Administrator accounts created prior to ONTAP 9.0 continue to use MD5 passwords after the upgrade, until the passwords are manually changed. MD5 is less secure than SHA-2. Therefore, after upgrading, you should prompt users of MD5 accounts to change their passwords to use the default SHA-512 hash function.
The password hash functionality enables you to do the following:
ONTAP accepts pre-hashed SHA-2 passwords only by using NetApp Manageability SDK (security-login-create and security-login-modify-password).