NetApp ONTAP Select VM 9.1RC1D1 Test

ONTAP Select is the SDS product of NetApp.

I’ve tested NetApp Edge in the past, a virtual version of NetApp Filer, but limited to 10TB in a single VM.

This product instead is a production ready HA 4 node server with all the software of ONTAP Cluster 9.

The deployment options are:

• Single node
• 4-node cluster (2 HA pairs)

With Up to 100TB raw capacity per node, each cluster could handle 400TB (4 x 100TB) RAW disks.

I’ve have deployed a single node (DEMO has limited TBs) on ESXi 6 server with flash storage, I’ve tryed both VMDK and RAW Device configuration.

I’ve created a 4 TB Lun

I rescan the disk on ESXi Cluster (it’s composed by 6 blade on a Lenovo FlexSystem Blade)

I deployed the OVA file that require 16GB Reserved, 4 Core Reserved, and vsphere 5.5 u3 and greater in a 2.3 TB Lun

I’ve powered on our VM that now is active

I’ve reviewed configuration and setup DNS running

I’ve used System Manager to manage via HTTPS the cluster, this is the initial dashboard

First I’ve assigned the standard 50 GB disk to the node and created the aggregate aggr1

After I’ve added 5 Disk of 250 GB to the node to enlarge the aggregate, here the first consideration, there’s only RAID 0, so if you add 1 disk or 10 disks (like my last test) the result is the same.

I’ve defined an IPspace and created a SVM Storage Virtual Machine

After I’ve enabled CIFS, adding Active Directory information, created the volume and the share I’ve gained access to the folder.

Windows report 150 MBps write and 150/350 MBps read (when use the first-level read cache provided by the system buffer cache) with 10 Gbit client in my configuration

This is the VMware network chart in realtime with 158/265 MBps performance:

The same result is achieved with raw device mapping, not bad but I hope to obtain a better results in my next article 😉

Second consideration, you must respect the minimum requirements, the vCPUs are always at high level, 4 vCPU are the minimum but for premium license you need 8 vCPU and 64 GB ram.