First look at ONTAP 9

Today, NetApp announced the new version on Data ONTAP, now called ONTAP 9. Not clustered data ONTAP nor data ONTAP 7-mode. From now on, it will just be ONTAP, since 7-mode is no longer being developed. RC1 is scheduled to be out by late June, 2016.

The last few years, NetApp has focused on bringing feature parity to cdot, so new features and usability were a little behind in my opinion. However, the company is now at a point of greater innovation and most importantly, it appears that they are finally listening to the partners, and customers.

ONTAP 9 brings enhancements to the already well known features such as DataMotion, Compression, and dedup among others. It also includes features such as data compaction, HeadRoom, and RAID-TEC among others. More on new features on a separate post.

The main noticeable change on ONTAP 9 is a major face lift. Yes, the GUI is different; way different, while keeping some of the old look. In my opinion, it makes a lot more sense to control everything at a higher level, rather than having to hunt drop-down menus at different locations, just like the 8.2 days. The new UI brings simplicity and usability at the same time, with an intuitive, non-cluttered set of tabs.

Here is a sneak peek of ONTAP 9 UI. The main menu is composed of 7 tabs that will give you access to manage and configure your NetApp cluster. Categories include Dashboards, LUNs, SVMs, Network, Hardware and Diagnostics, Protection, and Configurations.

Rather than describing what each tab does, I will just be posting the screenshots since they are self explanatory in my opinion. Enjoy…