NetApp - Storage Nuts & Bolts

Sneak Preview: NetApp System Manager (NSM)

For the past couple of months I've been playing with NetApp's upcoming Element Manager which is a complete re-write and eventually will replace FilerView. Since Val let the cat out of the bag, that opens the door for a blog entry.

Update - 03/06/2009: There has been an article recently posted by the Register stating that NetApp dumps FilerView in favor of the upcoming NetApp System Manager. That statement is not true. FilerView will continue to exist and be fully supported in the forseeable future.

The basic idea behind the NetApp System Manager (NSM) is to provide comprehensive management and capability of one of more arrays via a simple, easy to use, intuitive GUI.

NSM is a Windows/MMC 3.0 application that supports Discovery, Setup, FCP, iSCSI, CIFS, NFS, Deduplication, provisioning, Thin Provisioning, Snapshot and configuration management of multiple NetApp Storage Systems from a single pane of glass.

Storage Configuration Wizards

New wizards allow Admins to create quickly and easily create Aggregates, Volumes, LUNs, shares as well as a new Server Virtualization wizard that supports provisioning for VMware implementations.

Aggregate Wizard

Aggregate creation is literally a 3 click process. You can let the system select the appropriate disks based on the disk type you choose automatically, or you can select them manually. The Automatic process makes sure all disks in the aggregate are balanced across multiple back-end loops.

Volume Wizard

Creating a volume is similarly a no brainer process. Pick the aggregate you want, select the Volume size, snapshot space, %, enable thin provisioning if you'd like at the Volume level and/or enable deduplication under the Space settings tab and that's it. In there you can set the different Space Guarantees provided depending on what it is you want to accomplish.

LUN Wizard

The process of creating a LUN is pretty much out of the "How to Create a LUN for Dummies" book. Select a name for the LUN, it's size, the LUN type which corresponds to the OS type the LUN will be used by, click next, select an existing NetApp Aggregate/Volume that will contain the LUN or create a new Aggregate/Volume, select the initiators (FCP or iSCSI) that will have access to the LUN and you're done. Given the entire process is wizard driven I have personally found no way to mess up.

Server Virtualization Wizard

Given that we're seeing a large number of customer requests for NFS implementations for VMware, the NSM provides a Wizard for creating NFS Datastores. The process is similar to creating a Volume, however, the wizard will also ask for the VMkernel IP address of the ESX host(s) so the NFS volume gets exported. The dedup option is also there should you choose to take advantage of our NetApp level dedup capability.

Dashboard/System Tools

NSM provides a dashboard with notifications that are integrated with the Windows System Tray so you receive updated notifications regarding the system's health status. The Dashboard also includes it's own notification pane and performance pane. Autosupport, licensing, SNMP, and syslog can also be configured.

NSM will also be supported for the IBM N-Series system. The product will become available in the next few months, in the mean time it will soon become available to the NetApp Beta Community as a download for testing. We'd love to hear your feedback!!!

Technorati Tags: NetApp,NSM,NetApp System Manager

NetApp to acquire Onaro

For those of you who may not have been reading the newswire today, NetApp announced an agreement to acquire Onaro. For those not familiar with Onaro I'll give a brief overview of who Onaro is, what they do and their value proposition.

Upon hearing about this acquisition today I got very excited since I've been familiar with Onaro for the past 3 years and have been one of the cheerleaders of this company's solutions for some time.

Who's Onaro?

Onaro's a leading provider of Storage Service Management software based in Boston with an R&D facility in Israel. Over the years they've accumulated an impressive list of customers comprised of the "Who's Who" of the Fortune 50. In addition, they have made it onto the Gartner magic quadrant as one of the leading visionaries in 2007 and captured the "Best in show" award at VMWorld 2007 for their VMware capabilities.

What does Onaro do?

Onaro extends Data center automation to storage by providing:

• Real-time heterogeneous reporting without agents from the entire storage infrastrucure
• Application and Service level centric views and service quality reporting
• Support for IT processes such as built, manage, run, optimize, chargebacks
• Support for storage management decisions based on actionable data for:
  • Root Cause analysis - Every change is logged and analyzed
  • Troubleshooting - Track changes quickly to identify and rectify issue
  • Capacity Planning - Continuous reporting with trending and tiering information
  • Performance - Switch & array performance with built-in detection of service quality violations
  • Availability -
  • Server & Storage Utilization  - Identify underutilized resources
  • Server Virtualization  - Strong VMware integration and identification of hosts as server virtualization candidates
  • ITIL - Impact prediction prior to implementation
  • Audit & Compliance - Log all changes to environment with searchable database
  • Consolidation & Migration- Address issues prior to migration and pre-assess impact of change.

  Onaro's key features

• Unobtrusive, agentless discovery and reporting of heterogeneous storage environments
• Scalable architecture with rapid deployment
• Continuous monitoring and logging of all changes made to the environment
• Service path creation from applications to storage and correlation of infrastructure to logical devices
• Correlation and management of storage devices in a server virtualization environment with Cross-Domain visibility
• Continuous monitoring for reporting and management
• Deployment validation based on  Best Practices
• Quick identification of applications that could be migrated to lower storage tiers
• Validation of pre-migration plans based on "What-If" scenarios
• Monitoring and logging of all changes during migration
• Monitoring and reporting of post migration storage service level delivery

Here's an illuminating post from John McArthur (ex-IDC), President and co-founder of Walden Technology Partners on the Onaro acquisition.

I'll be writing more about Onaro in the near future as Onaro's product suite goes way beyond your typical SRM solution and addresses trends that require a different approach and one that does not primarily revolve around file level management.