5 Reasons to Upgrade to Data Ontap 8.0.1

Last week while hosting our Virtualization Field Readiness Summit I spent some time with Dr. Desktop (aka Chris Gebhardt) and while educating me on advancements in our technologies related to desktop virtualization he shared a few of the enhancements in Data Ontap 8.0.1 that were so exciting I thought I’d share.

Reason Number 1 - 64 Bit Aggregates

64 bit aggregates allow customer to extend the size of their storage pools (or aggregates) by raising the maximum capacity from 16 TB (with Data Ontap 7.x) to 100TB. For those of you unfamiliar with NetApp technology, an Aggregate is a collection of physical disks that have been protected in RAID-DP RAID groups. The aggregate is NetApp’s means to logically separate the capacity and performance IOPs from a physical disk drive and serve it via a resource pool to a number of datasets. This model allows us to leverage the physical resources to a higher level of utilization than what one can accomplish with traditional RAID technologies.

With 64 bit aggregates and RAID-DP, customers extend their dataset size and capabilities without compromising the protection of their data.

Reason Number 2 - NetApp DataMotion for FC, FCoE, & iSCSI LUNs

NetApp DataMotion for LUNs is one of our storage tiering technologies that can non-disruptively migrate LUNs (and the containing FlexVols) from one Aggregate to another within the same controller. DataMotion includes a migration validation capability and once executed will migrate LUNs and their Snapshots along with any LUN attributes such as thin-provisioning, deduplication, and dataset relationships (such as backup, dump, restore, replica, mirroring, MetroCluster, etc.) all without disrupting I/O or access.

Reason Number 3 - 10GbE & FCoE Unified Target Adapter

Data Ontap 8.0.1 provides support (in the form of device drivers) for our Unified Connect Target Adapter (UTA). A UTA is more commonly known as a Converged Network Adapter (CNA). With our UTA customers are able to enable simultaneous SAN (FCoE & iSCSI) and NAS (NFS & SMB/CIFS) connectivity with Data Center Ethernet (aka 10gbE) via a single PCI-E card.

The UTA also enables customer to potentially expand the amount of data their existing arrays host address by freeing up a PCI-E slots currently used for SAN & Ethernet connectivity and replacing it with a storage adapter for connecting additional disk shelves. PCI-E slots can sometimes be a priority when one's mid-tier array, like the FAS3270, can address 1.9 Petabytes of storage!

 

 

 

 

 

Reason Number 4 - File System Compression

 

 

 

 

In light of an ever-increasing storage footprint, customers require a means to store data in a virtualized manner, on which allows the logical capacity to greatly exceed the physical capacity of the storage media (be it disk or tape). Data compression is the latest storage efficiency offering in NetApp’s unmatched portfolio of storage savings technologies specifically targeted for production data sets such as Virtual Machines, Messaging systems, databases, etc.

While many of my posts highlight our ability to provide data deduplication at both the disk and cache layers, compression is an excellent means to compliment dedupe and increase storage savings for data sets beyond virtual machines such as home directories, engineering data, and archived data sets. Best of all, Data Compression is a free software license!

Note: Data compression can only be enabled on FlexVols residing on 64-bit Aggregates.

Reason Number 5 - Support for VMware VAAI

Data ONTAP 8.0.1 provides support for the VMware vStorage APIs for Array Integration (VAAI) features released with vSphere 4.1. These features, Full Copy, Block Zeroing, and Hardware Assisted Locking, enhance the scalability of a virtual infrastructure by offloading I/O operations to the storage array. The current set of VAAI functions support VMFS datastores, but trust me here, there more coming on the VAAI front!

 

 

 

 

 

Ok I may have mislead a bit when I suggested there were 5 compelling reasons, but I have one more to share…

Bonus Reason - Increased Performance!

With the release of Data Ontap 8.0.1 we have enhanced the dedupe logic in our array cache, which in a number of tests provides anywhere from a 10% to a 48% performance increase. This increase is on data sets that share common blocks such as deduplicated datastores or hardware accelerated VM clones provisioned with the VSC (which are powered by FlexClone).

I’d like to cite the work of Dr. Desktop, whose lab is currently booting 5,000 virtual desktops running Windows 7 in 50 minutes on 24 SAS drives! These results are a 28% increase over the results obtained from the same hardware running data Ontap 7.3.4.

Wrapping Up This Post

NetApp engineering is working hard to continually improve the capabilities of our platforms and the release of Data Ontap 8.0.1 customer are able to receive enhanced functionality and increased performance from their existing hardware platforms. I'd add that a number of the items in this post are being refined and enhanced and we mature with future releases.

As the upgrade process is non-disruptive, the path from Data Ontap 7.x to 8.0.1 couldn’t be any easier!

 

 

Comments

[Martin Gustafsson]

One reason not to upgrade: SMB 2.0 isn't supported.

[David Boll]

Another good reason to upgrade, the volume deduplication limit jumps to 16TB for all platforms.

[Morten Madsen]

@Martin

SMB 2.0 IS supported on Ontap 8.0.1. We are currently running 8.0.1 and SMB2

[Scott Chubb]

@Martin,
You are correct only for 8.0, however 8.0.1 has full SMB 2.0 support.

[Storagesavvy]

Disclaimer: EMCer here - Compression, 64-Bit Aggregates, and DataMotion all sound like great features from an upgrade.

A Few Questions:
Can you convert existing 32-bit aggregates into 64-bit aggregates after the upgrade and then increase the size? Or do you need to create new aggregates on different spindles?

Can you use DataMotion to migrate existing LUNs from 32-bit Aggregates into 64-bit Aggregates to take advantage of compression for existing data?

Thanks!

[Vaughn Stewart]

@Richard (aka Storagesaavy) -

Thanks for following and the inquiry. As I mentioned in the summary we are enhancing a number of the technologies shared in this post and in-place upgrades from 32-bit to 64-bit aggregates is one.

Today customers can create 64-bit aggregates, and obviously if they are looking to leverage some of the new capabilities that is available from them they have a number of ways to non-disruptively migrate their datasets to them. As I focus on cloud, I'd suggest that Storage VMotion enhanced with VAAI is one such method.

As you brought up compression and are with EMC I feel compelled to clarify some terminology as I don't believe engineers from EMC & NetApp speak the same language. NetApp provides block level dedupe on all arrays, for all datasets accessed over any protocol. It's use enhances performance and we promote it's use globally.

Compression is a technology that enhances storage savings, but ideally should be used with datasets that have low IO requirements.

I make these distinctions as most I engage with from EMC do not believe NetApp can actually dedupe disk and array cache, and as such tend to rely on compression and as these EMCers are well versed to the limits/uses cases with compression they tend to apply those limits to NetApp's dedupe capabilities.

Our SAN & NAS customers love dedupe and are seeing phenomenal results, as such I'd suggest the larger data sets, larger pools of I/O, and increased drive capacities are the driver to 64 bit aggregates more than compression.

[Storagesavvy]

Thanks for the reply. I personally do understand the differences between EMC Compression and Deduplication and NetApp Deduplication and Compression features but it's always good to point out to customers. With ALL of the technologies from both vendors, as with anything in life, there are cases where the benefits outweigh the drawbacks and cases where the opposite is true. I was using compression as an example enhancement of the 64-bit aggregates, of course maximum usable capacity is another major one.

[Lenny]

Not supported on FAS2050s and if you have a large snapmirror relationships you're stuck on 7.x

[ben]

Any news about forthcoming Snaplock compliance support for the Ontap 8x platforms yet?

[Vaughn Stewart]

@Lenny - you are correct, 8.0.1 is not available on the older hardware platform

@Ben - Let me see if we I can share publicly.

[Flemming Riis]

Any news on when compression licenses is released to the general public