Overview

You can find ONTAP 9.6 Netapp Simulator using the following link: https://netappnotesark.blogspot.com/p/downloads.html

Once you download the OVA, import the OVA into the VMWare

Configure

In this section we will configure the physical and software component of the Netapp. Well physical…as most as we can, given that it is virtualized :D Firstly, following our topology from the Vyos, we need 7 network adapters connected to the different networks.

Network Interfaces

Make sure you have the following for the NetApp Virtual Machine:

Now you can start the machine.

NetApp Software

After you have started the machine, you will have a menu in which you have to press ctrl + c, to enter into the boot menu settings:

That, will allow you to enter into a menu with 9 options, choose option 4 to perform a clean configuration and press enter: Of course, it will ask you if you are sure to zero the disks and perform a clean install:

After you press enter on the second “yes” it will restart the machine and it will allow us to continue with the configuraiton: Once it boots again, you can see that it is wiping all the data from the disks:

After the wiping of data, it will ask us to configure the network. Now, according our topology, we have used network: e0c as the managed network so:

Management interface port: e0c

Management interface IP: 172.23.1.12

Management interface netmask: 255.255.255.0

Management interface default gateway: 172.23.1.254 (the router's IP)

Now, it will ask us if we will continue the installation either:

Browser mode

Command line mode

You can choose whichever in production, I will continue with the Command line, but here is how it looks the Browser mode: P.S. the browser mode is not supported by the simulator.

Browser Mode

Command Line

The command line mode, relies on input from the user. It is less intuitive but I like it more. Also it is the only possibility for the simulator as I am too poor to buy the real thing :D Either way, there are only few questions which the installation wizard needs:

Create or Join a cluster: Create

Is this a Single-Node Cluster: No

Do you accept the defaults: Yes

Password for the administrator: Flatbox1

Cluster name: cluster1

Management network: e0c (not e0d)

Cluster IP Address: 172.23.1.11

Cluster Netmask: 255.255.255.0

License key: Press enter, we will continue it after

DNS Name: flackbox.lab

DNS IP: 172.23.4.1 (Windows Client which we will configure)

Controller Location: Flackbox-lab (we can add anything here)

Below you can see a summary:

There are more, but it didn't fit on the screen :) We can login with: Username: admin Password: Flatbox1

Disk Addition

Now, in order to make some use of our Virtualised storage, we need to add some disks.

Enter System Shell

Before that however, we need to unlock the diag user. Diag user is a special type of user, used for administrative purposes and the most important thing is that it allows us to enter into the system shell:

Create Data Disks

Now that we are in the system shell we are ready to create the disks as follows:

Change the Path

Create the disks

Create SSD Disks

To add SSD disks, use the same command, just instead of type 23, we will add disks with type: 35

After that, we can safetly reboot the machine. Once the machines boots, we have to fix a common problem with the simulator. The simulator often crashes because of the insufficient space in the root aggregate. So, we have to assign all disks this node and remove & disable the snapshots

Assign Disks & Remove / Disable snapshot

After we have disabled the snapshots, we can assign disk to the root aggregate: