Nutanix Collector 4.0 fully supports NetApp Clustered Data ONTAP CIFS Shares and a lot of other benefits. Here is a short summary:
WHAT’S NEW
Support for NetApp Clustered Data ONTAP CIFS Shares
Support for NetApp Clustered Data ONTAP is no longer beta, it is now GA and full support would be provided to gather CIFS Shares details from Clustered Data ONTAP version 8.3 or above. You can gather a valuable set of information directly from storage native boxes that can be extremely helpful in sizing your File Share requirements accurately.
Cluster details – Capacity, Storage Efficiency, # of CIFS Shares & # of Volumes
Node details – Node Health, Model, Vendor, ONTAP version, CPU & Memory info
Share details – Type of Share, Share Path, Access Control Levels, and Max Connections
Volume details – Capacity, Storage Efficiency, QoS Level, Snapshot & Backup Details
QoS details – Policy Group, Max Throughput & Workload Count
Short Demo link: Nutanix Collector support for ONTAP
Masking Sensitive Information
Collector 4.0 also provides the option to mask sensitive information when exporting the output to excel. This would be beneficial in the case of Government and Financial accounts or RFPs demanding the same. The following fields are masked across the various sheets – Cluster Name, Host IP, Host Name, VM Name, Disk Name, Snapshot Name, Snapshot File, Switch Name, Port Group, vSwitch, Network, Adapter, Disk, License Name & License Key.
Mapping of Collector Project & Sizer Scenarios
Collector Portal now allows you to not only view the Collector Projects but also allows you to view the associated Sizer Scenarios. To make it even better, we have ensured that you can also see the associated Sizer Scenarios for all your existing Collector Projects as well. This would be extremely beneficial in case of any customer satisfaction issues where the workload has changed pre and post-deployment.
Bulk edits on VM List Page
This has been a long-pending request, Collector Portal allows you to edit multiple VMs in one go via “Bulk Change”. Use cases where bulk edits would be of great value
Sizing a set of VMs in one cluster and the rest in another cluster. For example, all DB VMs “Target Cluster” values can be changed to a new cluster, say DB Cluster instead of default Cluster 1. The rest of the VMs can be left to default, Cluster 1, or further targeted towards specific clusters before exporting to Sizer.
Edit the resources allocated to the set of VMs. For example, all knowledge workers are not allocated enough vCPUs, increase all of them at once via bulk edit.
Additional Checks for Potential Undersizing when exporting to Sizer
In the case of virtual desktop environments, not all the VMs are utilized at the same time, especially when users are working across shifts. The VMs might be actively utilizing the resources but the VM might be switched off when Collector is run to gather the data. Considering the VM as OFF might result in a potentially undersized solution. We have added warnings in place to avoid these kinds of issues both when exporting Collector data to Sizer or Importing Collector data in Sizer.
ENHANCEMENTS
Identification of Home Directory & Application Shares
Collector 4.0 can identify if the shares configured on ONTAP CIFS are Home Directory shares or Applications shares. Sizer shall support exporting home directory shares only or all discovered shares.
Ease of Download
No need to remember any URLs to download Collector Desktop Application. Just ask the partner, prospect or customer to visit https://collector.nutanix.com/ or Google “Nutanix Collector”. Find the “Download Collector Desktop Application” right on the login page.
Retrieving back the Collection File (.zip)
We have also made minor adjustments in the placement of buttons to drive our users towards sharing the Collection (.zip) file over the .xlsx file. The updated button also indicates to the users that the Collection file is a zip file and not xlsx file. Use of the Collection file helps to extract all the value-added in the Collector portal and now you can also map the Collector data to Sizer Scenarios.
RESOLVED ISSUES
Resolved Out of Memory issues when trying to gather data from large Prism environments.
In the case of Hyper-V, Collector can now generate the output in the Excel (.xlsx) format, even when a few attributes for VMs, Cluster Name, and Disk Name are missing.
RESOURCES
Release Notes, User Guide & Security Guide
Report issues in Collector via this Google form
Download Collector via Collector Login Page