NetApp

ONTAP 9 Feature: Volume rehosting

dvdmorera NetApp, Storage ,

Why Is The Internet Broken?

ontap9week

Clustered Data ONTAP (now known as NetApp ONTAP) is a clustered file system that leverages virtualized storage containers known as Storage Virtual Machines (SVMs) that act as “blades” to create a secure, multi-tenant environment with a unified namespace.

These SVMs own objects such as network interfaces and Flexible Volumes (FlexVols) and act as their own segmented storage systems on shared hardware. In previous releases, the volumes were dedicated to the SVMs and could not be easily moved to another SVM in the cluster. You had to SnapMirror the volume over to the new SVM or copy the data. This process was time consuming and inefficient, so customers, for years, have asked for the ability to easily migrate volumes between SVMs.

In the 8.3.2 release, this functionality was added in limited fashion, for use with the new Copy-Free Transition feature. The volumes could only be migrated if they were…

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NetApp TMP Volumes

dvdmorera NetApp, Storage ,

As transitions from 7-mode to clustered mode continue to emerge, I have been dealing with TMP volumes lately due to unfinished migrations for many reasons.. mostly user error. This is not a new “thing” but rather a not well understood procedure.

7MTT is a tool that allows migration from 7-mode to clustered-mode by not only creating snapmirrors between the clusters, but also copying other important metadata such as shares, ACLs, exports, and much more.

During the data migrations, projects are created in 7MTT which includes volumes, those volumes can later be removed from the project prior to cutover, which results in TMP volumes at the destination node. I’ve seen individuals remove volumes from 7MTT projects, snapshot related to the snapmirror relationship, or simply chose to attempt to complete the migration manually… Not sure why!

The thing is… those volumes are pretty much useless outside of 7MTT. Even if you break the mirrors manually, those volumes will not be RW. Also, if you try to do anything from System Manager, you will get an error.

NetApp_tmp.png

Regardless of your case, if you wish to turn those volumes into a normal type (RW), you will need to disable transition protection on that volume. This needs diagnostic privileges, so run at your own risk… ’cause I won’t be responsible if you mess up.

Cluster::> set diag

Cluster::*> volume transition-protect -vserver vserverA -volume volA -is-enabled off

Cluster::*>vol show

Cluster::*>set admin

As of ONTAP 8.3.x these commands work, but use the ? in case they change in the future.

Again. This is not a new “thing” just being asked by a lot of people lately, so I thought this may help.

Run at your own risk.

Migrating to ONTAP – Ludicrous speed!

dvdmorera NetApp

Cool stuff by JP…

Why Is The Internet Broken?

As many of those familiar with NetApp know, the era of clustered Data ONTAP (CDOT) is upon us. 7-Mode is going the way of the dodo, and we’re helping customers (both legacy and new) move to our scale-out storage solution.

There are a variety of ways people have been moving to cDOT:

(Also, stay tuned for more transition goodness coming very, very soon!)

What’s unstructured NAS data?

If you’re not familiar with the term, unstructured NAS data is, more or less, just NAS data. But it’s really messy NAS data.

It’s home directories, file shares, etc. It…

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First look at ONTAP 9

dvdmorera NetApp ,

NTAP_logoToday, 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…

DASHBOARD

ONTAP_9_Dashboard2

ONTAP_9_Dashboard

 

LUNs

ONTAP_9_LUNs

 

SVMs

ONTAP_9_SVM

ONTAP_9_SVM2

 

NETWORK

ONTAP_9_Network

 

HARDWARE and DIAGNOSTICS

ONTAP_9_HW

 

PROTECTION

ONTAP_9_Protection

 

CONFIGURATIONS

ONTAP_9_Config

 

You can find a step-by-step guide by Neil Anderson at http://www.flackbox.com/netapp-simulator/

Bug Catcher: SRA/SRM testFailoverStart

dvdmorera NetApp, NetApp&VMware integration, SRM , , ,

scared-bugI’ve decided to write this post since I spent quite a bit of time troubleshooting this problem just to find out that it was a bug, grrrr. So, hopefully this will save someone some hair tearing and time as well.

I was recently implementing SRM 6.1 on a NetApp cluster running clustered mode (8.3.1). Configuration was flawless and was happy that I may complete a project early on a Friday. We decided to run a failover test to DR site, and this is where the issue came about.

After double checking all the settings, I had no luck finding any resources with this issue/resolution. The job would fail almost immediately after starting, with the error “Storage ports not found”. I checked the SRA ontap_config file to make sure the IPv4 option (isipv4) was set to match the IP format of the NFS configuration within SRM. Checked to make sure the firewall on the NetApp was set properly to allow communication, but everything looked correct.

I learned later on, that SRA 2.1 cannot detect NetApp interfaces that are set to mgmt. So, with NetApp LIFs, you have the option to “bundle” your data and mgmt interfaces within the same LIF (NFS, CIFS). If this is the case, those interfaces will be set to have the mgmt firewall-policy rather than the data firewall-policy, which is ok unless you are trying to use SRM/SRA in that setup.

Resolution:

  • Create a separate/dedicated mgmt LIF for your NFS SVM (per SVM)
    • Otherwise you are removing all mgmt interfaces for that SVM without a replacement
  • Remove the mgmt option for the NFS data LIFs
  • Change the firewall-policy for the NFS data LIFs from mgmt to data
    • You can use this command to do so:

network interface modify -vserver [vserver_name] -lif [data_lif_name] -firewall-policy data

Also make sure to check the ontap_config file for SRA. This is located under C:\Program Files\VMware\VMware vCenter Site Recovery Manager\storage\sra\CMODE_ONTAP.  If the ip addresses for the data LIFs are IPv4, this option needs to be set to YES.

ontap_config_SRA

 

 

 

Bug should be fixed with SRA 3…. coming soon to a datacenter near you.