NetApp E5500 Software

NetApp SANtricity software offers a powerful, intuitive interface for administering NetApp E-Series storage systems. 

NetApp® SANtricity® storage management software enables storage administrators to achieve maximum performance and utilization of their storage through custom performance tuning and extensive configuration flexibility. This distinctive combination is especially important in high-performance environments with varying and often drastically different workloads and performance demands.

SANtricity software is designed to support the highest levels of data availability, integrity, and protection to maximize 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 means that your data is fully protected when it reaches the storage system.

The following table describes the standard SANtricity software features that are available with every E-Series system.

Capability Product/Feature Description
Intuitive Management Storage administration SANtricity Storage Manager software provides management functionality and a graphical representation of the E-Series storage, with an easy-to-use interface for customization 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 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 multipath capabilities for path failover 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 I/O to its attached hosts.
Data Protection RAID levels 0, 1, 10, 3, 5, 6 and DDP With support for multiple RAID levels, SANtricity software offers the flexibility to address varying performance and capacity requirements and service levels. Dynamic disk pools (DDP) simplify traditional RAID management by distributing data, parity information, and spare capacity across a pool of drives, also enabling easier capacity expansion. DDP offers improved data protection by quickly recovering a failed drive while maintaining greater performance.
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 or degraded performance threshold is exceeded – indicating that a drive is showing signs of impending failure – SANtricity software issues a critical alert message and takes corrective action necessary to protect the data.
Background media scans Background media scans proactively check drives 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.
Data Integrity SANtricity Data Assurance Data assurance supports T10- Dif protection information for increased data integrity.
Problem Resolution AutoSupportTM NetApp’s AutoSupport capability enhances customer service by providing the configuration, performance, status and exception data needed to speed problem resolution. Event-based and Time-based (weekly, daily, other) messages are automatically sent to NetApp so that NetApp customer service can provide faster and better service.
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.
System Efficiency SSD Cache The NetApp SANtricity SSD Cache feature provides intelligent read caching capability to identify and host the subset of the data that is hot on the SSDs. Because this caching approach works in real time and in a data-driven fashion, it is always on. Users are not required to set up complicated policies to define the trigger for data movement between tiers—they simply define which volumes should take advantage of the SSD Cache and forget it.

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

Capability Product/Feature Description
Data Security SANtricity Drive Encryption AES-128 bit encryption and simplified key management protect data throughout the drive’s lifecycle without sacrificing performance.