The giveaway of Data ONTAP Edge, the NetApp Virtual Storage Appliance, was a huge hit at VMworld. Due to the tremendous feedback NetApp has decided to make the evaluation edition available to the public.
This is a great opportunity for those who are unfamiliar with the capabilities of Data ONTAP to experience it first hand. By downloading and registering for licenses you will receive access to Data ONTAP Edge, OnCommand Systems Manager and the Virtual Storage Console for VMware vCenter Server.
With these tools one receives a NetApp array as a VM, which functions identically as a physical FAS array. This is the beauty of the NetApp storage platform; software defines value and hardware is a commodity and merely a means to scale. Data ONTAP is the premiere software-defined storage platform!
The NetApp Community has established an area where you can engage with other VSA users and NetApp experts to share your experiences and discuss technical detail. We have a program for those who register that will share quick start videos designed to help one learn the features of Data ONTAP in a vSphere environment. This series will span installation & setup, storage management, data reduplication and hardware-accelerated VM cloning, snapshots and replication, which support VMware vStorage APIs (like VAAI & SRM).
Data ONTAP Edge is the perfect compliment to Data ONTAP Cluster Mode. The NetApp advanced storage and data management capabilities scale from ‘bring your own hardware’ to ‘Infinite & Immortal‘.
Why are you still reading, download Data ONTAP Edge!
I already setup the VSA in my home lab. For fun I deployed 50 Windows 2008 VMs in 6 minutes using 9 GB of storage. That came out to 96% dedup.
I would love to see an HA version of this made available.
Wish I had 9gb at home
How does the license work on this? 90 day trial or some such?
Oh… and by gb I meant TB. Doh.
It is a 90 eval. I am not sure if you can reapply for a another eval or not. Make sure to download OnCommand system manager and if you have the access to Virtual Storage Console, that is a must have with this as well.
Here is a very cool idea – what if you deployed the VSA into small offices, home offices and remote locations and then used SnapVault to centrally manage and protect remote data without the need to add on more complexity? Taking advantage of the simple to use and built-in capability is a very compelling use case for the IT shop that wants to add capabilities to the business without adding workload to their plate!
Sadly I have tried to access the VSA download for over a week now with no luck. Once I login with my NOW account I input in the requested fields, click submit then watch the webpage “blows up” with this:
Server Error in ‘/’ Application.
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The resource cannot be found.
Description: HTTP 404. The resource you are looking for (or one of its dependencies) could have been removed, had its name changed, or is temporarily unavailable. Please review the following URL and make sure that it is spelled correctly.
Requested URL: /e/f2.aspx
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Version Information: Microsoft .NET Framework Version:2.0.50727.5456; ASP.NET Version:2.0.50727.5456
Is anyone else seeing this issue?
The license keys are limited to 90 days.
You can (as with all NetApp filers) install demo license keys up to 3 times, after which you’ll have to reinstall.
-Darkstar