ONTAP Select 9.

Release Notes

July 2016 | 215-11319_A0_ur003

doccomments@netapp.com
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Contents
ABOUT THESE RELEASE NOTES ......................................................................................... 3
PRODUCT OVERVIEW............................................................................................................ 4
Major software components .............................................................................................................. 4
Summary of features and benefits .................................................................................................... 4
Where to get more information about ONTAP Select ..................................................................... 4

EVALUATION LICENSES AND SUPPORT ............................................................................. 6

COMPATIBILITY AND SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS ................................................................ 7
ONTAP Select hypervisor host server requirements ...................................................................... 7
ONTAP Select Deploy administration tool requirements ............................................................... 8
Protocol compatibility and interoperability ...................................................................................... 8

CONFIGURATION PREPARATION AND ASSESSMENT CHECKLIST................................ 10

General hypervisor preparation ...................................................................................................... 10
Network preparation of a four-node cluster ................................................................................... 10
Illustration of the ONTAP Select network and nodes .................................................................... 10
Configuration of the vSwitches on a hypervisor host..................................................................... 11
Final validation of the network configuration ................................................................................ 13

KNOWN LIMITATIONS .......................................................................................................... 14

KNOWN ISSUES ................................................................................................................... 15
WHERE TO GET HELP AND FIND MORE INFORMATION .................................................. 16
COPYRIGHT INFORMATION ................................................................................................ 17
TRADEMARK INFORMATION .............................................................................................. 18
HOW TO SEND YOUR COMMENTS ..................................................................................... 19

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About these release notes | 3

About these release notes

These release notes describe compatibility, limitations, and known issues for ONTAP Select
9.0. You should also review the ONTAP Release Notes to identify new features, known
problems, and limitations for ONTAP in general.
Related information
ONTAP 9.0 Release Notes

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4 | ONTAP Select 9.0 Release Notes

Product overview
ONTAP Select is a software-only version of ONTAP implemented as a virtual appliance. It
provides an enterprise class storage management solution running on commodity hardware.
Because of the inherent flexibility of the virtualization technology, ONTAP Select offers
several deployment models that can be used to address different business requirements and
usage scenarios.
Related references
Where to get more information about ONTAP Select

Major software components

ONTAP Select is composed of two major software components.
ONTAP Select Deploy administration tool
The Deploy administration tool is packaged and installed as a separate Linux virtual machine.
You must use the tool to deploy the ONTAP Select nodes and clusters.
ONTAP Select node image
Each ONTAP Select cluster is composed of either one or four nodes. Each node in a cluster is
deployed as a virtual machine and runs a specially-designed derivative of the ONTAP 9
software. This ONTAP image is included with the Deploy administration tool virtual machine.

Summary of features and benefits

ONTAP Select offers several features and benefits.
Virtual appliance
ONTAP Select is an implementation of ONTAP running in a virtual machine. It is based on the
Virtual Storage Appliance (VSA) technology used in previous NetApp software-based
offerings. Packaging and deploying ONTAP as a virtual appliance offers several benefits,
including:

Runs on commodity hardware

Rapid deployment and setup

Flexible deployment models

ONTAP Select is extremely flexible and provides several different deployment options,
including:

Dedicated versus collocated (hyper-converged infrastructure)

Single-node versus four-node cluster

Where to get more information about ONTAP Select

You should access the available ONTAP Select documentation and other resources to learn
more about ONTAP Select. You can find more information about the different features and
release-specific information about ONTAP Select in the documentation available on the
NetApp Support Site.
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ONTAP Select 9.0 Installation and Setup Guide for VMware

Provides instructions for the installation and initial configuration of the ONTAP Select
Deploy administration tool in a VMware environment.

ONTAP Select 9.0 Host Configuration Guide

Describes the deployment environment for an ONTAP Select host and includes the
procedures for configuring the hosts that are part of a cluster deployment.

ONTAP Select 9.0 Deployment Guide

Provides procedures and reference material for deploying and administering ONTAP
Select.

ONTAP Select Product Architecture and Best Practices Technical Report

This Technical Report might not be available at the time of initial release; contact your
Account Team representative if you need more information.

NetApp University

NetApp Support

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Evaluation licenses and support

You can deploy ONTAP Select with an evaluation license or a purchased license. The license
you choose applies to each of the nodes in the ONTAP Select cluster and therefore also
applies to the entire cluster. In addition, when deploying nodes with a purchased license you
must also acquire and apply a capacity license for each node.
Deploying ONTAP Select with an evaluation license
You can deploy ONTAP Select with an evaluation license if you want to evaluate the product
before making the decision to purchase. Note that the evaluation license is bundled with
ONTAP Select and automatically applied by the ONTAP Select Deploy administration tool.
When running with an evaluation license, each node has the following characteristics:

The serial number for the node is twenty digits and is automatically generated by ONTAP
Select (that is, you do not directly acquire it from NetApp)

A capacity license is not required

Two terabytes of storage can be used

The free evaluation period lasts up to 90 days

When deploying the nodes and cluster, you should use the ONTAP Select Deploy
administration tool as follows:

Do not supply a serial number for the node as part of configuring the host

Create the cluster with the evaluation flag set (eval = true)

Product support provided during the evaluation period

If you plan to deploy ONTAP Select in an evaluation mode (that is, with an evaluation license),
you should refer to the NetApp Community site for support. Click ONTAP Select to start a
discussion and to see all of the postings related to ONTAP Select.
Additional considerations
When deploying ONTAP Select with an evaluation license, the following also applies:

When you deploy a node with an evaluation license, you cannot upgrade the node to a
purchased license.

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Compatibility and system requirements | 7

Compatibility and system requirements

As part of evaluating ONTAP Select and planning a deployment, you should review the
system requirements and compatibility restrictions.

ONTAP Select hypervisor host server requirements

Before deploying ONTAP Select, you should review the requirements for the hypervisor host
server. These requirements involve software, hardware, and licensing issues.
Software compatibility
ONTAP Select can be deployed on the following hypervisors:

VMware ESXi 5.5 Update 3a (build 3116895 or greater)

VMware ESXi 6.0 GA (build 2494585 or greater)

Licensing requirements
To deploy ONTAP Select, your organization must have one of the following vSphere licenses:

VMware Enterprise

VMware Enterprise Plus

Hardware requirements
The physical hypervisor host where you deploy ONTAP Select must meet a basic set of
hardware requirements. The following vendors offer supported hardware platforms: Cisco,
Dell, HP, Fujitsu, and Lenovo.
The basic server hardware requirements include the following:

CPU
Intel CPU 25xx v3 (Haswell) or higher with 6 physical cores or greater

Memory
24 GB of memory or greater

Ethernet ports

4 x 10GbE (recommended)

2 x 10GbE (minimum)

RAID controller meeting the minimum requirements (see below)

RAID controller requirements

The RAID controller on the physical hypervisor host where you deploy ONTAP Select must
meet the following minimum requirements or greater:

12 GBs throughput

512 MB internal battery-backed or flash (SuperCAP) cache

8 24 10K RPM SAS disk drive

Configured in write back mode

o

Enable failback mode to write through, if supported

Enable always read ahead policy, if supported

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All local disks behind the RAID controller must be configured as a single RAID group
o

Disable the local drive cache for RAID group, which is fundamental to preserving
data integrity.

LUN configuration according to the following guidelines:

o

If the RAID group exceeds the maximum ESXi LUN size of 64TB, you should
configure multiple equal-sized LUNs consuming all of the available storage within
the RAID group.

Otherwise, you should configure one LUN consuming all available storage within
the RAID group.

Configuration requirements for the virtual machines

Each ONTAP Select node is deployed as a virtual machine on a hypervisor host. You must
make sure that each host meets the following configuration requirements:

Size of the datastore

Each host must have a datastore that is at least [2 TB plus 266GB] bytes. The extra 266
GB space is used by ONTAP Select internal processes and so is required overhead.

ONTAP Select Deploy administration tool requirements

Before installing the ONTAP Select Deploy administration tool, you should review the basic
requirements.
Virtual machine requirements
You must use the ONTAP Select Deploy administration tool to deploy, configure, and recover
the ONTAP Select clusters. The Deploy administration tool is packaged according to the OVF
(Open Virtualization Format) standard as a single .ova file.
You must install the Deploy tool as a dedicated virtual machine with the following minimum
requirements:

2 virtual CPUs

4 GB memory

40GB local disk space

In addition, your Deploy tool installation must meet the following requirements:

The host server where the tool is installed must provide network connectivity to the target
ONTAP Select hosts.

The Deploy virtual machine image must be installed on a vSphere server adhering to the
same supported ESXi versions as an ONTAP Select node.

Protocol compatibility and interoperability

ONTAP Select is compatible with several NetApp products and industry standard protocols.
ONTAP Select feature license and supported protocols
ONTAP Select automatically generates a feature license for each node. The following
features are included:

NFS

CIFS

iSCSI

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Compatibility and system requirements | 9

FlexClone

SnapRestore

SnapVault

SnapMirror

Also, ONTAP Select implements a capacity license based on storage consumption. You must
acquire and install a capacity license for each node running with a purchased license (that is,
not in evaluation mode). For more information on capacity licenses and general planning
considerations, see the ONTAP Select 9.0 Host Configuration Guide.
NetApp client software
You can connect to ONTAP Select using the following supported NetApp client software:

OnCommand System Manager

OnCommand Unified Manager for ONTAP

OnCommand Performance Manager

Virtual Storage Console for VMware vSphere

SnapCenter (Microsoft Windows and SQL Server Plugins)

To identify the supported versions of the client software, go to the corresponding storage
solution at the NetApp Interoperability Matrix Tool for the specific product. If the client
software supports ONTAP 9.0, then the same version is also supported with ONTAP Select.
Note that the use of SnapCenter and the corresponding plugins requires server-based
licenses. Storage system licensing of the SnapCenter plugins is not currently supported with
ONTAP Select.
Any other NetApp client software that is not included in the list is not supported by ONTAP
Select.

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Configuration preparation and assessment checklist

You must prepare each of the host servers where an ONTAP Select node will be deployed.
Refer to the ONTAP Select 9.0 Host Configuration Guide and the ONTAP Select Product
Architecture and Best Practices Technical Report for more information.
Note: The ONTAP Select Deploy administration tool does not perform the required network
configuration of the ONTAP Select hosts. You must manually configure each host prior to
deploying an ONTAP Select cluster.

Related concepts
Where to get more information about ONTAP Select

General hypervisor preparation

You must prepare the hypervisor hosts. Each host server must be configured with the
following:

A pre-installed and supported hypervisor

A vSphere Enterprise or Enterprise Plus license

Also, the same vCenter server must be able to manage all of the hosts (where an ONTAP
Select node is deployed) within the cluster.
In addition, you should make sure that the firewall ports are configured to allow access to
vSphere. These ports must be open to support serial port connectivity to the ONTAP Select
virtual machines. By default, VMware allows access on the following ports:

Port 23 and ports 1024 65535 (inbound traffic)

Ports 0 65535 (outbound traffic)

NetApp recommends that the following firewall ports be opened to allow access to vSphere:

Ports 7200 7400 (both inbound and outbound traffic)

Network preparation of a four-node cluster

You can deploy ONTAP Select as either a four-node cluster or a single-node cluster. In many
cases, the four-node cluster is preferable because of the additional storage capacity and
enhanced capabilities (such as, high availability through node pairing).
Illustration of the ONTAP Select network and nodes
The figures below illustrate a four-node cluster network and a single node within the four-node
cluster.
Four-node cluster showing two networks
The following figure illustrates a four-node cluster. The internal network enables
communication among the nodes in support of the ONTAP cluster network services. The
external network carries client, management, and cross-cluster replication traffic
(SnapMirror/SnapVault).

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Configuration preparation and assessment checklist | 11

Single node within a four-node cluster showing two vSwitches

The following figure illustrates the typical network configuration for an ONTAP Select virtual
machine within a four-node cluster. There are two separate networks: ONTAP-internal and
ONTAP-external.

Configuration of the vSwitches on a hypervisor host

The vSwitch is the core hypervisor component used to support the connectivity for the internal
and external networks. There are several things you should consider as part of configuring
each hypervisor vSwitch.
Considerations for a host with four physical ports
When each host includes four ports, you should use two vSwitches as follows:

One of the vSwitches is configured for internal traffic. This vSwitch must use 2x10GbE
network ports.
One of the vSwtiches is configured for external traffic. This vSwitch may be configured
using either 2x1GbE or 2x10GbE network ports.

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12 | ONTAP Select 9.0 Release Notes

Considerations for a host with two physical ports

When each host includes two ports, you should use one vSwitch as follows:

Both the internal and external traffic will share the single vSwitch. This vSwitch must use
2x10GbE network ports.

General vSwitch configuration considerations

In addition, you should be aware of the following vSwitch configuration considerations:

All vSwitches should be backed by two separate NICs (teamed) to provide network
adapter aggregation and failover capabilities:
o

Set the load balancing policy to Route based on the originating virtual port ID

Mark both adapters as active

The vSwitch responsible for the internal network should be configured to use jumbo
frames (9000 MTU).

A port group on the internal vSwitch (that is, ONTAP-internal):

o This port group is assigned to ONTAP Select virtual network adapters for the cluster,
HA interconnect, and mirroring traffic.
o Interfaces on this port group are assigned link-local IP addresses because this
network is expected to be private (VLAN tagging should take this into account).

A port group on the external vSwitch (that is, ONTAP-external):

o

This port group is assigned to ONTAP Select virtual network adapters for data and
management traffic.

If two NIC ports are available, both ONTAP-internal and ONTAP-external port groups
will reside on the same vSwitch.

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Configuration preparation and assessment checklist | 13

For more information on the recommended best practices related to network configuration,
you should review the ONTAP Select Product Architecture and Best Practices Technical
Report.

Final validation of the network configuration

You should validate the configuration of each host before deploying ONTAP Select.
Performing basic network validation
You should validate the basic network configuration by performing the following tasks:

Verify that the vSwitch containing the ONTAP-internal port group on each controller is
configured at 9000 MTU.

Verify that the vSwitch containing the ONTAP-external port group on each controller is
configured at 1500 MTU (1500 is the default, but 9000 is supported).

Review and confirm the NIC teaming and load-balancing settings of the ONTAP-internal
and ONTAP-external port groups.

Verifying the connectivity on the ONTAP Select internal network

You should validate the connectivity on the ONTAP-internal network by performing the
following tasks:

Configure a vmkernel NIC - vmk1 on the ONTAP-internal network on each controller.

Assign a unique IP address in the 192.168 subnet to vmk1 on each controller.

Connect to each ESXi controller over SSH and perform the following tests:
o
o

Perform a basic connectivity test on each controller by issuing a vmkping request

to vmk1 of every other controller.
Perform a connectivity check with the payload size equal to MTU header size
(that is, ICMP+IP+Ethernet headers) and the DF bit set to vmk1 of every other
controller.

vmkping -I vmk1 192.168.x.x

vmkping -I vmk1 -d -s 8972 192.168.x.x

If any of the ping requests fail, verify the following:

Upstream switch port channel and trunk configuration
Cabling to the physical switches and link light status
VLAN ID assigned to the ONTAP-internal port group

Delete the vmkernel NIC vmk1 from each controller.

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Known limitations
The following restrictions and limitations apply to the current version of ONTAP Select. These
limitations identify configurations or features that are not supported in this release of the
product. You should carefully review these restrictions before installing the ONTAP Select
Deploy administration tool and deploying the ONTAP Select nodes and clusters.
Guest operating systems and iSCSI support
The NetApp ONTAP Select platform does not currently support a VMware ESXi hypervisor
over the iSCSI protocol. This is also mentioned in an Interoperability Matrix Tool (IMT) alert for
the applicable ESXi iSCSI host configurations.
ONTAP features not supported in ONTAP Select
There are several ONTAP features that are not supported in ONTAP Select, including:

Fibre Channel
Both Fibre Channel and Fibre Channel over Ethernet are not supported.

Interface groups
IFGRPs are not supported.

Health monitors
The traditional health monitoring used with a hardware-based ONTAP deployment is
specific to the underlying hardware components. Due to the virtualized environment, the
health monitors are not active with ONTAP Select.

NIC offload support

Due to the virtualized environment, ONTAP Select does not provide NIC offload support.

Adding or removing ports from Cluster IPspace is not supported.

Modifying the speed, duplex, flow-control, and other properties of ONTAP ports (e0a-e0d)
is not supported.

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Known issues | 15

Known issues
You should review all of the known issues for the current release. The known issues identify
problems that might prevent you from using the product successfully.
Also, NetApp Bugs Online provides complete information for most known issues, including
suggested workarounds where possible.

Bug ID

Description

952221

ONTAP Select storage services might experience a page fault due to a

disruption in an HA interconnect link.

1012630

A datastore created on an ESXi host running ONTAP Select might experience

a resource busy or lock-not-free condition.

1012644

Heavy loads within a cluster of nodes using non-shared storage can trigger a
takeover.

1012657

In an HA configuration, an ONTAP Select node may experience a controller

disruption after a takeover operation completes.

1014007

When all external uplinks go down on the host running an ONTAP Select
virtual machine, the data and cluster management LIFs do not failover.

1014016

A high resynchronization time can occur for mirrored aggregates when the
amount of available storage is constrained.

1014076

The SVM create operation might take longer than normal to complete when
the intercluster LIFs are down.

1014360

A disk device attached to ONTAP Select might disappear due to iSCSI

connection errors.

1015402

An HA interconnect might remain down after moving or toggling the associated

ports.

1016133

The event raid.assim.lun.nolabels is reported with an incorrect

severity.

1017065

The ONTAP Select Deploy shell command host configure might fail if an
inactive VVOL datastore is present.

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Where to get help and find more information

The NetApp Support Site provides access to troubleshooting tools, product documentation,
and technical assistance. You can use NetApp Community forums to connect with peers, and
the NetApp Library to access technical reports and white papers.

Resource

Description

NetApp Support

Access troubleshooting tools, product documentation, and

technical support assistance.

NetApp Communities

Connect with peers, ask questions, exchange ideas, find

resources, and share best practices.

NetApp library of technical

reports and white papers

Access technical reports, white papers, and other

documents.

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Copyright information | 17

Copyright information
Copyright 19942016 NetApp, Inc. All rights reserved. Printed in the U.S.
No part of this document covered by copyright may be reproduced in any form or by any
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disclaimer:
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IMPLIED WARRANTIES, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES
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HEREBY DISCLAIMED. IN NO EVENT SHALL NETAPP BE LIABLE FOR ANY DIRECT,
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NetApp reserves the right to change any products described herein at any time, and without
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The product described in this manual may be protected by one or more U.S. patents, foreign
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RESTRICTED RIGHTS LEGEND: Use, duplication, or disclosure by the government is
subject to restrictions as set forth in subparagraph (c)(1)(ii) of the Rights in Technical Data
and Computer Software clause at DFARS 252.277-7103 (October 1988) and FAR 52-227-19
(June 1987).

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Trademark information
NetApp, the NetApp logo, Go Further, Faster, AltaVault, ASUP, AutoSupport, Campaign
Express, Cloud ONTAP, Clustered Data ONTAP, Customer Fitness, Data ONTAP,
DataMotion, Fitness, Flash Accel, Flash Cache, Flash Pool, FlashRay, FlexArray, FlexCache,
FlexClone, FlexPod, FlexScale, FlexShare, FlexVol, FPolicy, GetSuccessful, LockVault,
Manage ONTAP, Mars, MetroCluster, MultiStore, NetApp Insight, OnCommand, ONTAP,
ONTAPI, RAID DP, RAID-TEC, SANtricity, SecureShare, Simplicity, Simulate ONTAP, Snap
Creator, SnapCenter, SnapCopy, SnapDrive, SnapIntegrator, SnapLock, SnapManager,
SnapMirror, SnapMover, SnapProtect, SnapRestore, Snapshot, SnapValidator, SnapVault,
StorageGRID, Tech OnTap, Unbound Cloud, and WAFL and other names are trademarks or
registered trademarks of NetApp, Inc., in the United States, and/or other countries. All other
brands or products are trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective holders and
should be treated as such.
A current list of NetApp trademarks is available on the web.
http://www.netapp.com/us/legal/netapptmlist.aspx

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How to send your comments | 19

How to send your comments

You can help us to improve the quality of our documentation by sending us your feedback.
Your feedback is important in helping us to provide the most accurate and high-quality
information. If you have suggestions for improving this document, send us your comments by
email to doccomments@netapp.com. To help us direct your comments to the correct division,
include in the subject line the product name, version, and operating system.
You can also contact us in the following ways:

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