDs and HDDs) or HDD aggregates.
  • On ONTAP Cloud, you can use either SSD or HDD aggregates for FabricPool.
    However, using SSD aggregates is recommended.
• FabricPool supports using the following object stores as the external capacity tier:
• Amazon Web Services Simple Storage Service (AWS S3)
• Microsoft Azure Blob Storage for the cloud
• NetApp StorageGRID Webscale 10.3 or later

Additional considerations for using AWS S3 with FabricPool

• You might need a FabricPool license.
  • Newly ordered AFF systems come with 10 TB of free capacity for using FabricPool.
    If you need additional capacity on an AFF system, if you use AWS S3 on a non-AFF system, or if you upgrade from an existing cluster, you need a FabricPool license.
  • If you use Amazon S3 as the capacity tier for ONTAP Cloud, you do not need a FabricPool license..

Configuring Fabric Pool:

Check the Fabric Pool Capacity License.

Login to OnCommand System Manager, select Storage Tiers and you can see the External Capacity Tier Link.

The LIF that ONTAP uses to connect with the AWS S3 object server must be on a 10 Gbps port.

Create an intercluster role LIF to connect to the S3 Object Storage.

Now Login to S3 Browser and Create a new Storage Bucket.

Create a new Bucket.

New S3 Bucket got created successfully.

Now From OnCommand System Manager, Configure the External Capacity Tier.

Select AWS S3 and Provide Access and login credentials.

Select the Inter Cluster Role LIF.

Then Click Save and Attach Aggregates.

Successfully 1TB External Capacity Tier created. Then we need to attach an aggregates.

Select and add the aggregates to Cloud .

FabricPool does not support attaching an external capacity tier to an aggregate that contains volumes using a space guarantee other than none.

External Capacity Tier created successfully.

Now aggregate space used in the S3 bucket space.

NetApp Cloud Backup(AltaVault) with Veritas NetBackup (OST)

NetApp has launched a cloud backup product range called AltaVault – essentially a rebranded version of Riverbed’s SteelStore, which it acquired in October 2014.

AltaVault enables customers to securely back up their data to the cloud through physical, virtual and cloud-based appliances featuring inline deduplication and compression – something that can reduce the bandwidth and storage requirements by as much as 90 percent.

AltaVault physical appliances AltaVault physical appliances are among the industry’s most scalable cloud-integrated storage appliances, with capacities ranging from 32TB up to 384TB of usable local cache. Enterprises often deploy AltaVault physical appliances in their data centers to protect large volumes of data. These datasets typically require the highest levels of performance and scalability available. AltaVault physical appliances are built on a scalable and efficient hardware platform that is optimized to reduce data footprints and rapidly stream data to the cloud.

It is simple to set up the AltaVault appliance. You can start moving data to the cloud in as little as 30 minutes; setting up tape or other disk replication infrastructures can take days. By leveraging industry-leading deduplication, compression, and WAN optimization technologies, AltaVault appliances shrink dataset sizes by 10 to 30 times. They also substantially reduce cloud storage costs, accelerate data transfers, and store more data within the local cache, speeding recovery.


Security is provided by encrypting data on site, in flight, as well as in the cloud using 256-bit AES encryption and SSL v3/TLS v1. AltaVault appliances provide a dual layer of encryption that prevents any data moved into the cloud from being compromised, and it creates a complete end-to-end security solution for cloud storage.

Login to Altavault.
Select Configure--> Setup wizard

Now setup the cloud settings.

Select the provider first.

If private cloud like openshift then user the provider as openshift.

Once you provide all the required credentials and Tenant details, then it will connect to cloud.

Now check the cloud information details (status --- connected).

Now create OST storage.

select Configure --> OST

Add OST share now.

Select the type is Regular or Cloud.

Create a OST user also.

Now login to Netbackup Admin console and configure the Disk storage servers.

Select the Open Storage.

Provide the Storage server type and OST share name with user credentials.

Successfully created OST storage server.

Then create Disk Pools. (Replication Source).

Successfully Disk Pool created then create a storage unit.

Creating a storage unit.

Successfully Disk Pool and Storage unit created.

Same as create another disk pool, for Replication Target.

Create OST cloud type share in Altavault and use this space as Target.

Successfully Disk pool and Storage Unit created.

Now create a Storage Life Cycle POlicy (SLP) for backup and Duplication.

Add SLP name and operation as backup and add one more operation for Duplication in replication Target.

Create a policy to take a backup using SLP.

Run a manual backup.

Backup process is active and begin writing to OST source storage in Altavault.

Backup done successfully.

After the successful backup, the Duplication process started and it stores the data in replication target from openshift container.

Now do a restore test, open BAR and select the image to restore.

Restore to its original location.

Check in the Activity Monitor, the restore process successfully completed.