NetApp EF540 Flash Array Software

NetApp SANtricity software offers a powerful, intuitive interface for administering the NetApp EF540 Flash Array.

NetApp® SANtricity® software allows storage administrators to achieve maximum performance and utilisation of their NetApp EF540 system through extensive configuration flexibility, customised performance tuning and complete control over data placement. Its graphically based performance tools provide key information on storage I/O from multiple view points, allowing you to make informed decisions on configuration adjustments to refine performance further.

SANtricity software is designed to support the highest levels of data availability, integrity and protection to maximise application uptime. Its automated I/O path failover and extensive online configuration, reconfiguration, and maintenance capabilities support 99.999% availability. And with advanced technologies, such as proactive monitoring, background repair and extensive diagnostic features, SANtricity software provides full protection of your data when it reaches the storage system.

The following table describes standard SANtricity software features.

 

Functionality Product/Feature Description
Management Storage administration SANtricity Storage Manager software provides management functionality and a graphical representation of the EF540, as well as other E-Series storage, with an easy-to-use interface for customisation and ongoing operations.
Enterprise Management Window The EMW gives a comprehensive view of all E-Series storage systems in the management domain. From the EMW, administrators can add and remove hosts and storage systems, monitor the health of the storage and report its high-level status, configure alert notifications, run scripts to perform batch management tasks and launch the applicable Array Management Window for a selected storage system to perform detailed configuration and management operations.
Array Management Window Each individual EF540, E5400 or E2600 storage system is managed through a dedicated Array Management Window. The AMW is used to configure and reconfigure volumes (including attributes such as size, name, modification priority, cache settings and segment size), define hosts and host groups, grant host or host group access to sets of volumes (called storage partitions), monitor the health of system components, view the Event Log and storage profile, assign hot spares and monitor storage system performance.
High Availability I/O path protection I/O path protection offers load balancing and multi-path capabilities for path fail-over in the event of a connection, HBA or server failure.
Online administration All management tasks can be performed while the storage remains online, with complete read/write data access. This allows storage administrators to make configuration changes, conduct maintenance (including firmware upgrades) or expand the storage capacity without disrupting the I/O from its attached hosts.
Data Protection RAID levels 0, 1, 10, 3, 5, 6 With support for multiple RAID levels, SANtricity software offers the flexibility to address varying performance and capacity requirements, and service levels.
Proactive Drive Health Monitoring Proactive Drive Health Monitoring examines every completed drive I/O and tracks the rate of error and exception conditions returned by the drives, as well as drive performance degradation that is often associated with unreported internal drive issues. Using predictive failure analysis technology, when any error rate threshold is exceeded - indicating that a drive is showing signs of impending failure - SANtricity software issues a critical alert message and takes the corrective action necessary to protect the data.
Wear Life Monitoring SANtricity software tracks SSD wear life proactively and issues a critical alert message when the threshold is reached.
Advanced Drive Rebuilds A drive rebuild can continue even when encountering an unreadable sector (patented).
Background media scans Background media scans check drives proactively for defects, and initiate repairs before they can cause problems. This includes rewriting sectors that may not have been properly written, reallocating defective sectors, and finding and repairing parity inconsistencies.
Problem Resolution Advanced Diagnostics Extensive capturing and monitoring of diagnostic data provide comprehensive fault isolation and simplify analysis of unanticipated events.
Recovery Guru The Recovery Guru provides troubleshooting assistance and determines the appropriate procedure to use for recovery, so that operations can be restored as quickly as possible. The Recovery Guru displays detailed information about a particular problem and lists the recovery steps to restore operations.

Extended-Value Software
The following table describes the affordable, easy-to-buy add-on software products that are available to enhance base system functionality.

Functionality Product/Feature Description
Logical Copy SANtricity Snapshot® software SANtricity Snapshot software creates a point-in-time image, or logical copy, of a storage volume, enabling secondary servers to access a suspended version of production data for a variety of applications, including backup, application testing or development, information analysis and data mining.
Disaster Recovery SANtricity Remote Mirroring Synchronous and asynchronous data replication software delivers simple, efficient and flexible remote disaster recovery for business-critical applications.