Netapp 8.1.Cluster Mode Overview -

• - Scalable cluster of Netapp filers or vfilers with 3rd party storage managed centrally and working collectively.   NAS scalable to 24 nodes, SAN scalable to 4.
• Support for SAN protocols
• NFS4.1 Support
• PNFS Support
• Asnychronous volume snap mirror for DR

Netapp 8.1 7 Mode

-Upgrades much easier, straight upgrade from 7.3.2+ to 8.1
-SAS and SATA drives can now be used in metrocluster
 

Both Modes

***Ability to do 32 to 64 bit aggregate conversion; rather than copy to new aggregate.  Happens as aggregate grows beyond 16tb aggregate limit automatically.  No performance impact.
***Aggregate size increased for the most part 50% for all systems from 8.0.x to 8.1.  This is inline with 3TB drives released.
-Max volume size is static.
***32 Bit volume snap mirror to 64Bit volume supported. 
***64 bit aggregrates are now default rather than 32.

Biggest Changes in Both Releases Storage Efficency = Deduplication, Cloning and Compression

1. No deduplication license
2.  Dedupe volume limit increased maxium volume size of supported system
3. Deduplication Performance increased, 33% higher
4. Hourly checkpoints checkpoints hourly, incase dedupe is stopped and restarted
5. Block Ratios

DataCompression

1. Compression wasn’t GA in 8.0.X in 8.1 its GA.  When it was originally released it was inline only meaning that it was compressed before going to disk.  Now it is offered both inline and post process scheduling.
2. MetroCluster Support since 8.0.2
3. Current customer usage is 40% breakdown to production vs 60% backup and archive
4. No licenses or volume limits
5. Compression of existing data 7x faster than 8.0.x

***Comparing Dedupe to Compression – Dedupe looks at the 4k blocks and creates pointers to other similar 4k blocks.  Compression looks at 32k block and looks for largest repeating pattern, cyclical process until no more repeating patterns.

Systems Manager

• 8.1 will require system manager 2.0.  System Manager will work back to DataOnTap 7.2
• Browser base supported on Windows and Linux
• ClusterMode Support
• Ability to halt and reboot controllers
• Create and Manage Snapmirror relationships
• Dedupe,compression, and snapshot integration
• File and Lun Cloning

Here is a list I compiled after completing my What’s New In vSphere 5 class.  I won’t bother getting into licensing….

-No block limit size for VMDK
-VMDK scales to 64 TB with 2TB limit on files
- 32 Cores up from 8, 1 TB of Ram
-NFS DataStores increase from 32 to 256
-SATP Modules loaded on demand no more setting from command prompt
-No more setting iscsi port binding from command prompt gui driven
-Software base fcoe initiator

–VAAI -thin provisioning stun + VMFS space reclamation = As the data store reaches max compacity, instead of overfilling and risking data corruption at 97% VMs are put in suspend mode.  Space Reclamation works with the storage array vendor to shrink the lun size on a thin provisioned volume as used space decreases to increase storage efficency.
–vCenter client for Linux.
-vCenter appliance linux based….No it doesnt support linked mode
-Profile Driven Storage- Create profiles for SLAs based on performance etc for performance and availability.
-Storage DRS- DRS based on i/o and size
-Virtual Machine format 8 not really exciting usb 3.0 support and also Windows Aero
-Storage I/O Control – Extended to NFS
-Network I/O Control – More granular offering per virtual machine control.
-Vsphere WebClient – Wasnt this in ESX2?
–RTT Latency increase from 5ms to 10ms in Enterprise Plus vMotion

http://www.vmware.com/files/pdf/products/vsphere/vmware-what-is-new-vsphere5.pdf

http://www.vmware.com/files/pdf/techpaper/Whats-New-VMware-vSphere-50-Storage-Technical-Whitepaper.pdf

http://www.vmware.com/files/pdf/techpaper/Whats-New-VMware-vSphere-50-Networking-Technical-Whitepaper.pdf