Though I am looking forward to a replacement of Filerview, I have to admit that it seems a little shortsighted that its only integrated with MMC 3.0

I'm sure there has to be something that is OS agnostic coming along with NSM?

Lively discussion. First of all, thanks for posting your HSO's (Hot Storage Opinions) here, secondly, I'd like to state what I've stated in the Blog and that is, that NSM *eventually* will replace FilerView. What that means is the company plans to continue to support FilerView in the forseesable future for all platforms as there are no plans in place, meraning target dates, that I know of, to wack FilerView when NSM becomes available. In fact, the NSM rollout will be a gradual one with the FAS2000/3000 platforms supported first.

In any case, it is not NetApp's culture to hang people out to dry and I'm sure since NetApp's customers go beyond the commenrcial space and expand into the technical and scientific communities, the company will provide the necessary tools for those interested.

Cheers

> Anyone know if they built a .net class for this thing to ride on?  Better yet perhaps some PowerShell cmdlets!?

It's .NET (mostly written in C# FWIW), and exists as a DLL, but we haven't yet had discussions regarding exposing any of the internals.  We do have a nice set of wrappers for ONTAP API calls which do object serialization and other nice tricks - it's a bit of a step up from working directly with the ManageONTAP SDK.

We don't yet have PowerShell capability, but that's been discussed.  Maybe next release, if demand is sufficient.

Steve

Do I think I'll use NSM?  No... I have far too much time vested in the SDK, but it's not for me.  I always find these conversations kinda entertaining no one was raging about the need for a better GUI.  In fact all the conversations I had centered around the sdk, what language get's added next.  Low and behold NetApp goes out of there way and appears to fill a painpoint BANG...

I don't believe NetApp would ditch there current OS neural management capabilities.  To good a selling point, but you can't fault them, and abandon the platform. There addressing the largest install base in the world.  No one got up in arms when they released SMVI, but not a similar product for Xen,Hyper-V,XVM.. It's a GUI, and if your going to write a client side app for windows... It's MMC or bust.  I flame vendors for forcing me to install java on a production server!!!

Not trying to start a flame war... I understand, but they wouldn't bury this stuff in some compiled c# assembly (I hope not).  They already have ZAPI, and have announced that the next version of HUK will leverage that investment.

As for the learning capabilities that FilerView enables.  Totaly agree, I learned how to administer a NetApp SAN through FilerView.  After a while I graduated from the webpage to the cli, and then from there to the SDK.  I just don't see them ever killing filerview. Unless they kill the web server functionality all together what's the point?

At the end of the day It's just another tool in the toolbox.

~Glenn

then again wouldn't be the first time I was wrong

In the design of System Manager, we spent time to ensure it would more appealing to small/medium shops.  However, it is also full-featured - the functional overlap with FilerView is nearly complete, and there are a number of new features as well.

How we went about making it full-featured and simpler is interesting in some cases, I'll describe that more in my blog (soon!).

We've concentrated on improving a number of common end-to-end work flows.  Out-of-box setup and customer demos should be easier to give now, too.  NSM borrows many of the positive aspects of FilerView, FAS Easy Start Wizard, and StoreVault Manager, while avoiding some of their limitations.

Sorry for the teasers, as soon as I can, I'll make screen shots and blog posts.

We'll be looking forward to hear your feedback and requests for improvements.

Steve

As Nick has mentioned above, rest assured that FilerView will continue in its current form for now (it is still available).

I've developed software for each of the teams mentioned (FilerView, DFM, NSM), web and applications in Java and C and C#.  We remain pretty agnostic when it comes to management protocols and architectures.  Regarding FilerView and NSM, I expect that customers initially will choose based on their own preferences, current work flows and architectures.

NSM is intended as a form of element manager refresh, and is purposefully targeted to integrate more closely with Windows work flows (hence the MMC design).  For Windows administrators, it will clearly be a step forward from FilerView.

I hope you'll give it a try even if you're not a big Windows fan ... IMHO it's pretty good for an MMC app, and has some nice features :-)

We have some System Manager details to wrap up for this release, but after that I expect to have more time to describe details in my blog.

Steve

ok, great news, now give it to us!

serious: I think engineers or consultants, are not very thrilled about this. If this is as good as snapdrive 6, i will love it.

Most important for me as a cli user, i think customers will adopt and understand things better when it is build in a windows gui.

It is really a selling point, and hey, they don't take away the remote console, you still have a serial connection, a cli from filerview and a BMC console, so do not complain . As far i can see VMware did a good thing to provide their management layer windows based. customers find it easier to adopt, and the more customers, the more work to use the cli to solve their problems!

i did also a post of this stuff on my blog www.tendam.info

Now where is it?!?!?! Cant find it? where is the download link? Help me aaargh 

Will there also be a beta build for the IBM N-Series?

I noticed the link to the Beta version http://communities.netapp.com/community/netapp_partners_network/storage_management_software/system_manager

When going to the Link we receive unauthorized. Is this available for customers?

Our initial beta build got posted for limited access.  We're discussing how & when to broaden that.  Stay tuned.

Meantime, if you are eager for access, you should be able to get access through a sales engineer or partner representative who does have access.

(sorry for the thin details - still busy working on the product, and not too involved with this part, but will try to keep you posted with what I know.)

Steve

Hi,

6xxx series is not supported in this 1.0 release.

Reason for this was available resources for quality qualification, as well as support impact (6xxx series are typically larger and more complicated).

From an engineering perspective, the tool is architected in a way that will work fine on all NetApp hardware.  We will expand the supported hardware in the next release.

Steve (NetApp engineering)

Hi,

got an error message after trying to add an OnTAP-Simulator (7.3).

=== CLIENT ===
Version:      1.0X3
Build:        1.0.0.288
User:         W2K3-CL\Administrator
Host:         w2k3-cl (192.168.48.128)
Date:         12.03.2009 13:39
OS Version:   5.2
OS Name:      Microsoft Windows Server 2003
Service Pack: Service Pack 2
.NET Version: v2.0.50727
Memory Used:  45.832,00 KB
Memory Total: 393.216,00 KB

=== ERROR ===
NetApp.Library.UserControls.Error.DefaultErrorDetails

=== MESSAGE ===
System Manager only supports ONTAP releases 7.2.3 and higher, running on NetApp FAS2xxx and FAS3xxx series platforms or IBM N3xxx, N5xxx and N6xxx series platforms.

=== DETAILS ===
System Manager only supports ONTAP releases 7.2.3 and higher, running on NetApp FAS2xxx and FAS3xxx series platforms or IBM N3xxx, N5xxx and N6xxx series platforms.

=== CORRECTIVE ACTION ===
Add a supported platform running ONTAP 7.2.3 or higher.

=== STACK TRACE ===

Is that a bug or a feature?

regards

Erich

A MMC management tool will be great.  FilerView does everything I want but MMC is just so much more intuitive.

Apologies will always go to the Unix admins but then you are used to the command line adn can get anything done.

You can imagine the NetApp resellers going into a sales meeting demoing their product and having to configure things on the command line or Filer View.

It's much easier to purchase a product where you like the look of the administration - of course the Unix types are happy to use vi for everything!

But my maint point is NetApp really need to start developing Powershell for NetApp Admin alongside the rest of the tools.

Have a look at the VMWare VI Toolkit and see how incredibly powerful Powershell can become.

A colleage was on an AD training course by Microsoft and the trainer said the VMWare VI Toolkit was the best Powershell plug-in she had seen!

I use it for so much VM admin including developing great scripts to implement SMVI for free!

So, great news on the MMC but keep going for PowerShell.

System Manager 1.0 is scheduled to appear on the NOW site next week, assuming no hiccups.

We'll post an announcement when that happens.

(Hopefully it was safe for me to say that.  If not, I might post back here soon looking for open positions :-)

Steve

(System Manager engineering)

Fantastic -- glad to hear it.

Very nice tool, thank you!

> Incidentally, is there any specific reason not supported with Data ONTap 7.2.2?

Choice was a little bit arbitrary in the end, but more or less we adopted a release to recommend which was concurrent with our development.

It's possible to expanded the supported releases in the future, if we can make a case to product management.

Steve

> Makes sense...any guess if letting them run against 7.2.2 would be a problem? (IIRC there's a way to do it if I'm/they're willing to poke around)

Officially of course only 7.2.3+ is supported, and I can only advise choosing from among the supported releases.  For testing during the release, we have only qualified down to 7.2.3.  The published interoperability matrix can be found here

http://now.netapp.com/NOW/knowledge/docs/olio/guides/system_manager/system_manager_matrix.shtml

Practically speaking however the APIs vary little between point releases, and we would have little trouble qualifying each of the 7.2.X releases if needed.

Steve

Great job on this tool! So far I'm really liking it, especially since our organization is new to NetApp.

Just was curious on one setting...I noticed under the RSH settings that the field is blank. Is this supposed to display the /etc/hosts.equiv file? I previously had setup 1 host via FilerView and that host still displays under FilerView. Kind of curious why it isn't displaying in NSM.

Thanks again!

Do you mean create a CIFS share of the cat output? I don't think that's necessary as it appears NSM just reads the hosts.equiv file differently from FilerView. I guess my hosts.equiv file wasn't setup as "NSM-friendly".

It appears this feature works fine as long as you begin your hosts.equiv with an actual host name/ip instead of a comment. NSM won't read the file if it starts with a comment such as the default:
#Auto-generated by setup <insert date here>

Perhaps the trigger is having the # sign in column 1 or something like that.

The host I setup in FilerView was on the 2nd line after the #Auto-generated comment. NSM creates all entries on the first line before the #Auto-generated comment. Any entries before the #Auto-generated comment it will read, any after it won't. I don't think it should matter whether the host entries start before or after the #Auto-generated comment. At least FilerView and Ontap treats hosts.equiv that way.

In fact, the entry I created in FilerView after the #Auto-generated comment was deleted when I tried to make a new entry in NSM. It deleted the host/ip name but left the comment after the host/ip name.

I'd like to report this as a bug...

Message was edited by: Leif Hvidsten

Have downloaded the tool to have a play with.  Think the problem is user name / password but don't have time to play at the minute.  Error message is not helpful however...

Bren

=== CLIENT ===
Version:      1.0
Build:        1.0.0.340
User:         DIBBLUPTON\HIGGINSB
Host:         c4v8m3j (10.189.48.111)
Date:         20/04/2009 11:40
OS Version:   5.1
OS Name:      Microsoft Windows XP
Service Pack: Service Pack 2
.NET Version: v2.0.50727
Memory Used:  56,608.00 KB
Memory Total: 2,097,152.00 KB

=== ERROR ===
NetApp.Library.UserControls.Error.DefaultErrorDetails

=== MESSAGE ===
API invoke failed.  The remote server returned an error: (502) Bad Gateway.

=== DETAILS ===
API invoke failed.  The remote server returned an error: (502) Bad Gateway.

=== CORRECTIVE ACTION ===
No corrective action found

=== STACK TRACE ===
   at NetApp.Ontapi.NaServer.send(Object req)
   at NetApp.Ontapi.NaServer.Invoke(Object req, Type resultType)
   at NetApp.Ontapi.NaApi`1.Invoke(INaServer server)
   at NetApp.SSM.StorageSystem.StorageSystem.InvokeOntapApi[T](NaApi`1 api, Boolean isAsync)
   at NetApp.SSM.StorageSystem.StorageSystem.InvokeONTAPIReal[T](NaApi`1 api, Boolean isAsync, Boolean showLoginDialog)
   at NetApp.SSM.StorageSystem.StorageSystem.VerifyCredentials(Boolean showLoginDialogIfNecessary)
   at NetApp.SSM.StorageSystem.StorageSystem.VerifyCredentials()

=== INNER STACK TRACE ===
   at System.Net.HttpWebRequest.GetRequestStream()
   at NetApp.Ontapi.NaServer.send(Object req)

Sorry was just posting to say I was using it.

If I am still having problems I will post back into a new thread.

Bren

Reboot of the PC cleared the issue.

Early result, I like System Manager

Bren

Kiran,

Thanks for the solution,does it mean you cant reach the Filer using proxy gateway. There might be firewall running on proxy server.

Thanks

Daniel