Hello Toasters,

Has anybody upgraded to ONTAP 8.1.4 and made considerations for the new way ONTAP handles UTF-16 Supplementary characters? If so, how did you go about evaluating your exposure to issues with the new way the UTF-16 Supplementary characters are handled?

The 8.1.4 release notes state the following:

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Change in how Data ONTAP handles file names containing UTF-16

supplementary characters

Starting with Data ONTAP 8.1.4, there is a change in how Data ONTAP handles file names containing UTF-16 supplementary characters that you must be aware of if your environment uses such file names. Unicode character data is typically represented in Windows applications using the 16-bit Unicode Transformation Format (UTF-16). Characters in the basic multilingual plane (BMP) of UTF-16 are represented as single 16-bit code units. Characters in the additional 16 supplementary planes are represented as pairs of 16-bit code units that are referred to as surrogate pairs. When you create file names on the storage system that contain supplementary characters, Data ONTAP checks the surrogate pairs. If they are valid, Data ONTAP accepts the file name. If they are invalid, Data ONTAP now rejects the file name and returns an invalid file name error.

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Any thoughts or guidance would be appreciated. I also have a ticket with NetApp support. The first gentlemen I spoke with said he didnt know much about this issue despite his having worked with several customers running 8.1.4. He doesnt have any good recommendations for assesing our environment to exposure to UTF-16 Supplementary characters and thinks it is generally a low risk concern.

Thanks!

-Phil