NetApp Active IQ - A Logical Next Step in Maintenance

February 23, 2019 by Nathaniel Avery in Conferences

NetApp presented their latest in proactive maintenance technology, ActiveIQ at Tech Field Day 18 in Austin, TX. ActiveIQ is a blend of software and service that allows NetApp to review configurations and propose suggestions based on their extensive body of knowledge. To power the product, NetApp collects more than 10 trillion data points per month of information from customer’s systems, stores it in a massive data lake, and exposes that data to other systems within NetApp to look for trends. The tech vendor also uses a machine learning algorithm to mine customer data for issues and optimal configurations. It’s really quite promising stuff.

Tech Field Day Delegate - Part Deux

January 31, 2019 by Nathaniel Avery in Conferences

One week from now I’ll be in Austin as part of the Tech Field Day delegate crew for Tech Field Day 18. This is my second Field Day event having attended Cloud Field Day 4 in Silicon Valley last year. I remember being completely terrified going into the trip. I had no idea what to expect. Sure, I’d watched presentations over the internet for years, but I hadn’t considered what happened once the cameras stopped rolling. It’s also fair to say I suffered from a fair bit of impostor syndrome. I didn’t feel my voice was as strong as the other delegates’. I couldn’t have imaged the sense of camaraderie, conversations, and history gained from attending.. Long story short, it turned out to be one of the most fun work-ish experiences I’ve had in my adult life.

Notes from the Field - Newer Versions of NetApp OnCommand Require TLS

July 02, 2015 by Nathaniel Avery

Depending on when you installed your NetApp storage running ONTAP, certain connectivity parameters might prevent web based managent with newer version of OnCommand Manager.

There are several errors that could be displayed including "500 Connection refused."

The web based onCommand management suite worked fine, until TLS was required. Previously, only HTTPS was enabled on the NetApp. TLS is a much more secure protocol and is the preferred method of connectivity.

TLS can be enabled via the command line with the following command:

options tls.enable on

The setting can be verified by running the options command.

The list will display the status of every option in the system. The TLS.Enable option is the one of concern.

acp.domain                   43200
acp.enabled                  on
acp.netmask                  16580607
acp.port                     e0P
auditlog.enable              on         (value might be overwritten in takeover)
auditlog.max_file_size       10000000   (value might be overwritten in takeover)
auditlog.readonly_api.enable off        (value might be overwritten in takeover)
autologout.console.enable    on         (value might be overwritten in takeover)
autologout.console.timeout   60         (value might be overwritten in takeover)

...

timed.sched                  hourly     (same value in local+partner recommended)
timed.window                 0s         (same value in local+partner recommended)
tls.enable                   on         (same value required in local+partner)
trusted.hosts                *          (same value required in local+partner)
vfiler.vol_clone_zapi_allow off
vol.copy.throttle            10         (value might be overwritten in takeover)
vol.move.cutover.cpu.busy.limit 100
vol.move.cutover.disk.busy.limit 100

Apply this command to all filers in a failover cluster.

The settings and commands were tested on DataOntap running in 7 mode.