A few years ago, NetApp released a software-only version of ONTAP (or, software-defined, if you prefer), in which you could install enterprise-ready ONTAP on pretty much any hardware you wanted, so long as the hardware specs met the minimum requirements.

Originally, it was known as “ONTAP Edge” and was marketed for just what the name said – “edge” use cases, such as remote branch offices or DR sites. It was pretty limited in function; no HA, single node, small data footprint. As such, it didn’t get a huge amount of adoption.

But then, NetApp upped the ante and gave Edge a makeover and called it “ONTAP Select.” While the name kind of reminds you of a bulk-store supercenter membership, Select delivers on several fronts.

With ONTAP Select, you get:

Support for multiple hypervisors, including RedHat KVM and VMware

HA/failover capability

Up to 8 nodes in a cluster (which will likely increase over time)

400TB capacity per node

“Pay as you grow” license model

Support for:

Direct attached HDD or SSD in a Hardware RAID Config Datastores from external arrays (not limited to block-attached LUNs) HCI-based datastores, such as NetApp HCI, vSAN, and Nutanix

Ability to install ONTAP Select even on competitor storage systems(!)

There’s plenty more you can read about here:

https://www.netapp.com/us/media/tr-4517.pdf

https://www.netapp.com/us/media/tr-4613.pdf

We also did a podcast on ONTAP Select as a vNAS here:

So, what would you use it for?

There are more and more use cases for ONTAP Select popping up, including (but not limited to):

Remote branch office

SnapMirror destinations

Edge to core to cloud/data pipleline use cases (such as machine learning/AI)

Ruggedized deployments (think ONTAP on a tank)

There are some new technical reports available for solutions, found here:

Oracle Databases on ONTAP Select:

https://www.netapp.com/us/media/tr-4690.pdf

NetApp ONTAP Select Deploy on Intel NUC

https://www.netapp.com/us/media/tr-4698-deploy.pdf

And this podcast covered ruggedized ONTAP Select, via Vector Data:

This video also covers ONTAP Select solutions: