Category NetApp

Let me first off tell you how excited I am to be able to share this with you!

I think “OMFG” can easily classify the type of excitement I have for this tool, the simplicity it will introduce into your life, and more.    I can honestly tell you, that without this tool a lot of the things I do on a regular basis would take a lot longer, so if you know anything about me, it is that I like simplicity with reason, efficiency and getting the most out of my resources.

For those of who you think “You can’t get excited over a tool, especially one involving storage” Well wait and see, because you’ll be drooling along with me! ;)

This is part 1 of an almost endless series because there will be more things coming out of this, that and I don’t want to create one massive difficult to read posting on Premium AutoSupport.

So, let’s get started!

All things begin with the NOW Page – So go ahead and login to now.netapp.com

Once you’ve logged in, you will see a section titled:

“My Netapp Products”

Within that section “My AutoSupport” it’s easy to see with the yellow “NEW!” – Go ahead and click on that and you will be ready to start taking advantage of Premium AutoSupport!

Here it is zoomed up a bit so you can see what I’m talking about!

Alright, we’ve clicked in (Yes, this is very basic tutorial for now, I’ll get into the guts soon!)

Alright, you’ve gotten this far! Wow, there are some cool things on this page, which are often overlooked.   I’d like to point those out, just so I’ve done my civic duty!

Okay, here is the disclaimer text.   Browser Support lists IE 6,7 –  Firefox 1, 2, 3 (With SVG) And it cites that Apple Safari is not supported.   For the purposes of all of my screenshots I AM actually using Internet Explorer, however I exclusively use Chrome 99% of the time.   I’ll mention what works and doesn’t work across browsers, the IE and FF experience are absolutely great but you won’t be crippled if you’re not using them – You just won’t get as Rich of an experience.   And the facts behind that are, sometimes you won’t want the rich experience when doing some specific nitty gritty things.   So don’t fret over browsers there is much support!

Another cool thing, which is a great supplement to this, is the WebEx Tutorials and Flash Demos!  Oh, and the iPod contest it mentions, which takes you to a Tech On Tap article from May of 2008.   If you’re seeing this post and not that one, it’s because it’s honestly hard to find anything from those, it’s a great article though by Jay Mistry! (FYI: The screenshots in the TOT Article do not reflect the way Premium AutoSupport looks today. :))

A brief quote from that article:

Now, Premium AutoSupport’s Upgrade Advisor tool does all the hard work for me, saving me four to five hours of work per storage system and providing an upgrade plan that’s complete and easy to follow. The tool works for both standalone systems and clusters and supports all Data ONTAP releases since 6.3. Among the things that it checks for are:

• Known upgrade issues
• Required firmware revisions
• Applicable field alerts
• Software license issues
• Version compatibility of dependent  software products (SnapDrive®, etc.)

Another advantage of the Upgrade Advisor is that it gives us a complete plan to back out each upgrade should a problem arise. We’ve never had to use such a plan, but new regulations in the finance industry are starting to mandate this capability, so it’s nice to have it covered.

I mention this now, because I didn’t even plan to tap on Upgrade Advisor until much later ;) But nonetheless, we’re almost there! It’s time to click the “Premium Autosupport” link!

And this is the part where I stop, and take you directly to the dashboard of one of my demo systems!   You likely will be presented with a list of systems you manage, so select one and you’re ready to rock and roll!

Certain sections have been blocked out, in order to protect my still having a job! ;)

However I’ll go into depth of each of these sections which are hard to read, how they can benefit you and a number of other cool things… In the next post :)

At the high level, the key sections I’d like to mention here which I’ll go into depth are:

• Health Summary and Detailed Healthcheck
• Visualizations
• Configurations
• Raw AutoSupport Data
• Performance
• Upgrade Advisor
• Customize Notifications
• EMS Log Viewer

…and more as I can :)

I did try to order them in the order I intend to deliver them, so if they don’t come out in that order, we’ll deal with that.   Nonetheless, this is the end of this high-level overview, hopefully you’ve learned a bit more about the Premium AutoSupport from this alone (Like its existence) and you’ll be on your way to ensuring a more simplified storage management experience.

I know once you start using these things you’ll be saying “OMFG” too. :)

Psst, see the Performance section? There’s a lot more in there as well, soooo super cool! I’ll try to get these other ones out there as soon as possible so you can benefit the same way I personally do with the magical mysterious things I do! :)

So, I’ve talked before about wanting to discuss the communities but not wanting to reveal information which isn’t exactly public.. Well, I’ve found a way to discuss this without an issue!

It’s called sadly.. Not logging in :) Yes, it is lame, but it works for me! So on to the communities!

At the high level it looks like this:

Which if you look around you’ll find a communities section with breakouts, Recent Content, NetApp TV and the top 5 discussions, documents and the latest poll!

Down a bit further (out of this section) you find Top participants, tags, recent blog posts and…. twitter!

So drilling down a bit we find this kind of stuff

This is a pretty straight-forward area, which provides indepth information for you to ask questions where you’ll get responses from both NetApp folks as well as other customers in the field with your same problem, questions or even solutions of their own!    We’re fortunate to have a number of followers (Internal/External) who monitor and moderate certain forums in order to provide their input into the types of things you’ll encounter out there!  The number of subjects is numerous and you’re always game to discuss any topic under the sun and get some good participation!

Occasionally, you’ll see new and updated Polls! Like this one:

It’s through polls like this where the user community can speak out about their configurations or situations to get a feel for what others happen to be doing.  In this particular poll it shows of the 15 respondants, 40% of them have NFS connectivity to VMware, which is certainly great for those considering NFS and were not sure who else was out there doing it.

And occasionally in the Recent area, you can get an exposure to just some of the types of questions being interactively asked – And who knows, I might even respond ;)

So be sure to check out those communities, check me out while out there as well! I’ll see all of the posts even if I’m not actively watching the site and my contact information is scattered there as well as the rest of the internets as a whole ;)

Take care getting your NetApp on and soon I will tell you how to do even more faster and easier with my other really cool planned things :)

So, I was logged in to the NetApp Communities this weekend (That’s right, I never stop working, or sleep…)

To tell you the truth, I’ve been rather inactive for some time, ever since I made it to “Master” level, was in the Top 5 (Was 2nd place, but have dropped in to 3rd place!) Oh, and one of my other projects kicked off consuming my time.

So, I was surprised to see THIS!

I’m not sure how long the NetApp TV link/videos have been out there, but I certainly saw it there!

This, and a few of the other ones are certainly interesting little marketing stories, but what isn’t a marketing story is the Communities themselves :)

Albeit I’ve been inactive for some time, I still receive every single comment, post or otherwise bit of information that goes out there (I’m so glad we have so many active employees and customers out there, so I don’t have to go through and answer every question myself! sadly I know that I would if I let myself :))

I actually wrote a nice post profiling all of the details of the NetApp communities back many months ago, and then squelched myself because I felt I was releasing too much information that might get my hands slapped, so I didn’t post it.  But nonetheless, this doesn’t seem like anyone will spank me over it!

You ought to check it out, because honestly I do check it out rather regularly, even if I’m not actively posting or commenting… I do read the few thousand emails from the communities which appear in my inbox weekly :)

For those of you who know me, I’m passionate.  Infact I’m a bit too much over the top “OMG I want to share this with you” type of passionate, which is why I convey a lot of the information that I do in the form of this blog.

For the longest time (since I’ve started at NetApp) There has been information I’ve wanted to share.    However, the NDA, Protective and other natures of me has prevented from really transmitting and transferring that “OMFG! This is sooo cool! You should know about it! It will make your life so much easier, faster, etc!”

Luckily for me! Some of those things which I find absoluteledly cool like you wouldn’t believe, I will be allowed to talk about! (Yay me! Yay you!)  so look forward to a series of segments on process simplification, some excerpts of my undelivered Accelerate training session (Which I still need to finish the full write-up of, for posterity) and a whole other series of cool stuff I absolutely love to talk about, especially when there’s noone to share the knowledge with!

Do let me know if there’s something in particular you want me to talk about and I’ll see if I can without getting into too much trouble! I honestly have had a whole slew of topics which I’ve self-squelched myself so as not to get into any sticky situations discussing things I’m not supposed to!

I’m looking forward to this!

You ever get up and say “ooh! I want to find these TR articles!” Okay, if you don’t, *I* do :)

I certainly know a number of other folks who are always out there wondering …. Where do I find this?!?

Well, here is this little gem!

That’s right! all you need to do is click this Technical Reports: By Number link, and there you will have them all right there! I expanded it out to the “View All” feel free to manipulate as appropriate.