Introducing the New Active IQ – 25 Years in the Making
Rip Wilson
25 years ago, we introduced NetApp® AutoSupport® in Data ONTAP® 3.0. AutoSupport sent configuration and event data from our storage systems back to our support and engineering teams. The goal was twofold: to understand how our customers were using our storage so we could build a better product, and to be able to quickly and efficiently support our customers when they had a problem. It was a win-win for NetApp and our customers, and the start of something great.
Along the way, we became more proactive. We could spot a failing disk drive and send a replacement before there was a problem. We had a database of known risk signatures and the corrective actions, and we could alert customers. Think of it as a form of AIOps — artificial intelligence for IT operations — before AIOps was cool.
Then came NetApp Active IQ®, which was another huge step forward. We used the massive amount of AutoSupport telemetry data from our installed base and the latest data science and predictive analytics techniques to expose risk factors and uncover potential problems before they occurred. Through a web UI or mobile app, Active IQ made it easy for customers to monitor the overall health of their environment and follow the steps to fix any problems.
New Interface, New Workflows, New Experience
Today, Active IQ does it again, evolving into a true “digital advisor” that uses advanced AIOps to automate the proactive care and optimization of NetApp environments.The latest release completely redesigns the customer experience. It introduces new views and workflows that make it even easier for you to maintain your NetApp system’s health, security, and availability, and it greatly simplifies administrative and operational tasks.
- You can now build a customized dashboard that reflects the systems most important to you.
- Wellness cards show the categorized and prioritized “best next actions” that most effectively improve the overall health of your environment.
- The inventory card provides an overview of your environment with links to system-level details.
- Planning cards help you see what’s ahead that could affect your budget.
- The upgrade card keeps you informed of recommended software upgrades and kicks off a new workflow that makes it easy to plan and execute an upgrade.
- The valuable insights card summarizes the impact of your NetApp Support contract and Active IQ over the last year.
Nothing’s changed about the advanced data science continuously running behind the scenes, where the volume, velocity, and variety of our data leads to better analytics and intelligence. The insights and guidance of Active IQ are now simply easier to consume and more action oriented. As we like to say, actionable intelligence for optimal data management.
Automation on a Scale Unlike Any Other
As companies race to tout automation and AIOps, what’s often lost is how “real” it is, and whether it can be done at scale.Active IQ has used AIOps to automate problem resolution for years and done so at an industry-leading scale. Each year tens of thousands of hardware failures are predicted and proactively replaced before a disruption occurs and without our customers logging a support ticket. Each day potential problems are identified and resolved without our customers ever interacting with NetApp Support. And now, we’re automating firmware updates on NetApp ONTAP® systems.
In the new Active IQ release, when a risk can be mitigated by a firmware update, the Ansible icon “lights up.” This alert lets you know that there’s an Ansible playbook you can run to automatically update that system’s drive or shelf firmware and resolve the risk. The playbooks are reusable and can become a routine step in your normal Ansible-based configuration management activities. You can learn more about this new functionality at netapp.io.
Start Simplifying Your Storage Management Today
Active IQ is in a constant state of evolution, and as our data and analytics expertise grows, so too do its capabilities. Our vision is to digitally transform the customer experience by providing you with essential insights, guidance, and automation across every aspect of your NetApp ecosystem. We want to empower you with actionable, anticipatory knowledge; digitize offline workflows to create efficiency; and build systems that are self-correcting, self-healing, and self-optimizing. With each release of Active IQ, we take another step toward this vision.Active IQ is available to all NetApp customers with an active support contract*. If you have an SSO, you can get started now. Or visit the Active IQ page to learn more.
*Features vary by product and support tier.
Rip Wilson
Rip Wilson is a principal product marketing manager at NetApp with over 20 years of experience developing compelling messaging and content that communicates our unique business value. Rip holds a degree in business management from Georgia Tech. He is based in Colorado and enjoys golf, tennis, and poker.
