Some of you may know that NetApp Engineering uses an ONTAP Simulator as part of our development process. (The simulator runs all of ONTAP as a process under Linux. At a very low level, we spoof the disk drivers, so that disks are simulated by local files. We spoof the network drivers by putting the Linux Ethernet card into promiscuous mode and creating a fake MAC address associated with the simulator.)
Enough technical details.
The point of this message is that we are now making the simulator available to customers so that they can experiment with ONTAP features and commands without putting production systems at risk. I have had many customers tell me that they wished they had a way to play with new releases and new features, but they didn't have a safe place to do it.
Just to be clear: This is not production software. It's ONTAP running on top of Linux, so don't use it for performance testing. We have no formal support program. Don't call NetApp support. This is an "as is" tool. (Some restrictions may apply. :-)
On the other hand, I think you will find the simulator to be very useful for experimenting with ONTAP. Hundreds of NetApp engineers use it every day, and we have been using the simulator for over a year in NetApp training classes. Not only can you experiment with the features of a single filer, but you can run multiple simulators and experiment with features like SnapMirror, SnapVault, and Cluster Fail Over. It doesn't support Fibre Channel, because that would take more hardware, but it does support iSCSI and all of the other TCP/IP protocols, including NFS, CIFS, HTTP and FTP, as well as network management protocols like SNMP and NDMP.
Here are some details:
You can download the simulator from NOW at http://now.netapp.com/NOW/cgi-bin/simulator.
We have created a category in the NOW community forums called "ONTAP Simulator" that can be accessed at http://forums.netapp.com/showcategory.asp?cid=172.
And finally, we have created a majordomo mailing list that people can join at xdl-simulator@netapp.com. (You know the drill. To join send to majordomo@netapp.com, not to the simulator list itself.)
And of course, feel free to talk about it here on toasters.
As I said above, the simulator is NOT formally supported, but some volunteers at NetApp have agreed to informally answer questions to the xdl-simulator mailing list.
Have fun!
Dave Hitz Founder and EVP Engineering, Network Appliance