That’s right – release candidate now available. If you have concerns over the “RC” designation, allow me to recap what I mentioned in a previous blog post:

RC versions have completed a rigorous set of internal NetApp tests and are are deemed ready for public consumption. Each release candidate would provide bug fixes that eventually lead up to the GA edition. Keep in mind that all release candidates are fully supported by NetApp, even if there is a GA version available. However, while RC is perfectly fine to run in production environments, GA is the recommended version of any ONTAP software release.

For a more official take on it, see the NetApp link:

http://mysupport.netapp.com/NOW/products/ontap_releasemodel/post70.shtml

What’s new in ONTAP 9.1?

At a high level, ONTAP 9.1 brings:

Tons of brand new platforms

NetApp FlexGroup (Generally available!) with Unified Manager and Performance Manager support!

NetApp Volume Encryption (NVE)

SnapMirror to AltaVault/cloud (RC2)

12 node SAN clusters

Native Foreign LUN Import with AFF support (no PVR needed!)

System Manager improvements (FlexGroup GUI, storage efficiency reporting, new cluster setup workflow)

SAP HANA support for AFF templates

Azure support for ONTAP cloud

Trusted Platform Module

32GB FC

SMB 3.1.1 AES-128-GCM encryption (~1.7 times faster than CCM in ONTAP 9.0!)

40GB Ethernet

9.1RC2 specifically brings (outside of bug fixes):

Support for the DS460C shelves

Official support for backup of NAS to cloud via AltaVault (SnapMirror)

SMB support for NetApp FlexGroup volumes

Happy upgrading!

For info about ONTAP 9.0, see:

ONTAP 9 RC1 is now available!

ONTAP 9.0 is now generally available (GA)!