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NetApp Keystone – A deep dive into ONTAP AQoS and how they drive STaaS Service Levels

I’ve been spending some time getting spun up on Keystone, and subsequently went down the rabbit hole as far as I could go. Keystone is structured around service levels. And to properly understand those service levels it helps to understand the concept of IO Density, alongside how that is implemented with ONTAP Adaptive QoS. Join me as I go down said rabbit hole through the underlying concepts and hopefully pop up on the other end as a Keystone service level expert. I/O Density Starting things off with I/O density. NetApp defines it as the “number of input/output operations processed per[…]

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NetApp’s May 14th Announcements – New Hardware, Free Data Classification, and More

I wanted to take some time to cover NetApp’s May 14th, 2024 announcements. It was clear early on that marketing was prancing in their pantaloons a bit and a more technical focused installment from yours truly might be helpful to some folks. At a high level it’s more of the same from NetApp, a refresh to the mid- and high-end AFF hardware to meet ever growing industry advancements, same for StorageGRID, and the continual iterative updates to ONTAP and BlueXP. Super fun and exciting? Maybe not. But a sign that NetApp still remains highly relevant and deserving of space in[…]

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NetApp Insight 2023 – Event Rundown and Tech Updates

Before I start rattling off some tech updates to come out of NetApp Insight 2023 I wanted to start by rambling about the event in general. On the off chance someone who’s actually in charge of the event will swing by here. I know a lot of my colleagues will swing by here, and a lot will be on the same page. First and foremost, after being remote for several years, Insight back in person was fantastic. I got to meet friends and colleagues I haven’t seen in ages, and meet new folks I would’ve never spoken to otherwise. Everyone[…]

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NetApp BlueXP – Setting up an on-premises Cloud Connector

Before you can roll up your sleeves and start using BlueXP from NetApp you need to set up a Cloud Connector. These are small virtual machines which run a myriad of containers to facilitate all the various bits and bobs that provide a connectivity foundation for the BlueXP feature set. Ideally, well, ideally if you’re using resources in one of the large hyperscalers (AWS, Azure, GCP) you want to deploy a connector there. That gives you the ability to use the Cloud Connector as, basically, a API and command pass through. Essentially allowing BlueXP to talk directly to the hyperscaler[…]

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NetApp ONTAP – Setting up Multi-Admin Verification via CLI and System Manager

Okay, so maybe hiring that guy who looks like Snidely Whiplash was a poor choice. Starting with ONTAP 9.11.1 you can enable further secure ONTAP by setting up multi-admin verification, or MAV for short. MAV can prevent system administrators from taking certain data disruptive actions without getting approval from at least one other administrator. How it Works MAV works by creating a rule set of commands or GUI operations that require multiple users to approve before it can be executed. Alongside are administrator groups which can provide authentication for those actions. When an action is triggered that’s a part of[…]

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NetApp ONTAP – Whitelist and Blacklist Extensions with FPolicy via CLI, API, and System Manager

Within NetApp’s ONTAP software there’s the ability to monitor NAS actions via functionality called FPolicy. It’s essentially a notification framework that’s built around the logging and notification of actions against SMB/CIFS and NFS shares. The real power of FPolicy comes to light when you partner it with an off-system engine like Varonis or Cloud Secure, opening the door to all kinds of smart security controls. Native on-system FPolicy functionality is comparatively limited. While the framework is active and feeds info back into the other areas like logging, it lacks the majority of feature rich components an off-system partner provides. One[…]

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AWS and VMware Cloud go live with FSx NetApp ONTAP datastores – An introduction and guide

Recently, at VMworld Explore, VMware and AWS announced general availability of the much-anticipated integration of AWS’ FSx NetApp ONTAP NFS shares for use in their VMware Cloud virtualization stack. This article will cover the benefits and considerations so you can see whether it fits with your cloud journey. I tried to create a title for this post that wasn’t incredibly long, without using a metric ton of acronyms. Forewarning this post is going to be acronym heavy, even more so as usual, since we’re combining technical concepts across three acronym pushing tech companies. TL;DR VMware’s stack in AWS, VMC, now[…]

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NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP – Understanding Offerings, Licensing, Pricing, and More

The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel. “All these different licensing tiers are confusing,” Judsonian heard someone say, as he shouldered his way through the crowd around the door of NetApp. “It’s like someone took a simple concept and set the difficulty to 11.” It was a Cloud voice and a Cloud joke. Simply put, NetApp’s Cloud Volumes ONTAP (CVO) is a simple great product. The licensing around it, well, that’s a lot more cumbersome. CVO – What is it? How is it licensed? CVO is NetApp’s ONTAP software running in AWS,[…]

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Deploying Azure NetApp Files – A Quick Guide

I wanted to write a quick guide on Azure NetApp Files in Microsoft Azure, with info on how the service works and how to deploy it. I say quick but ended up adding more technical details than one might say is required – that’s just he engineer in me. I hope you find this helpful and relatively straight forward. Azure NetApp Files – What Is It? Azure NetApp Files (ANF) is an Azure native deployment of NetApp’s ONTAP platform in their cloud environment. ANF is simply high performance file shares using NFSv3, NFSv4.1, SMB, or a combination. As part of[…]

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NetApp Cloud Insights – ONTAP EMS Alerting & Dashboard Widgets

Back in December 2021, NetApp’s Cloud Insights (CI) added support for ONTAP’s Event Management System (EMS) alerts. I don’t know how many possible EMS alerts there are but the event catalog is only a meager 2229 pages long. From what I understand the CI team worked with the ONTAP engineering team to highlight the 75-100 or so alerts are really impactful on a day-to-day basis. For this article I just wanted to quickly highlight how to check the EMS logs and show how to create simple dashboard widgets to display them. Log Explorer Now under Queries you can create and[…]

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