Announcing OneFS 8.0.0

EMC Isilon OneFS 8.0.0 release has some great new and updated features that provide benefits on both the hardware and software sides. For example:

  • You can apply file filtering rules to allow or deny file writers to a specific access zone based on criteria that you specify. You can also apply filtering rules to allow or deny file writes to SMB shares.
  • You can configure overlapping base directories for access zones.
  • You can configure multiple DNS servers for each access zone, also known as multi-tenancy.
  • You can store data in the cloud using CloudPools, enabling you to take advantage of lower-cost cloud storage.
  • The clusterwide event log groups related alerts and enables you to configure a maintenance period to stop alerts from being generated while you’re performing maintenance tasks on the cluster.
  • Simultaneous and rolling upgrades are supported between OneFS 8.0.0 and later releases. When you upgrade from OneFS 8.0.0 and later versions, you can roll back the active upgrade to the earlier version of OneFS. The new upgrade features are available only when you upgrade between OneFS 8.0.0 and later releases.

New Features in OneFS 8.0.0

The following new features are included in OneFS 8.0.0. For details, see the OneFS 8.0.0 Release Notes. You’ll need to log in to EMC Online Support to access release notes.

Authentication

  • You can apply file filtering rules to a specified access zone, including any SMB shares and NFS exports within the access zone.
  • Multi-tenant DNS support enables different tenants on the same Isilon cluster to use different DNS servers to perform hostname lookups. DNS servers are configured by a new network object called a groupnet that’s associated with a single access zone. The DNS cache maintains separate caches for separate groupnets. Groupnets are supported by the SMB, NFS, HDFS, and Swift protocols.
  • You can configure access zones to have a shared base directory, allowing the access zones to share data. Access zones that share a base directory should also share authentication providers.

Cluster configuration

  • You can store your data in the cloud with the CloudPools licensed module. CloudPools supports EMC Isilon, EMC Elastic Cloud Storage Service, EMC ECS Appliance, Amazon S3, and Microsoft Azure as cloud providers. Through file pool policies, you can define which data on your cluster to archive to the cloud. Although file data is moved to remote storage, the files remain visible in OneFS.

Events, alerts, and cluster monitoring

  • The isi statistics commands are now OneFS API-based and support Role-Based Access Control (RBAC). See the OneFS 8.0.0 CLI Administration Guide for details.
  • Here are just some of the many improvements to the clusterwide event log. Be sure to check the OneFS 8.0.0.0 Release Notes for details.
    • Related events are placed in an event group, and those events are managed at the group level – allowing you to resolve or ignore related events with a single action.
    • Alerts are distributed through channels, providing flexibility in determining when notifications should be sent and how, and the distribution list for each notification.
    • You can avoid notification of numerous maintenance events by scheduling maintenance periods. Updating event groups is suspended during the maintenance period and resumes when the period ends.
    • Command-line interface (CLI) commands for the clusterwide event log are now OneFS API-based and support Role-Based Access Control (RBAC). See the OneFS 8.0.0 CLI Administration Guide for details.

File system

  • OneFS 8.0.0 is based on FreeBSD 10, improving CPU usage and overall system performance.

Migration

  • New migration controls enable you to monitor and to pause running NetApp migrations.
  • You can schedule NetApp migrations to run during off-peak hours and make them dormant when network usage is high by specifying a sleep schedule. (This feature is not supported for VNX migrations.
  • Migrating data from NetApp SnapLock volumes is supported in SmartLock Enterprise mode.
  • A single migration ID ties a migration workflow together. You can trace the history of NetApp and VMX migrations by providing the migration IDs.

SMB

  • With SMB continuous availability, you can allow clients to create persistent handles that can be reclaimed after an outage, and specify how long to retain the persistent handle. You can use the continuous availability feature to force strict lockouts on users attempting to open a file that belongs to another handle. This feature is available for servers using Windows 8 or Windows 2012 R2 or higher.
  • You can enable server-side copy so that file data doesn’t have to traverse the network. Avoiding network traversal can improve performance for file copy operations performed by Microsoft Windows clients.

Upgrading to OneFS 8.0.0

All upgrades from earlier releases to OneFS 8.0.0 require a simultaneous reboot of the cluster.

If you want to upgrade to this new release, explore your upgrade options by reviewing the Isilon Supportability and Compatibility Guide. Then, prepare for the upgrade process by reviewing the following documents:

When you’re ready to upgrade, download the OneFS 8.0.0 installation file from the Download section of the EMC Online Support site.

More information

For more technical information about all of the new OneFS 8.0.0 features and enhancements, refer to the OneFS 8.0.0 Documentation Info Hub.

Let us know!

Let us know what you think. If you have feedback for us about this or any other Isilon technical content, email us at isicontent@emc.com. And thank you!

About the Author: Risa Galant