Category: NetApp Tutorials

In this NetApp tutorial, you’ll learn about ONTAP licensing. I’ll explain how the licensing works, the available different license types, and show you how to configure it in both the System Manager GUI and the command line. Scroll down for the video and also the text tutorial. NetApp Licensing V...

In this NetApp tutorial, you’ll learn about ONTAP upgrades.   I’ll cover where to find the documentation you should check before doing the upgrade. We’ll also look at the manual checks that you should do before the upgrade and how to actually perform it, and we’ll go into some of the ca...

In this NetApp tutorial, you’ll learn about migrating 7-Mode to Clustered ONTAP, and the different tools that you can use including the 7-Mode transition tool. Scroll down for the video and also the text tutorial. NetApp 7-Mode Migration Video Tutorial   7-Mode to Clustered ONTAP Migratio...

In this NetApp tutorial, you’ll learn about the different Centralized Management products that are available from NetApp that help you with managing multiple distributed clusters spread across different locations. Scroll down for the video and also text tutorial. NetApp Centralized Management ...

In this NetApp tutorial, you’ll learn about snapshot scheduling strategies. That’s when you should take snapshots, and how long you should retain them for, and how you should set the snapshot copy reserve. Scroll down for the video and also text tutorial. NetApp Snapshot Scheduling Strat...

In this NetApp tutorial, you’ll learn how snapshot schedules and policies work. The ONTAP cluster takes scheduled snapshots of NAS volumes by default, now, you’re going to learn how those schedules work. Scroll down for the video and also text tutorial. NetApp Snapshot Schedules Video Tu...

In this NetApp tutorial, I’ll give you an overview of the different ONTAP data protection technologies and how they all fit together. Scroll down for the video and also text tutorial. NetApp Data Protection Overview Video Tutorial ONTAP Data Protection   Data protection ensures that your ...

In this NetApp tutorial, you’ll learn about tape backups and NDMP in ONTAP. Scroll down for the video and also text tutorial. NetApp Tape Backups Video Tutorial   Tape Backups   ONTAP does not have its own native tape backup application. You can use ‘smtape’ commands at the comma...

In this NetApp tutorial, you’ll learn what ONTAP Snapshots are and how they work. Scroll down for the video and also text tutorial. NetApp Snapshot Operation Video Tutorial   Snapshots   A Snapshot copy is a read-only, point in time image of the active file system (AFS). An active fi...

In this NetApp tutorial, you’ll learn about SnapMirror Engine fan in, fan out, and cascades. Scroll down for the video and also text tutorial. NetApp SnapMirror Fan In, Fan Out, and Cascades Video Tutorial   Fan In   With fan in, you can replicate multiple source volumes from the sam...

In this NetApp tutorial, you’re going to learn about Application Aware Data Management and Balanced Placement. This is an application-driven process that you can use, which will automate a lot of that work for you. Scroll down for the video and also text tutorial. NetApp AADM and Balanced Plac...

In this NetApp training tutorial, you’ll learn about RAID groups and aggregates, how they relate to each other, and considerations for how best to configure them. Scroll down for the video and also text tutorial. RAID Groups and Aggregates on NetApp ONTAP Video Tutorial RAID Groups   Your...

In this NetApp training tutorial, I will cover NetApp Multiprotocol configuration for CIFS and NFS NAS. NetApp Multiprotocol allows both Windows and UNIX based clients to access the same files and folders. Scroll down for the videos and also text tutorial. NetApp Multiprotocol Video Tutorial Securit...

In this NetApp tutorial, I’ll give you an overview of the performance in ONTAP storage systems. Scroll down for the video and also text tutorial. NetApp ONTAP Performance Overview Video Tutorial   ONTAP Performance   The most commonly used performance metrics for monitoring and evalu...

In this NetApp tutorial, you’ll learn about ONTAP Storage QoS and how you can use it to control the performance that will be given to your workloads. Scroll down for the video and also text tutorial.   NetApp Storage QoS Video Tutorial   Storage QoS   Storage Quality of Service ...

In this NetApp training tutorial, we will focus on NetApp storage architecture. The NetApp storage architecture is organised into disks, aggregates, RAID groups, volumes, Qtrees and LUNs. Scroll down for the video and also text tutorial. The NetApp Storage Architecture – Video Tutorial Disks ...

In this NetApp training tutorial, I will cover MultiPath Input/Output (MPIO), Device-specific Modules (DSM), NetApp Host Utilities, and Asymmetric Logical Unit Access (ALUA). These are the software utilities that allow the initiator (the SAN client) to discover and correctly use multiple paths to th...

In this NetApp tutorial, you’ll learn about the Replicated Database (RDB), quorum, and epsilon. Scroll down for the video and also text tutorial. NetApp Replicated Database, Quorum, and Epsilon Video Tutorial   Vol0   Vol0 contains system data for managing the node and cluster and it...

In this NetApp training tutorial, we will cover NetApp SAN implementation on clustered ONTAP. Scroll down for the video and also text tutorial. NetApp SAN Implementation Video Tutorial   What is a Storage Area Network (SAN)?   Storage Area Network (SAN) provides block-level access to stor...

In this NetApp tutorial, you’ll learn about Active IQ, which is an online management tool from NetApp, which used to be known as My Auto-Support. What it allows you to do is to monitor the health of your storage systems and it also offers advice on recommended upgrades and best practice. Scrol...

In this NetApp training tutorial, I will cover the NetApp FlexClone. Scroll down for the video and also text tutorial. NetApp FlexClone Video Tutorial NetApp FlexClone    A FlexClone volume is, not surprisingly, a clone of another volume. The feature is most commonly used for deploying a virt...

In this NetApp tutorial, you’ll learn about FlexVols. That’s our Flexible Volumes. Scroll down for the video and also text tutorial. NetApp Flexible Volume (FlexVols) Video Tutorial NetApp Storage Architecture   Volumes are the lowest level in the ONTAP architecture that clients can...

In this NetApp training tutorial, we will discuss the NetApp SyncMirror. NetApp SyncMirror is an optional feature which provides redundancy for our disk shelves. Scroll down for the video and also text tutorial. NetApp SyncMirror Video Tutorial NetApp SyncMirror   There are multiple levels o...

In this NetApp training tutorial, we will discuss the NetApp SnapMirror Engine. Scroll down for the video and also text tutorial. NetApp SnapMirror Engine Video Tutorial The NetApp SnapMirror Engine   The SnapMirror engine is used to replicate data from a source volume to a destination volume. ...

In this NetApp tutorial, I’ll explain some of the operations that you’re going to be carrying out on your FlexVols. Scroll down for the video and also text tutorial. NetApp Flexible Volume Operations Video Tutorial Basic FlexVol Commands   Starting out with the basic commands, if yo...

In this NetApp training tutorial, we will focus on NetApp Load Sharing Mirrors. Load Sharing Mirrors are mirror copies of FlexVol volumes which provide redundancy and load balancing. Scroll down for the video and also text tutorial. NetApp Load Sharing Mirrors Video Tutorial The load balancing is fo...

In this NetApp tutorial, you’ll learn about FlexGroups. FlexGroups is a new feature for ONTAP 9 that allows you to have volumes which are a much larger size than would normally be available. It also improves performance too. Scroll down for the video and also text tutorial. NetApp FlexGroups V...

In this NetApp tutorial, you’ll learn about Fabric Pool, which is an ONTAP storage tiering technology. It keeps your hot recently accessed data on high performance storage, on your primary storage, and it tiers off your cold data to lower performance, but lower cost object storage. Scroll down...

In this NetApp training tutorial, we will cover NetApp SnapVault. Scroll down for the video and also text tutorial. NetApp SnapVault Video Tutorial NetApp SnapVault   NetApp SnapVault is ONTAP’s long term disk-to-disk backup solution. You can also use it to offload tape backups from remo...

In this NetApp tutorial, you’ll learn about the ONTAP boot-up process and we’ll have a quick lab demo where I’ll show you the system booting up. Scroll down for the video and also text tutorial.   NetApp The Bootup Process Video Tutorial   The Boot Device Image   Bef...

In this NetApp training tutorial, I will cover NetApp SnapMirror Data Protection Mirrors, which I gave a shorter overview of in this post. Scroll down for the video and also text tutorial.   NetApp SnapMirror Data Protection DP Mirrors Video Tutorial NetApp SnapMirror Data Protection DP Mirror...

In this NetApp tutorial, you’ll learn about the different administrative components on the cluster. I’ll tell you about Volume Zero, and Aggregate Zero. Also, about the replicated database and our admin SVMs. Scroll down for the video and also text tutorial. NetApp Admin Components Video...

In this NetApp training tutorial, I will cover NetApp MetroCluster. This is NetApp’s solution for redundancy for a storage system spread across two different buildings that are within the same geographical region. Before I get into the details of MetroCluster, it’s going to be easier to unde...

In this NetApp tutorial, we will cover NetApp Storage Virtual Machines (SVMs). SVMs allow us to implement secure multi-tenancy in ONTAP. Scroll down for the video and also text tutorial. NetApp Storage Virtual Machines (SVMs) Video Tutorial NetApp Storage Virtual Machines (SVMs)   Let’s say w...

In this NetApp tutorial, I will explain NetApp Network Load Balancing. This is the seventh post in our NetApp networking video tutorial series. Links for the other videos in the series are at the bottom of the page. Scroll down for the video and also text tutorial. NetApp Network Load Balancing Vide...

In this NetApp training tutorial, you’ll learn about SnapDrive, SnapManager, and SnapCenter, which can be used to give you client-side integration for taking snapshots for your SAN protocols. Scroll down for the video and also text tutorial. SnapDrive, SnapManager, and SnapCenter Video Tutoria...

In this NetApp training tutorial, I will explain NetApp Subnets. This is the sixth post in our NetApp networking video tutorial series. Links for the other videos in the series are at the bottom of the page. Scroll down for the video and also text tutorial. NetApp Subnets Video Tutorial NetApp Subne...

In this NetApp training tutorial, you’ll learn about NVMe over Fabrics (NVMe-oF) in ONTAP. Compared to the other storage protocols, NVMe is very new. You can check out the tutorial on it in my Intro to SAN and NAS course. Scroll down for the video and also text tutorial. NetApp NVMe-oF Video T...

In this NetApp training tutorial, I will explain NetApp Broadcast Domains and Failover Groups. This is the fifth post in our NetApp networking video tutorial series. Links for the other videos in the series are at the bottom of the page. Scroll down for the video and also text tutorial. NetApp Broad...

In this NetApp training tutorial, I will explain about NetApp VLANs. This is the second post in our NetApp networking video tutorial series. Scroll down for the video and also text tutorial. NetApp VLANs Networking Video Tutorial VLANs are ubiquitous in networking in general, where they are used to ...

In this NetApp training tutorial, you’ll learn about unified replication which allows you to configure both SnapMirror and SnapVault on the same destination volume to provide both disaster recovery and backup capability. Scroll down for the video and also text tutorials.   NetApp Unified ...

In this NetApp training tutorial, I will explain the NetApp Interface Groups. Interface Groups enable link aggregation of one or more Ethernet interfaces. This is the first in a series on NetApp networking, you can find links to the other tutorials at the bottom of the page. Scroll down for the vide...

In this NetApp training tutorial, I will explain how Flash Pool aggregates on NetApp ONTAP storage systems work. Flash Pool is a NetApp VST (Virtual Storage Tier) caching technology. Scroll down for the video and also text tutorial. Flash Pool – NetApp VST (Virtual Storage Tier) Video Tutorial...

In this NetApp training tutorial, you’ll learn about ALUA and SLM, which stand for Asymmetric Logical Unit Access and Selective LUN Mapping respectively. These are used to control what paths are going to be advertised to the client to access its SAN storage. Scroll down for the video and also ...

In this NetApp training tutorial, I will discuss NetApp High Availability on FAS controllers. Your storage system is almost certainly going to be a mission critical component in your environment so you don’t want to have any single points of failure. Controller redundancy is provided by the H...

In this NetApp training tutorial, you’ll learn about the different configuration options you can use for SAN thin provisioning and how things are going to differ depending on whether you’ve used the command line or the System Manager GUI. Scroll down for the video and also text tutorials...

In this NetApp training tutorial, you’ll learn about inline and postprocess storage efficiency operations. I’ll explain what the default settings are on both AFF and FAS systems and how they differ. Moreover, I’ll also explain the various caveats about what can be configured where....

In this NetApp training tutorial, you’ll learn about how to monitor reports for the different storage efficiency technologies. Scroll down for video and also text tutorial. NetApp Storage Efficiency Reporting Video Tutorial The actual space savings that you’re going to achieve from dedup...

In this NetApp training tutorial, you’ll learn about thin provisioning for SAN protocols. You can thin or thick provision the LUN in the volume as well as thin or thick provisioning the volume in the aggregate. You’ll also learn about the fractional reserve, why we need it, and how it wo...

In this NetApp training tutorial, you’ll learn about LUN space reclamation, which is a way that we can make sure that the amount of space used in our LUNs is reported correctly on the ONTAP system. Scroll down for the video and also text tutorial. NetApp LUN Space Reclamation Video Tutorial LU...

In this NetApp training tutorial, I’ll give you a high-level overview of the NetApp ONTAP operating system, the different platforms that it runs on, and where you would use each one. Scroll down for the video and also text tutorial. NetApp ONTAP Platforms Overview Video Tutorial – FAS, A...

In this NetApp training tutorial, I’ll give you an overview of the NetApp platforms that run on the Element operating system, namely SolidFire and NetApp HCI. Scroll down for the video and also text tutorial. NetApp Element OS Platform Overview Video Tutorial – SolidFire and NetApp HCI S...

In this NetApp training tutorial, you’ll learn about the NetApp Data Fabric, which is NetApp’s vision or strategy to integrate all of their storage platforms across their portfolio with each other and also across Cloud services. Scroll down for video and text tutorials.   The NetApp...

In this NetApp training tutorial, I’ll give you an overview of NetApp’s E and EF-Series platforms that run on the SANtricity operating system. Scroll down for the video and text tutorials.   The E-Series and EF-Series platforms provide simple, easy to manage, fast, and reliable bloc...

In this NetApp training tutorial, I’ll give you an overview of NetApp’s Public Cloud Storage offerings namely Cloud Volumes ONTAP, NetApp Private Storage, and Cloud Volumes Service. Scroll down for the video and text tutorial. NetApp Cloud Storage Solutions Overview Video Tutorial  ...

In this NetApp training tutorial, I’ll give you an overview of StorageGRID Webscale which is NetApp’s object storage platform. Scroll down for video and also text tutorial. NetApp StorageGRID WebScale Overview Video Tutorial   StorageGRID Webscale provides on premises object storage...

In this NetApp training tutorial, I’ll give you an overview of NetApp’s converged infrastructure solutions, FlexPod, and NFLEX. Scroll down for the video and also text tutorial. NetApp Converged Infrastructure Overview Video Tutorial – FlexPod and NFLEX The converged infrastructure...

In this NetApp training tutorial, we will cover deduplication, compression, and compaction. These are ONTAP storage efficiency technologies that help save physical space and reduce cost. Scroll down for the video and also text tutorial. NetApp Deduplication, Compression, and Compaction Video Tutoria...

In this NetApp training tutorial, we will take a look at NetApp Thin Provisioning which makes it appear to your clients that they’ve got more storage available than the actual physical storage space that is really on their storage system. Scroll down for the video and also text tutorial. NetAp...

In this NetApp training tutorial, I will explain the NetApp IPspaces, the fourth post in our NetApp networking video tutorial series. Links for the other videos in the series are at the bottom of the page. Scroll down for the video and also text tutorial. NetApp IPspaces Networking Video Tutorial Wh...

In this NetApp training tutorial, I will explain the NetApp Logical Interfaces(LIFs), the third post in our NetApp networking video tutorial series. Scroll down for the video and also text tutorial. NetApp Logical Interfaces (LIFs) Video Tutorial NetApp Logical Interfaces are where our IP addresses ...

In this NetApp training tutorial, I will cover NetApp Storage Pools. Scroll down for the video and also text tutorial. NetApp Storage Pools (Flash Pool SSD) Tutorial Video Tutorial NetApp Storage Pools for Flash Pool SSD   This is a feature that came out in ONTAP version 8.3 which makes more ...

In this NetApp training tutorial, I will explain Flash Cache which is one of NetApp’s Virtual Storage Tiering technologies. Flash Pool, the other VST technology, is covered in the next post in this series. Scroll down for the video and also text tutorial. Flash Cache – NetApp VST (Virtua...

In this NetApp training tutorial, I will cover the NetApp Service Processor (SP). The Service Processor provides remote management capabilities for your NetApp system. Scroll down for the video and also text tutorial. NetApp Service Processor Video Tutorial What is a Service Processor?   Servic...

In this NetApp training tutorial, I will describe the different networks that NetApp ONTAP storage systems are connected to; the Data Network, Management Network, Cluster Interconnect, and High Availability connection. Scroll down for the video and also text tutorial. NetApp Cluster, Management, Dat...

In this NetApp training tutorial, we will look at how reads and writes are handled and performance optimised in NetApp ONTAP by WAFL, NVRAM and the System Memory Cache. Scroll down for the video and also text tutorial. NetApp WAFL, NVRAM and the System Memory Cache – Video Tutorial In this exa...

This guide has complete step by step instructions to help you setup a home lab for VMware SRM Site Recovery Manager with the NetApp Snapmirror Data Protection solution. Everything is free and because it’s virtualized you can run it all on your laptop. Lab Guide by Vincent Li. Vincent has over ...

I get asked quite regularly what the cool SSH client application I use in my videos is. SuperPutty runs on top of Putty and allows you to connect to the CLI of multiple devices in different tabs in the same window. This is much more convenient than having a separate window for each device, and [&hel...

This NetApp training tutorial explains how to install and configure the VyOS virtual router in VMware Workstation. The networks and IP addresses configured in the tutorial are for my NetApp lab, but you can easily adapt them to any project you’re working on. Scroll down for the step by step vi...

This NetApp training tutorial explains how to download, install, and configure VMware Workstation Player, the free version of VMware for Windows Desktops. The networks and IP addresses configured in the tutorial are for my NetApp lab, but you can easily adapt them to any project you’re working...

In this NetApp training tutorial, I will discuss the NetApp ONTAP clustered hardware architecture. In the last post, we covered the scalability limitations that existed in legacy 7-Mode, the main problems being that there is a maximum of two controllers in the same system and it does not support act...

In this NetApp training tutorial, I will cover the 7-Mode Hardware Architecture. ONTAP 7-Mode was deprecated after version 8.2 of the operating system, but it’s much easier to understand the clustered hardware architecture of Clustered ONTAP and ONTAP 9 if you see the 7-Mode architecture first...

  I sat down with industry veteran Matt Leib at NetApp Insight to discuss his career in IT and advice for people building their career in the industry. Scroll down to see the transcript. You can read Matt’s blog at https://virtuallytiedtomydesktop.com/ and find him on Twitter at @MBLeib H...

In this NetApp training tutorial, I explain how to perform a NetApp ONTAP 9 upgrade. The information applies whether you’re upgrading from ONTAP 8 or between versions in ONTAP 9. Scroll down for the video and also text tutorial. I’ll cover: Where to find the documentation you should check b...

In this NetApp training tutorial post, you’ll see a super fast and convenient way to always keep up to date with all the latest NetApp news, features, and tutorials. Scroll down for the video and also text tutorial. How to Get the Best NetApp Content – Quick & Easy Tutorial The deal ...

NetApp ONTAP 9.4 New Features and Platforms The new NetApp ONTAP 9.4 operating system for their FAS and AFF storage platforms has just been announced. Brand new ONTAP hardware platforms are also available – the high-end All Flash FAS AFF A800, entry level AFF A220 and entry level hybrid flash FAS2...

In this NetApp training tutorial, I will cover qtrees and quotas. Scroll down for the video and also text tutorial. NetApp Qtrees and Quotas Video Tutorial Qtrees are an optional feature in the NetApp ONTAP software architecture. They can be created within volumes to segment those volumes into small...

NetApp Export Policies Tutorial In this NetApp training tutorial, I will cover Export Policies for NAS protocols. Export Policies and rules enable you to restrict access to volumes and qtrees.     NetApp Export Policies   NetApp Export policies and rules enable the administrator to re...

In this NetApp training tutorial, I will cover the NetApp Infinite Volumes. Scroll down for the video and also text tutorial. NetApp Infinite Volumes and Storage Classes Video Tutorial Flexible Volumes and the NetApp Storage Architecture   (Read my NetApp storage architecture post for an overv...

In this NetApp training tutorial, I will cover NetApp NFS storage. Scroll down for the video and also text tutorial. NetApp NFS Video Tutorial Protocol Licensing   Although they will typically come as a bundle, each of NAS and SAN protocols are licensed separately. You will not be able to enab...

In this NetApp training tutorial, I will cover the Role Based Access Control (RBAC). Scroll down for the video and also text tutorial. NetApp RBAC Role Based Access Control Video Tutorial NetApp RBAC Role Based Access Control    ONTAP supports Role Based Access Control where different adminis...

In this NetApp training tutorial, I will cover CIFS and SMB on NetApp storage. Scroll down for the video and also text tutorial. NetApp CIFS and SMB Storage Video Tutorial NetApp CIFS SMB   The terms CIFS (Common Internet File System) and SMB (Server Message Block) are used interchangeably as ...

In this NetApp training tutorial, I will give a guided tour of the FAS8000 series platforms which comprise the FAS8020, FAS8040, FAS8060 and FAS8080 EX models. I will also explain the hardware architecture and available ports on the back of the controllers. Scroll down for the video and also text tu...

In this NetApp training tutorial, I will give a guided tour of the FAS2500 series platforms – the FAS2520, FAS2552 and FAS2554. I will also explain the hardware architecture and available ports on the back of the controllers. Scroll down for the video and also text tutorial. NetApp FAS2500 Ove...

In this NetApp training tutorial, I will cover the hardware characteristics of the various NetApp disk shelf models and how to carry out the system cabling. Scroll down for the video and also text tutorial. NetApp Disk Shelf Models and Cabling Video Tutorial NetApp Disk Shelf Models – SAS &nbs...

In this NetApp training tutorial post, I will give a summary of the new NetApp ONTAP 9 operating system, plus show you where you can get free official NetApp videos and a lab demo.   Want to practice on your laptop? Download my free step-by-step guide ‘How to Build a NetApp ONTAP Lab for ...