ONTAP 8.3.2 is GA!

Just a quick note now that 8.3.2 is now GA and here’s a few features that I may have missed in my combined post on 8.3.1 and 8.3.2 or the details of which just weren’t available to me. I’ll start by reiterating some of the highlights in point form:

  • Copy Free Transition (CFT)
  • In-line DeDupe (on AFF)
  • In-place, adaptive compression

Those were some of the more poignant features, but here’s some others that I either didn’t know about or just weren’t to me:

  • MetroCluster distance increased by 50% bringing it to 300KM
  • Oracle NFS workload provisioning for All Flash FAS (AFF)
    • Using a Quick Start guide, and a wizard in the on-board OnCommand System Manager, the claim is you can have your new AFF cabled and serving Oracle over NFS in under 15 minutes.

The real beauty in this release however is in regards to CFT. I’ve said it before, but I’m still impressed by this feature. Basically you can stand up a new cDOT system with it’s own root aggregates and connect your 7-mode disk to it (yes there’s caveats) and with some 7MTT magic smoke, your data is now being served out of your shiny, new cluster-mode environment. Previously 7MTT (7-mode Transition Tool) only supported source data in the 8.1.x code line, but with this new release, 7MTT now supports 7-Mode systems running Data ONTAP 8.1.4P4 – 8.1.4P9 and Data ONTAP 8.2.1 or later. Also, in 8.3.2RC, CFT would only work on a net-new system with only its root aggregates, but in the 8.3.2GA, CFT now supports importing your 7-mode disk on to 8.3.2GA systems with pre-existing data aggregates and volumes. Here are all the permutations that you can now leverage CFT to import your 7-mode data:

  • Import 7-Mode disk shelves in the following ways:
    • Import disk shelves from a 7-Mode HA pair to a new HA pair in a new cluster.
    • Import disk shelves from a 7-Mode HA pair to a new HA pair in an existing cluster that has additional data-serving nodes.
    • Import disk shelves from a 7-Mode HA pair to an HA pair that has data aggregates in an existing cluster that is serving data.
    • Import disk shelves from an HA pair that contains volumes in a volume SnapMirror relationship to an HA pair in a new or existing cluster.
      You must manually create the cluster peer relationship after transition; however, a rebaseline transfer is not required, and you can retain the SnapMirror relationship after transition.

*UPDATE: The above is actually more a function of 7MTT 2.3, but you need it for CFT anyway.

For all the gory details of CFT and how awesome it is, go here for your copy of the Copy-Free Transition Guide.

What does all this actually mean? It means that soon we can finally stop referring to “it” as either 7-mode or cluster-mode and just refer to “it” as ONTAP or Data ONTAP again.

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