ONTAP 9.8 has been announced

Timed perfectly with NetApp INSIGHT 2020 is the annual ONTAP payload announcement. Once again, there’s a lot in this payload, so I will simply deliver a list of bulleted sections, addressing as many of the changes as I’m able. I’ll provide additional detail on the ones I feel are the most interesting. For a full run down, please consult the release notes or start a conversation with me on twitter.

FlexGroup Volume Enhancements

  • Async Delete
    • Delete large datasets rapidly from the CLI.
      • This is great for those high file count deployments.
  • Backup enhancements
    • 1,023 snapshots supported
    • NDMP enhancements
  • FlexVol to FlexGroup in-place conversion enhancements
  • VMware datastore support
  • Proactive resizing of constituent volumes

FlexCache Volumes, a true global namespace

  • SMB support added with distributed locking
  • 10x origin to cache fan-out ratio, now 1:100
  • Caching of SnapMirror secondary volumes
  • Cache pre-population

Data Visibility

  • File system analytics, viewable in System Manager
    • Enabled on a per-volume basis
    • Can also be queried via API access
  • QoS for Qtrees
    • IOPS and throughput policies available per qtree object
    • Managed via REST API or CLI
    • Qtree-level statistics
    • NFS only in this release, no adaptive QoS

All-SAN Array (ASA) enhancements

  • Persistent FC Ports
    • Symmetric active/active host-to-LUN access
    • Each node on the ASA will maintain a “shadow FC LIF”, reducing SAN failover times even further.
  • Larger Capacities
    • Max LUN = 128TB LUNs
    • Max FlexVol = 300TB
      • These limit increases are on the ASA only
  • MCC-IP support
  • Priced ~20% less than unified platforms
Before Persistent FC Ports
With Persistent FC Ports

ONTAP S3

  • Preview-only in 9.7, GA in 9.8
  • System manager integration
  • Bucket access policies
  • Multiple buckets per volume
  • TLS 1.2 support
  • Multi-part upload
    ONTAP S3 is not a replacement for a dedicated, global object store

Storage Efficiency Enhancements

  • FabricPool
    • Tiering from HDD aggregates
    • Object tagging (For information life cycle policies)
    • Increased cooling period (max 183 days)
    • Cloud retrieval
  • Storage efficiencies
    • Differentiation of hold and cold data for application of different compression methods, 8k compression group for hot, 32k for cold
    • Deduplication prior to compression

Simplification

  • Upgrade directly to two versions newer without passing via intermediary version
  • Headswaps using nodes running the latest version of ONTAP can be used on nodes running versions of ONTAP up to two versions behind
  • REST API enhancements
    • ZAPI to REST mapping documentation
    • ONTAP version information in API documentation
  • System Manager Improvements
    • Single-click firmware upgrades
    • File system analytics
      • Granular details about your NAS file systems
    • Hardware and Network visualization
    • Data Protection Enhancements
      • Reverse resync
  • Simpler Compliance
    • Volume move support, no second copy required
    • WORM as the default

Security and Data Protection Enhancements

  • Secure purge
    • crypto shred individual files
  • IPSec
    • encrypted network traffic, regardless of protocols
      • Simplifies secure NFS, no need for Kerboros
      • iSCSI traffic on the wire can now be encrypted
  • Node root volume encryption
  • MetroCluster
    • Unmirrored aggregate support
  • SnapMirror
    • SnapMirror Business Continuity (SM-BC) provides automated failover of synchronous SnapMirror relationships for application-level, granular protection
      • These are non-disruptive
      • SM-BC is preview-only in 9.8 and SAN-only.
    • SnapMirror to Object Store
      • Google Cloud, Azure, or AWS
      • Meta Data included so Object Store data is a complete archive
      • Efficiencies maintained
SnapMirror to Object Store

Virtualization Enhancements

  • FlexGroup volumes as VMware datastores
  • SnapCenter backup support
  • 64TB SAN datastore on the ASA
  • SRA support for SnapMirror Synchronous
  • Support for Tanzu storage

That sums up the majority of the improvements, looking forward to this release coming out. See you at NetApp INSIGHT 2020!

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