What’s new in ONTAP 9.6

New Hardware Support:

- AFF A320A

- NS224A SSD Storage Shelf (NVMe native shelf)

- Brocade G630 FC Switch

- Quanta IX8 IP Switch (Metrocluster configs)

- ATTO FibreBridge 7600N (Metrocluster configs)

- Cluster Interconnect Switches:

-- BES-54348

-- Cisco Nexus 92300YC

ONTAP 9.6: Major Features - Simplicity and Productivity:

- New ONTAP System Manager based on REST APIs

- Automatic inactive data reporting on SSD aggregates (FabricPool)

- Simpler FlexGroup volume management

- Auto-discovery of nodes during cluster setup

- Adaptive QoS support for NVMe/FC (maximums) and ONTAP Select (minimums)

ONTAP 9.6: Major Features – More Customer Use Cases:

- More host OS support with NVMe/FC

- FabricPool tiering to Google and Alibaba clouds

- FlexCache with Cloud Volumes ONTAP

- FlexGroup on MetroCluster and with SQL Server over SMB CA

- Higher performance ONTAP Select with Premium XL license

ONTAP 9.6: Major Features – Security and Data Protection:

- Over-the-wire encryption with SnapMirror and FlexCache

- Per tenant (SVM) encryption key management

- Aggregate-level encryption enables cross-volume dedupe

- SnapMirror Synchronous with more protocols & interoperability, sync-to-async cascades

- Entry AFF and FAS MCC IP, and shared inter-site networking

ONTAP 9.6: Major Features (continued):

- NVMe/FC adds support for QoS maximums, 512B namespaces and SnapMirror

- FlexCache now supports Cloud Volumes for bi-directional caching between on-prem and cloud

- Synchronous SnapMirror adds support for NFSv4 and CIFS/SMB 2.0+ on top of FC, iSCSI and NFSv3

- MetroCluster IP now supported for AFF A220 and FAS2750 systems

- FabricPool adds tiering support for GCP and Alibaba. Also adds tiering support for “all” ingested user data immediately to the cloud tier

- SnapMirror and FlexCache support line encryption using TLS 1.2

- Each SVM can be configured with its own key management server

- System Manager has been redesigned w/simpler workflows and complete views of network topology, storage assets and intelligent reporting of on-perm and cloud capacity usage

- REST APIs (introduced in ONTAP 9.4) add support for most configuration and administration tasks including cluster setup, protocol config, provisioning, performance monitoring and data protection

- Systems running ONTAP 9.6 are automatically discovered on the network (no need to explicitly enter a correct IP address to start a cluster setup)

-- The enhancements automatically generate a node-management LIF and allow System Manager users to use Guided Setup without having to perform tasks in ONTAP CLI to clean up auto-generated LIFs after setup is completed

-- Install a new cluster with an iPad!

- FlexGroup supports CA file-shares

ONTAP 9 Release Support Policy Update:

Starting with ONTAP 9.6 all releases have Long Term Service (LTS) support!

ONTAP 9.6 Management Update

- New management product names:

-- ONTAP System Manager – primary tool for managing a cluster, designed for the IT generalist

-- Active IQ Unified Manager – more extensive management for multiple cluster and site

- ONTAP System Manager:

-- Redesigned dashboard page views and simpler workflows based on REST APIs

-- Visualizations of network topology and storage hardware

-- Intelligent reporting of on-premises and cloud capacity usage

-- ‘View only’ version in ONTAP 9.6 – feedback welcomed to help tune release (voc@netapp.com)

- RESTful APIs:

-- REST APIs are easier to use than existing zAPIs

-- Python software developers kit available at ONTAP 9.6 GA – additional SDKs later

-- New ONTAP features and new Ansible modules will be based on REST APIs only