Thanks for continuing to enhance the SDK.  It's a great tool, and you are making it even better.

1. What did you like the most about SDK 3.0?

The new documentation.  It's much easier to locate things and move around.

The new dll form for the libraries may be helpful to me too, although I haven't had a chance to play with them yet.

2. What are the improvement areas for SDK 3.0?

Please continue to add new API calls.  There are still a number of things I have to do in my program via CLI commands rather than through API calls because the particular thing I need isn't provided.

It would also be nice if the documentation listed the SDK version (or ONTAP version) that first supported each API call.

By the way, the release history for SDK 3.0 says there is a new API named useradmin-user-has-capability, but that API isn't listed in the "Data ONTAP APIs" section of the Programming Guide.

I was wondering if there are any plans to expose the ONTAP API as a Web service.

1: I have not really used it yet, but I like the fact that at least one non-compiled language is supported.

2: This may be my own oversight, but... I cannot find any ability to query the filer for a bulk transfer of all counters (a counter snapshot ) and then use the result of this query as a pseudo filer connection for my other queries. This would be a very valuable addition, as it would not only offload a lot of connections to the filer, but I would know I am looking at simultaneous data even if my queries are several seconds apart. If there is no such ability, please consider it

Hi Kevin,

Currently we don't have plans of changing the namespace of Perl modules. If NaServer/NaElement namespace gets changed then all the scripts using these modules needs to edited. This will break the backward compatibility. Hence we do not want to change the namespace.

Please let me know any if you are facing any problems using the existing namespace. If there are potential problems in the existing namespace then we can consider changing it.

Thanks,

Rashmi.

Thanks for the suggestion. I will discuss on this regard with my team.

If you have any more suggestions, please share it with us.

Thanks,

Rashmi.

You can download SDK from http://communities.netapp.com/docs/DOC-1110

Not sure, how to do it for a cacti environment.   There is a thread on cacti, check this out : http://communities.netapp.com/message/2308#2308

Also, you can find some information for application integration in SDK help : Getting Started with SDK -> SDK Interfaces for Application Integration

Hi Jack,

Where you able to move ahead with your scripts? 

Thats great... Hope to see you more in these communities.

Mike, thanks for asking!

Getting started with an SDK can be a fun journey, and lets hope we can get you off to a right start!

Once you have the SDK downloaded, extract it into some directory structure you can work with (I dumped it to the root of my C: drive to work with)

Then, for some tips and guidance of what to do, browse down to the following file:

manage-ontap-sdk-3.0R1\doc\WebHelp\index.htm

At which point, open that up in your favorite browser (IE or Firefox - It does not work correctly in Chrome)

I find that the best place to start from there is in the "Getting started with the SDK" section.

This will provide you with an introduction, overview, release notes, etc.  Enough to get you started and playing with the SDK!

Additionally, if you want to play around with some things live (with a simulator or a lab or otherwise system) you can play around with a few tools (cli or gui) located in "manage-ontap-sdk-3.0R1\bin\nt"  In there you will find zexplore and apitest - Launch them and you'll see what it brings for you to play with!

Hopefully this helps you get started Mike, and don't hesitate to ask any questions as you get to playing with things!

Christopher

Good point there Rashmi,

I was initially doing it in Chrome and it wasn't being so happy in working, so I went down a level (found it not working, and switched to FF)

So, yes as you point out SDK_help.htm indeed would be the best solution

Thanks!

Hi,

Yes. C# support is planned in next release of SDK. Next SDK is planned towards the end of this year.

Thanks,
Ankur

Opening up to C# and/or PowerShell would be very helpful for anyone who (like myself) has already migrated largely to .NET.

Has anyone had any success in using the SDK libraries in Visual Studio .NET. At present I'm having to compile every back in VC6 and the make additional calls which is very clumsy.

A SOAP-based Web Service would be a dream as this makes the whole SDK process a lot less language-specific.

Any update on the next release?

Still waiting to get C# support!

Hi,

We could not release Manage ONTAP SDK 3.5 in January. It will be released within few weeks.

Thanks,

Rashmi.

I would like to echo Matthew's comments.  A little better documentation for the calls using Perl.  I have been building a mdule so once I get them figured out I put them there for easier access.  Maye NetApp should consider writing a wrapper module for Perl.  I have been coding Perl for 10 years but I am not a programmer.  I'm a Unix/SAN admin.  I also would like to see system-cli become supported.

Frank Bounds

Hi Corey,

Looks like aggr-create request is not framed properly.Try using the following snippet for creating aggregates:

my $in = NaElement->new("aggr-create");
$in->child_add_string("aggregate", $aggr_name);
$in->child_add_string("is-mirrored", $mirrored);

my $disks = NaElement->new("disks");
my $disk_info = NaElement->new("disk-info");

$disk_info->child_add_string("name",$disk1);
# add more disks using child_add_string like ...
#$disk_info->child_add_string("name",$disk2);...

my $mirror_disks = NaElement->new("mirror-disks");
my $mirror_disk_info = NaElement->new("disk-info");
$mirror_disk_info->child_add_string("name",$mirror_disk1);

# add more disks using child_add_string like ...
#$disk_info->child_add_string("name",$mirror_disk2);...

$disks->child_add($disk_info);
$mirror_disks->child_add($mirror_disk_info);

$in->child_add($disks);
$in->child_add($mirror_disks);

my $output = $s->invoke_elem($in);

What I like about it: I can actually use it rather than having to parse text output from SSH commands :) I'll finally be able to get my MSCS geo-cluster working with snapmirror sync. :)

What needs improved: The commands that don't have an API should be documented - qtree security for one :) Docs are a good start, they need an example with each to show how it's intended use.

Other Suggestions: Maybe adding one service that does execute a command line (would remove the need for SSH programs from my script), .NET support, WSDL for a web service would probably make it a whole lot more reusable and support other languages without having to have a specific API for it.

Dear  Sir,

My customer who is a major telecommunication equipment supplier around the world is now developing a Database management system(like oracle and DB2)  which may contain couple of features regarding database backup , storage provisioning, DR ,etc.   Understand that netApp has this support of ONTAP SDK for both partners and customers , Just wondering whether my custome is applicable to get enrolled for following feature get developed.

- Database hotbackup by using ONTAP snapshot API 

- Database storage provisioning discovery and managent by using ONTAP API

- Performance statistics

Thanks in advance  if you could provide more detail regarding ONTAP SDK and any comment/recommendation is greatly appreciated.

Best Regards,

Jason

email  : jason.wu@netapp.com

1) What did you like the most about SDK 3.0x?

Very easy to use and understand.  Very nice that it uses http to communicate.  I was able to rewrite it into php, which makes interacting with it from Cacti and other web based apps VERY easy.  Additionally, I am assisting a coworker with creating a PowerShell version, which should make command line interaction significantly easier as well.

2) What are the improvement areas for SDK 3.0x?

Document EVERYTHING.  Seems like every time I read a new entry on the forum here I discover a new, undocumented, command.

Fix the aggr-space-info call to not return negative numbers...VERY annoying that I have to do a remote cli call and parse raw text to get this information.  This is even worse in my opinion because other calls that return space information (volume-list-info) return the correct values

Hi Andrew,

Thanks for your feedback. You wrote " Document EVERYTHING. Seems like every time I read a new entry on the forum here I discover a new, undocumented, command". Can you provide more details on what undocumented new commands you have discovered? 

Thanks,
Ankur

The SDK documentation has improved significantly.  Navigate through "Design Guides" --> "Performance Management" --> "Appendix - Performance counters...", you can find a brief description of counters. For e.g.

Hi,

In the manage ontap sdk, for QTree: available space, and used space counters are not available.They are available from aggregate, volume and lun.

are this qtree specific counters will be provided in next release?

Thanks

Arpit

Okay, so I've run into some tasks that I can't do with the SDK.  These are things that I would really like to do.

1. Find out how long the currently running SnapMirror job has been transfering. (yeah, that's a DataONTAP limit!)
2. Read log files.
3. Run disk sanitization.

Any one else have items to add to the list of missing features for the SDK?

Nope.. No support for zSeries yet.

I guess, you are looking for SDK software license.  It is available as part of the documentation in SDK_help at Home > Manage ONTAP SDK 3.5 > Software License Agreement.

Hi,

The new SDK has some support for some new ONTAP 7.3.1 features that we hope to use. 

But, still no support for virtual interfaces.  When will this appear? (By all means shoot me down if it is there I was just blind!)

Cheers,

Kevin Peirce.

Hello,

I've been using the SDK 3.0 for some time now, and here is what I can say about it.

What is nice is the number of counters we can get from the filers.

What could be improved is the languages proposed as APIs : I use python for programming, and I had to struggle to compile against the c library.

The documentation is nice, but there are lacks in the counters documentation (mostly counters for what I've encountered). For example : in the perf object documentation, the disk_read_MB_per_sec_histo counter is described as Histogram of disk read megabytes per second, which would be OK, but it returns an array with 29 values, and the signification of these values doesn't seem to be explained. So how can we use it ?

Other example, for the processor object, domain busy is described as an array of processor time in various domains, but these are not described.

So a little more explanation of the counters signification when their names are not sufficent would be welcome.

Maybe this more detailled documentation exists somewhere, in that case an easy-to-find pointer to it would be welcome.

Anyway it's a great tool, and a great job done.

Thanks

Jean-Marc

>>>1. What did you like the most about SDK 3.x?

There are lots of improvements but i liked the vfiler-tunelling API addition a very cool feature.

>>>> What are the improvement areas for SDK 3.x?

Add support for the other data ONTAP like GX.

Todd,

I am not able to reproduce this problem on neither VS2005 nor VS2008  .

Which Visual Studio and .NET framework version are you using ? When are you facing naserver.cs file error ? Are you atleast able to compile and execute hello_ontapi sample code ?