Highlights from the ONTAP 9.0 RC1 Release Notes

From ONTAP 9.0 RC1: Release Notes

New and changed features in the ONTAP 9.0 release family

Manageability enhancements

- FIPS 140-2 support for cluster-wide control plane web service interfaces

- Support for enhanced Storage QoS limits

-- up to 12’000 policy groups per cluster

-- can specify a combination of IOPs and MB/s

- Changes in audit configuration operation

- Support for SHA-2 password hash function

- Password security enhancements

-- password complexity enforcement

-- delay after failed login attempt

-- define the account inactive limit

-- expire a user password

-- display password expiry warning

-- send invalid login notifications to audit.log & EMS

- Enhancement for audit log management

- Support for non-English characters in qtree names

- Support for Storage Encryption onboard key management

- Support for cache-retention policies on Flash Pool aggregates

- Support for root-data partitioning enhancement

-- root-data partitioning is supported on AFF platforms

- Support for headroom functionality

-- Assists workflow provisioning and balance

-- Helps you prevent overloading a node

MetroCluster configuration enhancements

- Implementation of node-level QoS

-- reduces node outage by prioritizing the I/O operations needed to complete a disaster recovery (DR) operation

- Support for reestablishing SnapMirror or SnapVault relationships

- Support for eight-node MetroCluster configurations

-- where using the NAS protocol

- Support for unmirrored aggregates in MetroCluster configurations

Networking and security protocol enhancements

- IPv6 support for DDNS

- Increased limits for maximum LIFs per node

-- in clusters where all nodes have at least 20 GB of memory, you can create up to 256 NAS LIFs or 512 SAN LIFs per node

- Automatic detection and isolation of network port failures

- Support for LLDP

-- Link Layer Discovery Protocol - an alternative to CDP

- Support for UC compliance with DSCP marking

-- Differentiated Services Code Point (DSCP) marking is a mechanism for classifying and managing network traffic and is a component of Unified Capability (UC) compliance

Storage resource management enhancements

- Support for inline data compaction

-- Inline data compaction stores multiple user data blocks and files within a single 4 KB block on a system running ONTAP

-- Inline data compaction is enabled by default on AFF, and you can optionally enable it on volumes on FAS systems

-- You can run inline data compaction independently or together with data compression or deduplication

- Support for automated SAN and NAS storage provisioning

-- The following new templates are accessible under the Application Provisioning tab in OCSM:

--- NFS Oracle

--- NFS Oracle RAC

--- SAN Oracle Single

--- SAN Oracle RAC

--- SMB SQL Server

--- SAN SQL Server

--- NAS Virtual Server Infrastructure

--- SAN Virtual Server Infrastructure

--- SAN Virtual Desktop

- Support for relocating root volumes to new aggregates

- Support for rehosting a volume from one SVM to another SVM

- Supported security styles for Infinite Volumes

-- unix, ntfs, mixed, or unified

FlexArray Virtualization (V-Series) enhancements

- Support for 16 TB array LUNs

- FlexArray Virtualization resiliency enhancements

File access protocol enhancements

- Enhanced support for SMB protocols

-- The following enhancements are now supported in SMB 2.0 and later:

--- LDAP signing and sealing

--- Workgroup authentication

--- Large MTU

--- SMB null user and IP qualifiers

-- The following SMB enhancements are now supported in SMB 3.0 and later:

--- Accelerated AES-NI encryption

- Support for CIFS server in workgroup mode

- Enhancements for Kerberos 5

-- Kerberos 5 authentication with privacy service (krb5p) is supported

- Support for LDAP signing and sealing

- LDAP support for SHA2 hashed passwords

- Multiple client match specifications in NFS export rules

-- “provides comparable functionality to standard /etc/exports files in 7-Mode”

- NFS export access cache enhancements

- FPolicy enhancements

-- This release includes the following FPolicy enhancements:

--- Filtering controls

--- Async resiliency

- Support for new CIFS auditing events

-- The new auditing events are as follows:

--- file-share

--- audit-policy-change

--- user-account

--- security-group

--- authorization-policy-change

SAN enhancements

- ODX LUN copy is now supported between clusters

- iSCSI target support for an FQDN response

Data protection enhancements

- Support for triple parity RAID protection (RAID-TEC)

- Support for SnapLock technology

- Support for cloning data protection volumes

-- in an SVM-DR relation, the cluster administrator can clone data protection (DP) volumes from the destination SVM to another SVM in the destination cluster for development testing

- Support for excluding volumes from replication

-- in an SVM-DR relation…

- Support for excluding LIFs from replication

-- in an SVM-DR relation…

- Support for converting volume-level SnapMirror relationships to an SVM disaster recovery relationship

- Support for using a SnapMirror license to enable SnapVault

- Support for NDMP extension

-- NDMP extension 0x2050, which enables Snapshot copy management and backup restart extensions, is supported

- Support for intercluster SVM peer relationships between SVMs with the same name

- Support for SnapMirror and SnapVault global throttling

-- These options are enforced on all nodes in the cluster:

--- Enabling and disabling the node-level throttle

--- Setting the maximum bandwidth for outgoing transfers

--- Setting the maximum bandwidth for incoming transfers

- Support for secondary SnapVault Snapshot copies

-- you can create Snapshot copies on a SnapMirror SnapVault destination for longer term retention without having to create and maintain a corresponding longer term Snapshot copy at the primary destination

- Support for renaming SnapVault Snapshot copies

- Support for all SnapMirror and SnapVault cascade configurations

Antivirus enhancements

- Support for Vscan on-demand scanning

- Support for FQDN configuration of Vscan servers

Upgrade enhancements

- Expanded support for automated nondisruptive upgrades

-- to include major upgrades from Data ONTAP 8.3.x to ONTAP 9.0

Transition enhancements

- Support for transitioning SnapLock volumes

- Support for transitioning a disaster recovery relationship between vFiler units

- Support for transitioning peering networks from IPv4 to IPv6

Unsupported features for ONTAP 9.0 RC1

- LDAP over SSL replaced with LDAP over TLS

- Remote Support Agent (RSA) replaced with AutoSupport On Demand