Comparing ONTAP P Releases

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A more recent NetApp Best Practice states:

“It is a best practice to upgrade first to the latest patch release in the same ONTAP release family and then upgrade to the next supported major release. This will ensure that any issues in your current version of ONTAP are resolved before upgrading.”

The minimum recommended ONTAP releases are listed here.

As of June 22, 2023, the published minimum recommended ONTAP/Data ONTAP releases on the NetApp Support Site for releases still in full support are as follows:

  • For ONTAP 9.12x, the minimum recommended version is 9.12.1P4.
  • For ONTAP 9.11x, the minimum recommended version is 9.11.1P8.
  • For ONTAP 9.10x, the minimum recommended version is 9.10.1P12.
  • For ONTAP 9.9x, the minimum recommended version is 9.9.1P15.
  • For ONTAP 9.8x, the minimum recommended version is 9.8P18.
  • For ONTAP 9.7x, the minimum recommended version is 9.7P22.
Say you're on 9.10.1P9. You're thinking "do I really need to upgrade to P12 before I start my upgrade to 9.12.1P4!?"

Personally, I don't think it's necessary. 9.10.1P9 is just over 6 months old (at the time of writing), so the cluster has had an upgrade in the last year or so. The best practice statement feels more geared towards systems that haven't been upgraded for well over a year. And it makes sense in those cases to do the ONTAP upgrade to the latest P-release first.

If you want to check there aren't any upgrade related bugs in the interim releases, you can do like this:




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