NetApp, formerly Network Appliance Inc., is a company in the computer technologies industry specializing in data storage hardware and associated management software. NetApp storage equipment is used by enterprises and service providers to store and to share large amounts of digital data across physical and hybrid cloud environments.
The NetApp storage hardware includes all-flash and hybrid storage systems for block, file and object storage. NetApp storage systems integrate with major public cloud service providers and natively support VMware vSphere for virtualized workloads.
NetApp Storage Architecture
NetApp offers two main storage systems. First is the NetApp filer, also known as NetApp Fabric Attached Storage (FAS). This series operates in the enterprise class Storage Area Network (SAN) environment. It presents storage over the network using file-based protocols like CIFS, FTP, HTTP, and NFS.
NetApp FAS devices can also present storage over the network using block-based protocols such as Fibre Channel, Fibre Channel over Ethernet, and iSCSI. The NetApp FAS series of devices use a proprietary operating system called Data ONTAP which was designed and developed specifically for storage.
The NetApp filer also know as NetApp Fabric-Attached Storage (FAS) is a type of disk storage device which owns and controls a filesystem and present files and directories over the network, it uses an operating systems called Data ONTAP (based on FreeBSD).
NetApp Filers can offer the following
Supports SAN, NAS, FC, SATA, iSCSI, FCoE and Ethernet all on the same platform
Supports either SATA, FC and SAS disk drives
Supports block protocols such as iSCSI, Fibre Channel and AoE
Supports file protocols such as NFS, CIFS , FTP, TFTP and HTTP
High availability
Easy Management
Scalable
The most common NetAPP configuration consists of a filer (also known as a controller or head node) and disk enclosures (also known as shelves), the disk enclosures are connected by FC or parallel/serial ATA, the filer is then accessed by other Linux, Unix or Window servers via a network (Ethernet or FC)
The filers run NetApp's own adapted operating system (based on FreeBSD) called Data ONTAP, it is highly tuned for storage-serving purposes.
All filers have a battery-backed NVRAM, which allows them to commit writes to stable storage quickly, without waiting on the disks.
It is also possible to cluster filers to create a highly-availability cluster with a private high-speed link using either FC or InfiniBand, clusters can then be grouped together under a single namespace when running in the cluster mode of the Data ONTAP 8 operating system.
The filer will be either Intel or AMD processor based computer using PCI, each filer will have a battery-backed NVRAM adaptor to log all writes for performance and to replay in the event of a server crash. The Data ONTAP operating system implements a single proprietary file-system called WAFL (Write Anywhere File Layout).
WAFL is not a filesystem in the traditional sense, but a file layout that supports very large high-performance RAID arrays (up to 100TB), it provides mechanisms that enable a variety of filesystems and technologies that want to access disk blocks. WAFL also offers
snapshots (up to 255 per volume can be made)
snapmirror (disk replication)
syncmirror (mirror RAID arrays for extra resilience, can be mirrored up to 100km away)
snaplock (Write once read many, data cannot be deleted until its retention period has been reached)
read-only copies of the file system
read-write snapshots called FlexClone
ACL's
quick defragmentation
Filers offer two RAID options (see below), you can also create very large RAID arrays up to 28 disks, this depends on the type of filer.
RAID 4 offers single parity on a dedicated disk (unlike RAID 5)
RAID 6 is the same as RAID 5 but offers double parity (more resilience), two disks in the
raid could fail
Second is the the NetApp E-Series devices which are hybrid storage arrays that deliver top level performance and high uptime for data-centric applications and mixed workloads. While NetApp FAS is designed as shared storage, E-Series is a better fit for applications that require dedicated storage such as SAN-based applications, dedicated backups, and high-density storage. The NetApp E-Series runs its own operating system called SANtricity.
Monitoring NetApp in vROps
Management Packs are available for both NetApp FAS and NetApp E-Series, giving you visibility into your NetApp storage right in vROps. The NetApp FAS Management Pack opens a connection to the DFM/API Services server and runs a collection query. See Figures 3 below for a visual of the DFM Services connection method of the Blue Medora Management Pack For NetApp FAS.
NetApp FAS Management Pack
The Blue Medora Management Pack for NetApp FAS provides end-to-end visibility, analytics, and capacity planning for NetApp workloads. The Management Pack utilizes the VMware vRealize Operations (vROps) analytics engine to unveil deep insights into NetApp storage capacity and performance issues. Automated analysis exposes early indications of impending performance and capacity issues before they can impact your business.
NetApp FAS Dashboards
With NetApp FAS in vROps you can monitor the performance and capacity of NetApp storage environments that support your VMware Datastores (as well as non-virtualized workloads). Dashboards are provided out-of-the-box and include Storage Topology, Datastores, System Explorer, Virtual Machine Troubleshooting, Overview, QoS, Performance, and VM Performance.
One of the more popular dashboards is the Storage Topology, shown below. By selecting a NetApp resource within the Custom Relationship widget on the left, you can quickly view the Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) and relationships for the selected resource. Select a resource from the Environment Overview widget on the left to populate the remaining widgets. Then select a metric from the metric selector to see it graphed below.
Health, Risk, and Efficiency Analysis
The NetApp FAS Management Pack also delivers actionable health, risk, and efficiency analysis. This provides increased visibility into your NetApp storage resources to help detect issues before they are problems.
NetApp Backups
The last point to touch on is backups, NetApp offers two types
Dump
backs up files and directories
supports level-0, incremental and differential backups
supports single file restore
capable of backing only the base snapshot copy
SMTape
Backs up blocks of data to tape
Supports only level-0 backup
does not support single file restore
capable of backing up multiple snapshot copies in a volume
does not support remote tape backups and restores
The filer will support either SCSI or Fibre channel (FC) tape drives and can have a maximum of 64 mixed tape devices attached to a single storage system.
Network Data Management Protocol (NDMP) is a standardized protocol for controlling backup, recovery and other transfers of data between primary and secondary storage devices such as storage systems and tape libraries. This removes the need for transporting the data through the backup server itself, thus enhancing speed and removing load from the backup server.
By enabling NDMP support you enable that storage system to carry communications with the NDMP-enabled commercial network-attached backup application, it also provides low-level control of tape devices and medium changers. The advantages of NDMP are
provide sophisticated scheduling of data protection across multiple storage systems
provide media management and tape inventory management services to eliminate tape handling during data protection operations
support data cataloging services that simplify the process of locating specific recovery data
supports multiple topology configurations, allowing sharing of secondary storage (tape library) resources through the use of three-way network data connections
supports security features to prevent or monitoring unauthorized use of NDMP connections
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