#NetApp + Lenovo, will they work together?

1 messages · Page 1 of 1 (latest)

lost cobalt
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We have a customer who is asking us if it is possible to add Lenovo nodes to an original NetApp cluster? My guess is that it will not be supported by either (even though Lenovo support cases tend to end up at NetApp anyway). But it will most likely work just fine... But has anyone tried this? ### Update, we do have Lenovo customers running Snapmirrors to our "Backup as a Service" NetApps without any issues...

steep lichen
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Those customers are probably running older versions of ONTAP then. Supposedly, ONTAP checks the vendor ID with SnapMirror now. And I'm pretty sure you cannot join a Lenovo system to a NetApp one. I mean who would you call for support in such a case lol

brave hearth
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Will not be supported.

lost cobalt
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No mixed cluster support makes sense. But we do have Lenovo boxes running 9.14.x and snapmirrir to 9.15 NetApp systems...

graceful bloom
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While I'm not sure about any hard-coded block, I can say that SnapMirror between Lenovo and NetApp clusters is not supported, FYI.

lost cobalt
bronze current
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I've done some reading and I'm pretty sure it won't work

bronze current
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100% sure it won't work - found a specific blocker in the ONTAP upgrade code that checks for it. Snapmirror between vendors should not be expected to work either.

lost cobalt
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Hmm just checked some of our setups and they still work just fine 😉 Cluster peering and snapmirror updates...

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The cluster is on 9.16.1RC1... where did you find the "blocker" ?

steep lichen
bronze current
bronze current
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@summer grail can you confirm it is absolutely unsupported and shouldn’t work? 😉

steep lichen
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I think NetApp is pretty clear that this is all not supported (I just cannot find the presentation at the moment where that was stated). The question is more like "will it still work", some things are not code enforced. And there are two things we're talking about here, mixing OEMs in a single cluster, and SnapMirror between the systems. The latter one I think still technically works (even though it's not supported)

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in those cases (cross-join OEMs in a cluster and create SnapMirrors), there is no "upgrade" involved, so any ONTAP Upgrade code can not prevent that

bronze current
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Mixing OEMs in a cluster won’t work - even if you somehow join it, it will fail to upgrade. That’s the code I found which is active

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snapmirror may work, but it may be restricted at a future time, if it becomes an issue for the partnership

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All I can say is: do not log a case about it 🙂

steep lichen
bronze current
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Check the checksums of the Lenovo distributions of ONTAP and compare them to NetApp provided ones 🙂

steep lichen
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I did, they're different 🙂

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I have not done a detailed analysis on what files inside the TGZ are different but the TGZs themselves are not the same, and the "BUILD" files for example show obvious differences

bronze current
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Interesting. I don’t have access to Lenovo ones

steep lichen
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I only have one (9.13.1p2)...

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there are some obvious differences in the checksums (left is NetApp, right is Lenovo) but these may just be a string change of all occurences of "NetApp" to "Lenovo" 😉

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lost cobalt
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the ONTAP packages are different not just because the Logos are replaced, but also because Lenovo uses their own disks... or at least I think they do? (On E-Series I know for a fact that they use different disks to what NetApp uses)... strangely on the Lenovos the SCSI string is still "NETAPP...." on the disks 😉 I get get you some detail from a few running systems if you want?

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`GEODM5::> node show -fields model
node model

GEODM5-01 DM5000F
GEODM5-02 DM5000F
2 entries were displayed.

GEODM5::> disk show -fields model
disk model

Info: This cluster has partitioned disks. To get a complete list of spare disk capacity use "storage aggregate show-spare-disks".
1.0.0 X357_S16433T8ATE
1.0.1 X357_S16433T8ATE
1.0.2 X357_S16433T8ATE
1.0.3 X357_S16433T8ATE
1.0.4 X357_S16433T8ATE
1.0.5 X357_S16433T8ATE
1.0.6 X357_S16433T8ATE
1.0.7 X357_S16433T8ATE
1.0.8 X357_S16433T8ATE
1.0.9 X357_S16433T8ATE
1.0.10 X357_S16433T8ATE
1.0.11 X357_S16433T8ATE
1.0.12 X357_S16433T8ATE
1.0.13 X357_S16433T8ATE
1.0.14 X357_S16433T8ATE
1.0.15 X357_S16433T8ATE
1.0.16 X357_S16433T8ATE
1.0.17 X357_S16433T8ATE
18 entries were displayed.`

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If they wanted to "break" compatibility I guess it that the "cluster peering" will be the place to do it? and to my knowledge there isn't a way to see which model hardware or ONTAP version is used on the remote cluster?

bronze current
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Nah, it’s ok. All I can say is that cross vendor snapmirror isn’t intended to work from what I’m reading, but if it does become actually blocked in the future, you’d have to consider how unfriendly it would be to block existing peers and how likely that would be to occur.

lost cobalt
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Yeah we would be in a word of hurt if this were to break 🙂

bronze current
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There might not be commands to see models, but afaik it knows the vendor string

lost cobalt
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I'm just hopeing that the "Lenovo stuff" has an end just as the IBM N-Series 😉 con't recall for how long that went? 5 years maybe? 😉

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Yeah.. good old Fujitsu... isn't that only sold in Japan?

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I used to work for Fujitsu... as a NetApp tech 😉 but also did some of their Eternus stuff...

bronze current
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Maybe! I don’t know

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Re market for Fujitsu stuff

lost cobalt
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I tried to get some pricing on the Fujitsu branded NetApp's a year ago... (from a Fujitsu guy)... never got far... so I am pretty sure it's limited to only Japan, China etc..

steep lichen
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I can tell that Lenovo sometimes pretty aggressively tries to engage NetApp customers in central Europe as well, often trying to undercut NetApp project prices by 10-15 %. They are pretty annoying over here (not as annoying and rude as Pure though 😅 )

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it might have changed recently though, it's been a while since I heard those stories

lost cobalt
# steep lichen I can tell that Lenovo sometimes pretty aggressively tries to engage NetApp cust...

You are right, we won a few cases against them by using the C800 which Lenovo doesn't have in their line up, so they have use use C400 which doesn't compare well against the C800... 😉 I have actually sold a few Lenovo boxes (E-Series) where I gave NetApp my cost-price from Lenovo and asked them to at least match it... which they wasn't able to... I guess it's because Lenvo uses their own disks...

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Another thing is that NetApp has opted to set a min. number of disks in the smaller C-models to 12 (I think it is).. so with smaller setup it's just stupid that the minimum is 180TB raw 😉 Lenovo doesn't have this limit... so we have been more or less forced to sell a few of the smaller systems because of this...

steep lichen
lost cobalt
devout sedge
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C = capacity

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I’m thinking that was the point to have a minimum capacity, capacity based aff after all

lost cobalt
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The fact is that the C-models are plenty fast for workloads at small or mid-sized customers... and since you cannot do lower than C250 and 15TB disks... seems strange to enforce a limit of 180TB for the smalest entry level system? 🙂

brave hearth
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min for the C250 is 8x15 = ~65TiB total

steep lichen
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yeah, the 180TiB limit is for the C800

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C400 and C250 are 120TiB (raw) minimum

lost cobalt
steep lichen
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technical limit is 8 IIRC (at least for auto configuring during setup, if you manually partition and assign disks you might be able to get away with fewer). the 12 disk limit is purely a quoting/sales issue. You can also get around that but it requires a PVR

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but for the C250 it should be possible to quote it with 8 disks ... then again I don't do quoting so I am not sure 🙂

brave hearth
slow ivy
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Well it's more like
C30: 123TB raw
C60: 245TB raw
C80: 376TB raw

So while C60 with 8 drives works these must be the 30TB ones otherwise you're below the raw size limit.
Same with C80, you need 12x30TB min. The 15TB ones are not even supported there (not yet).

solid fjord
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Was cool to read this topic, didn't know it was possible to snapmirror between NetApp and Lenovo 😄

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We also having more trouble to propose new NetApp's because of the min disk requirements, we have a lot of small-mid size customers and they needs in term of space are under 50TB and workloads doesn't necessary require AFF series power

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But it is what it is, we are selling a lot of Lenovo now 😦

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The gold times of C190 are gone ahahaha

brave hearth
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You can work with your account team on the configs.

lost cobalt
lost cobalt
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Are you able to run Lenovo's version of ONTAP as ONTAP Select? 😉

summer grail
# bronze current <@698289418754064527> can you confirm it is absolutely unsupported and shouldn’t...

Sorry guys.. Apparently I need to login to Discord more often. No, mixing different ONTAP version within the same cluster name space is NOT supported by either company, on purpose. Either is snapmirroring between ONTAP's. Even though its the same hardware and software. This is spelled out in the latest version of the Lenovo/NetApp Partnership FAQ, if you could actually get access to it now since FieldPortal access was blown-up and you can no longer find ANYTHING in PartnerHub.

summer grail
summer grail
lost cobalt
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Thanks for the clerification Mark, we cross our fingers that at lest the SnapMirror doesn't get shut down any time soon, because we have a substantial ammount of TB synced up to Lenovo branded systems, and as far as I can see the only way to make this fully supported would be to buy Lenovo iron... But I guess will will ramp up the restore tests just to be sure that we are able to deliver if needed. And we will have to swallow the unsupported-issue... to be honest I don't think we have had a support case on this for years... and I guess we will try to convert the customer to genuine NetApp when their existing systems expire... hopefully by then NetApp are done raising their prices like crazy.. 🙂