What it is ?

A tool that gives you the experience of administering and using a NetApp storage system with all the features of Data ONTAP at your disposal.How it works: The simulator can be loaded onto a Red Hat or SuSE Linux box and looks and feels exactly like Data ONTAP. It has the same code base (with additional wrappers to simulate the hardware) and is included in Engineering's nightly build process. The simulator is available for Data ONTAP 6.4.5 through 7.3.1.

Why it's cool ?

Almost anything you can do with Data ONTAP can be done with the simulator. Without purchasing new hardware or impacting your production environment, you can test functionality, export NFS and CIFS shares, set up fake tape drives, and even simulate two heads on the same box for clustering.

Advantages

• Data ONTAP feature testing can be easily done. The simulator includes fully functional license keys for all NetApp software. You can create WORM-protected files using SnapLock® and a simulated set of populated disks, and after the test you just delete the files instead of throwing away drives. You can test NetApp SAN functionality using iSCSI before implementing in a production FC or iSCSI SAN environment. You can also experiment with features such as FlexVol™ and FlexClone™ before deploying Data ONTAP 7.0 on production systems.
• Application integration. Application developers use the simulator to experiment with and develop applications that use Manage ONTAP™ APIs. The Manage ONTAP SDK (software development kit) contains documentation and C/C++, Java™, and Perl libraries.
• Bug fix testing. The simulator can be used to confirm that a new release fixes a previous issue without having to physically touch a production machine. Assuming the bug fix is proven, you can test it on real hardware and know that time isn't being wasted with upgrades and downgrades.
• Education. Every admin on your team can have a personal testing environment.

Download Data ONTAP Simulator...

You can download the Simulator images from http://now.netapp.com/NOW/cgi-bin/simulator .

Simulator Introduction on NTN can be found at http://communities.netapp.com/docs/DOC-1034.

I have taken an example of the Data ONTAP Simulator installation in Standalone Linux Box. I have taken SUSE 10 version and login with root user.

linux-sesl-184-54:/home/simulator # uname -a
Linux linux-sesl-184-54 2.6.16.21-0.8-default #1 Mon Jul 3 18:25:39 UTC 2006 i686 i686 i386 GNU/Linux

linux-sesl-184-54:/home/simulator # who am i
root     pts/0        Sep  5 14:42 (10.30.50.109)

Limitations:

This is not a production version of Data ONTAP and should not be used in your production environment. There are inefficiencies (for example, a 1GB disk file will be much larger than 1GB) and performance running on another OS without a disk system behind it will obviously be considerably less than with Data ONTAP. Simulator can’t hold disks more than 28 and approximately around 28GB in total size. Finally, the simulator can't emulate environments where specific hardware is required (for example, Fibre Channel).It is recommended that the Data ONTAP Simulator be installed on a non-production Linux system. Simulator installation scripts may replace the Red Hat libc library with an older more stable one. It's unlikely but possible  that other applications may be affected.

                                  NetApp Data ONTAP simulator installation steps

                                   -------------------------------------------------------------

Step I:

====

o Download the Data ONTAP simulator and keep it under home directory

linux-sesl-184-54:/tmp # mv 7.3.1-tarfile-v22.tar /home
linux-sesl-184-54:/tmp # cd /home/
linux-sesl-184-54:/home # ls
7.3.1-tarfile-v22.tar
linux-sesl-184-54:/home # pwd
/home
linux-sesl-184-54:/home # ls
7.3.1-tarfile-v22.tar

Step II:

=====

o Now untar the simulator installer.

linux-sesl-184-54:/home # tar -xvf 7.3.1-tarfile-v22.tar

Step III :

=====

o Once you have untarred the installer you will find the new folder simulator where the installer get extracted.

linux-sesl-184-54:/home # ls
7.3.1-tarfile-v22.tar  simulator

Step IV:

=====

o Change Driectory to the  extracted path

linux-sesl-184-54:/home # cd simulator/
linux-sesl-184-54:/home/simulator # ls
Vmware, Linux and Simulator installation.doc  disks.tgz  disks2.tgz  doc  license.htm  readme.htm  runsim.sh  setup.sh  sim.tgz

Step V:

=====

o Now run the installer script (setup.sh) to create the Single Node Simulator. If you wish to install Cluster Pair skip this step and perform Step VII.

linux-sesl-184-54:/home/simulator # ./setup.sh
Script version 22 (18/Sep/2007)
Where to install to? [/sim]:  =====================>  Choose your simulator install path.
Would you like to install as a cluster? [no]:
Would you like full HTML/PDF FilerView documentation to be installed [yes]:

Continue with installation? [no]: yes ===================================================> Enter "yes" to contiue the installtion

Creating /sim
Unpacking sim.tgz to /sim
Configured the simulators mac address to be [00:50:56:1:cd:eb]
Please ensure the simulator is not running.
Your simulator has 3 disk(s). How many more would you like to add? [0]: 2
Too high. Must be between 0 and 25.

Your simulator has 3 disk(s). How many more would you like to add? [0]: 2 =====================> Maximum available disk numbers for simulator (Choose the number of disks and size based on your Linux disk space)

The following disk types are available in MB:
        Real (Usable)
  a -   43   ( 14)
  b -   62   ( 30)
  c -   78   ( 45)
  d -  129   ( 90)
  e -  535   (450)
  f - 1024   (900)

If you are unsure choose the default option a

What disk size would you like to use? [a]: f    ===========================================> Choose the bigger disk size based on your need and the disk space availability

Disk adapter to put disks on? [0]:

Use DHCP on first boot? [yes]: no  ===================================================> Say "no" if you wanted to configure Static IP address

Ask for floppy boot? [no]:
Your default simulator network interface is already configured to eth0.

Which network interface should the simulator use? [eth0]:  ==============================> Choose the "interface" which you wanted to use for Data Traffic

Another simulator is running. Cannot give good advise about memory.

How much memory would you like the simulator to use? [512]: =============================> Choose the Default RAM size

Create a new log for each session? [no]:
Overwrite the single log each time? [yes]:
Adding 25 additional disk(s).
Complete. Run /sim/runsim.sh to start the simulator.
linux-sesl-184-54:/home/simulator #

Step VI:

======

o That's it, start the simulator by running startup script /sim/runsim.sh. And configure the Setup as per your need.

Step VII:

=====

o To configure the Data ONTAP Simulator for the (cluster)  Active Active Pair do the following

Script version 22 (18/Sep/2007)
Where to install to? [/sim]:
Would you like to install as a cluster? [no]: yes ====================================> Say yes to install the Active Active Pair (Cluster) Node
Continue with installation? [no]: yes
Creating /sim
Unpacking sim.tgz to /sim/node1
Configured the simulators mac address to be [00:50:56:1:15:27]
Unpacking sim.tgz to /sim/node2
Configured the simulators mac address to be [00:50:56:8:7c:b1]
Building cluster half for node /sim/node1
1024+0 records in
1024+0 records out
1048576 bytes (1.0 MB) copied, 0.006192 seconds, 169 MB/s
Building cluster half for node /sim/node2
1024+0 records in
1024+0 records out
1048576 bytes (1.0 MB) copied, 0.00734 seconds, 143 MB/s
Please ensure the simulator is not running.
Your simulator has 3 disk(s). How many more would you like to add? [0]: 25

The following disk types are available in MB:
        Real (Usable)
  a -   43   ( 14)
  b -   62   ( 30)
  c -   78   ( 45)
  d -  129   ( 90)
  e -  535   (450)
  f - 1024   (900)

If you are unsure choose the default option a
What disk size would you like to use? [a]: f
Disk adapter to put disks on? [0]:
Use DHCP on first boot? [yes]: no
Ask for floppy boot? [no]:
Your default simulator network interface is already configured to eth0.
Which network interface should the simulator use? [eth0]:
Another simulator is running. Cannot give good advise about memory.
How much memory would you like the simulator to use? [512]:
Create a new log for each session? [no]:
Overwrite the single log each time? [yes]:
Adding 25 additional disk(s).
Complete. Run the script /sim/node1/runsim.sh to start the first node, license clustering, then repeat with /sim/node2/runsim.sh.
linux-sesl-184-54:/home/simulator #

                                             FAQs

                                              --------

1. How to run CFO pair of Data ONTAP simulator ?

    o Follow the above installation Step VII and now there will be two node folder created in /sim path called as node1 and node2. You can run both the

       node together and configure the cluster pair

2. How to install Simulator from USB drive ?

    o First take the image in USB drive and insert USB drive to your desktop and mount the USB image onto the VM Host and follow the below steps exactly you

      can install.

      linux-sesl-184-54: cd /media
      linux-sesl-184-54:/media# cd USBDRIVE
      linux-sesl-184-54:/media/USBDRIVE# cd 7.3.1-sim-cdrom-image-v22
      linux-sesl-184-54:/media/USBDRIVE/7.3.1-sim-cdrom-image-v22# ./setup.sh

3. How to make Simulator to work in VmHost ?

     o If you cant ping/telnet the simulator ip address which runs on Vmware please try to enable the interface promiscuous mode using the following steps

       Modify the 'Promiscuous Mode' setting to 'Accept' on the vswitch to which the guest VM (hosting the Data ONTAP simulator) is connected to. From

      within the VI Client, perform the following:

1. Select 'Configuration' Tab.
2. Select 'Networking'.
3. Select 'Properties' for the vswitch.
4. Under 'vswitch', select 'Edit'.
5. Select 'Security' Tab.
6. Change the dropdown for 'Promiscuous Mode' to 'Accept'.
7. Click OK.

After that try to ping or open Filerview using http://sim-ip/na_admin.

4. Where do I find Simulator Licenses ?

1 .Go to Filerview  - http://sim-ip/na_admin

2. Click on "Documentation Specific to the Simulator"

3.Click on "License Keys"  page from the http root on the system.

Note: Form 7.3 Simulators, you can use A-SIS and Nearstore also, you can run both  snapvault primary/secondary on the same node.

5. My simulator hangs during booting time, What should I do ?

   Data ONTAP  7.3.1 simulator the recommended memory is 512MB. But in 7.2.5.1 the smallest  simulator memory you should choose is 220MB.

   Try to increase the RAM by running setup script and start the simualtor

6. Is it possible to create VLANs in an Data ONTAP simulator?

    It doesn't work for virtual NICs in simulator (ns0/ns1), hence maybe unsupported.

7. Is it possible to have extra interfaces on the Simulator ?

   One of the known limitations in simulator is that it supports only 2 network  ports.

8. How to setup multiple simulators with DFM ?

   Install your simulator as per normal, then go into /install/path/node1 .You'll see a file called ,serialno. It contains 2 serial  numbers, the first being this node in the cluster, and the second being

   the serial number of its cluster partner (Incase you installed Cluster simulator). Edit this file so the serial numbers are different from the defaults and let them be unique. Now DFM will happily

   discover this simulator.

9. Which Data ONTAP Simulator supports De-Dupe ?

    De-Dupe is supported from Data ONTAP simulator 7.3 version.

10. Simulator started, but can't get into FilerView ?

  o Type "java" on the simulator console. If it says "Java not Enabled". Try to re-install simulator or try FAQ 11 and skip all below trials

  o  Check if the options httpd.admin.enable to be on.

  o  Try FAQ 3 if its a VmHost.

11. How do I get full Data ONTAP release root volume on Simulator ?

You can install a full release of Data ONTAP on to your simulator.  What will be  installed is basically just the kernel with some basic /etc files to get it  running.  So you'll need to expand your root volume to a reasonable size  (400MB), then grab the Data ONTAP image from the NOW site of the version you want.  Don't worry about the arch type, you won't actually be  installing the kernel anyway, that's already done.  Then load the bits on in  your favorite way (NFS/CIFS/software install, whatever).  Then reboot.  You  don't need to run download because it doesn't make sense on a sim anyway.

12. How to make the Data ONTAP Simulator to run on virtual NIC card ?

   -Say virtual interface is eth1, then "ifconfig eth1 0.0.0.0"

   -Copy MAC-address from eth1 and put it to the text-file called ",mac-address"  on your sim-directory

   -Setup your simulator to use eth1 as your sim-interface using setup script, set IP-address from  the same subnet as your eth0

   -You should be able to ping/mount/whatever from you simulator using eth1

13. How to add disks to simulator post installation ?

     Halt the simulator and you can run the following command

     1. You can run the Setup command and increase the number of disks mentioned in Step V

     2. If you want advanced command and dont like the above step you can run the following command

        #  . makedisks -n 4 -t 3

          Options:

               -n <additional number of disks to create>

               -t <disk type ID>

               -e <additional sectors>

               -a <adapter on which to start populating disks