When you install the Connector, or when an automatic upgrade occurs, the Connector contacts repositories to download images for the installation or upgrade. By default, the Connector has always contacted the following endpoints:

The first endpoint includes a wild card because we can't provide a definitive location. The load balancing of the repository is managed by the service provider, which means the downloads can happen from different endpoints.

For increased security, the Connector can now download installation and upgrades images from dedicated endpoints:

We recommend that you start using these new endpoints by removing the existing endpoints from your firewall rules and allowing the new endpoints.

These new endpoints are supported starting with the 3.9.47 release of the Connector. There is no backwards compatibility with previous releases of the Connector.

Note the following:

This release of the BlueXP Connector includes bug fixes and a change to the endpoints contacted during Connector installation.

At this time, the 3.9.47 release is available for standard mode and restricted mode.

When you manually install the Connector, the installer no longer contacts https://support.netapp.com.

The installer still contacts https://mysupport.netapp.com.

The Connectors page lists only currently available Connectors. It no longer displays Connectors that you have removed.

A new private mode release is now available to download from the NetApp Support Site

The 3.9.46 release includes updates to the following BlueXP components and services.

While the BlueXP digital wallet and BlueXP replication are also included with private mode, there are no changes from the previous private mode release.

For more details about private mode, including how to upgrade, refer to the following:

You can quickly identify ONTAP clusters that have low capacity or low performance, gauge the extent of availability, and identify security risks. You can view alerts related to capacity, performance, protection, availability, security, and configuration.

You can drill into alert details and find recommendations.

With BlueXP alerts, you can view alerts associated with your ONTAP storage environment and drill into the details that are linked to ONTAP System Manager.

Learn about BlueXP alerts.

FSx for ONTAP file system management tasks such as adding volumes, expanding file system capacity, and managing storage VMs are now managed in BlueXP workload factory, a new service offered by NetApp and Amazon FSx for NetApp ONTAP. You can use your existing credentials and permissions just as before. The difference is that you can now do more from BlueXP workload factory to manage your file systems. When you open an FSx for ONTAP working environment from the BlueXP canvas, you will go directly to BlueXP workload factory.

Learn about FSx for ONTAP features in BlueXP workload factory

If you're looking for the advanced view option, which enables you to manage an FSx for ONTAP file system using ONTAP System Manager, you can now find that option from the BlueXP canvas after you select the working environment.

Customers can now create Amazon FSx for NetApp ONTAP file systems in three new AWS Regions: Europe (Zurich), Europe (Spain), and Asia Pacific (Hyderabad).

Refer to Amazon FSx for NetApp ONTAP is now available in three additional regions for full details.

You can now add a storage VM to the Amazon FSx for NetApp ONTAP file system using BlueXP.

The My Opportunities tab is now My estate. The documentation is updated to reflect the new name.

You have had the ability to view Amazon S3 buckets on the BlueXP Canvas for quite a while. Now you can add new buckets and change properties for existing buckets directly from BlueXP. See how to add new Amazon S3 buckets.

You have had the ability to view Azure Blob Storage on the BlueXP Canvas for quite a while. Now you can add new storage accounts and change properties for existing storage accounts directly from BlueXP. See how to add new Azure Blob storage accounts.

The following permission is now required to manage Azure NetApp Files volumes from BlueXP:

Microsoft.Network/virtualNetworks/subnets/read

This permission is required to read a virtual network subnet.

If you're currently managing Azure NetApp Files from BlueXP, you need to add this permission to the custom role that's associated with the Microsoft Entra application that you previously created.

Learn how to set up a Microsoft Entra application and view the custom role permissions.

You can no longer create a volume from a template. This action was associated with the BlueXP remediation service, which is no longer available.

A new Application Templates service enables you to set up a volume template for Azure NetApp Files. The template should make your job easier because certain volume parameters will already be defined in the template, such as capacity pool, size, protocol, VNet and subnet where the volume should reside, and more. When a parameter is already predefined, you can just skip to the next volume parameter.

BlueXP backup and recovery now can back up both FlexVol and FlexGroup on-premises volumes that are configured using either SnapLock Compliance or SnapLock Enterprise protection modes. Your clusters must be running ONTAP 9.14 or greater for this support. Backing up FlexVol volumes using SnapLock Enterprise mode has been supported since ONTAP version 9.11.1. Earlier ONTAP releases provide no support for backing up SnapLock protection volumes.

See the complete list of supported volumes in the Learn about BlueXP backup and recovery.

Before you can use Search & Restore, you need to enable "Indexing" on each source working environment from which you'll want to restore volume data. This enables the Indexed Catalog to track the backup files for every volume. The Volumes page now shows the indexing status:

BlueXP backup and recovery now supports file and folder restores on Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) versions 8 and 9 using the Podman engine. This applies to the BlueXP backup and recovery Browse and Restore method.

BlueXP Connector version 3.9.40 supports certain versions of Red Hat Enterprise Linux versions 8 and 9 for any manual installation of the Connector software on a RHEL 8 or 9 host, regardless of the location in addition to the operating systems mentioned in the host requirements. These newer RHEL versions require the Podman engine instead of the Docker engine. Previously, BlueXP backup and recovery had two limitations when using the Podman engine. These limitations have been removed.

Learn more about restoring ONTAP data from backup files.

This release includes an improved catalog index that completes the baseline indexing much faster. Faster indexing enables you to use the Search and Restore feature more quickly.

Learn more about restoring ONTAP data from backup files.

With this release, you can now restore volumes that you created in ONTAP that are less than 1 GB. The minimum volume size that you can create using ONTAP is 20 MB.

The DataLock feature protects your backup files from being modified or deleted for a specified period of time. This is helpful to protect your files against ransomware attacks.

For details about DataLock and tips on how to mitigate the associated costs, refer to Backup-to-object policy settings.

The Amazon Web Services (AWS) Identity and Access Management (IAM) Roles Anywhere service enables you to use IAM roles and short-term credentials for your workloads outside of AWS to access AWS APIs securely, the same way that you use IAM roles for workloads on AWS. When you use IAM Roles Anywhere private key infrastructure and AWS tokens, you don't need long-term AWS access keys and secret keys. This enables you to rotate credentials more frequently, improving security.

With this release, support for AWS IAM Roles Anywhere service is a technology preview.

Refer to BlueXP backup and recovery July 2024 release blog.

Previously, FlexVol volumes could be restored, but you couldn't restore FlexGroup folders or directories. With ONTAP 9.15.1 p2, you can restore FlexGroup folders using the Browse and restore option.

With this release, support for FlexGroup folder restore is a technology preview.

For details, refer to Restore folders and files using Browse & Restore.

For details to enable it manually, refer to BlueXP backup and recovery July 2024 release blog.

This BlueXP classification release includes general improvements and bug fixes.

This BlueXP classification release includes the following updates.

This release provides support for Red Hat Enterprise Linux v8.10 in addition to previously supported versions. This is applicable to any manual on-premises installation of BlueXP classification, including dark site deployments.

The following operating systems require using the Podman container engine, and they require BlueXP classification version 1.30 or greater: Red Hat Enterprise Linux version 8.8, 8.10, 9.0, 9.1, 9.2, 9.3, and 9.4.

Learn more about BlueXP classification.

This release provides support for NFS v4.1 in addition to previously supported versions.

Learn more about BlueXP classification.

This release provides support for Red Hat Enterprise Linux v9.4 in addition to previously supported versions. This is applicable to any manual on-premises installation of BlueXP classification, including dark site deployments.

The following operating systems require using the Podman container engine, and they require BlueXP classification version 1.30 or greater: Red Hat Enterprise Linux version 8.8, 9.0, 9.1, 9.2, 9.3, and 9.4.

Learn more about BlueXP classification deployments overview.

This release provides improved scan performance.

The DS_v2 and Es_v3 machine families are no longer available for selection on BlueXP when deploying new instances of Cloud Volumes ONTAP in Azure. These families will be retained and supported only in older, existing systems. New deployments of Cloud Volumes ONTAP are supported in Azure only from the 9.12.1 release. We recommend that you switch to either Es_v4 or any other series compatible with Cloud Volumes ONTAP 9.12.1 and later. The DS_v2 and Es_v3 series machines, however, will be available for new deployments made through the API.

Supported configurations in Azure

NetApp has planned the end of availability (EOA) and end of support (EOS) of Cloud Volumes ONTAP node-based licensing. Beginning with 11 November, 2024, the limited availability of node-based licenses has been terminated. The support for node-based licensing ends on 31 December, 2024. After the EOA of your node-based licenses, you should transition to capacity-based licensing by using the BlueXP license conversion tool.

For annual or longer-term commitments, NetApp recommends that you contact your NetApp representative prior to the EOA date or license expiry date to ensure that the prerequisites for the transition are in place. If you don't have a long-term contract for a Cloud Volumes ONTAP node and run your system against an on-demand pay-as-you-go (PAYGO) subscription, it is important to plan your conversion before the EOS date. For both long-term contracts and PAYGO subscriptions, you can use the BlueXP license conversion tool for a seamless conversion.

End of availability of node-based licenses
Convert node-based licenses to capacity based

The option to deploy Cloud Volumes ONTAP systems by using node-based licenses is deprecated on BlueXP. Except for a few special cases, you cannot use node-based licenses for Cloud Volumes ONTAP deployments for any cloud provider.

NetApp recognizes the following unique licensing requirements in compliance with contractual obligations and operational needs, and will continue to support node-based licenses in these situations:

End of availability of node-based licenses

BlueXP now enables you to select a cold tier to store the inactive capacity tier data on Azure Blob storage. Adding the cold tier to the existing hot and cool tiers provides you with a more affordable storage option and improved cost efficiency.

Data tiering in Azure

You now have the option to restrict public access to your storage account for Cloud Volumes ONTAP systems on Azure. By disabling access, you can secure your private IP address from exposure even within the same VNet, should there be a need to comply with your organization's security policies. This option also disables data tiering for your Cloud Volumes ONTAP systems, and is applicable to both single node and high-availability pairs.

Security group rules.

You now have the ability to activate write once, read many (WORM) storage on an existing Cloud Volumes ONTAP system using BlueXP. This functionality provides you with the flexibility of enabling WORM on a working environment, even if WORM was not enabled on it during its creation. Once enabled, you cannot disable WORM.

Enabling WORM on a Cloud Volumes ONTAP working environment

The n1 series machines are no longer available for selection on BlueXP when deploying new instances of Cloud Volumes ONTAP in Google Cloud. The n1 series machines will be retained and supported only in older, existing systems. New deployments of Cloud Volumes ONTAP are supported in Google Cloud only from the 9.8 release. We recommend that you switch to the n2 series machine types that are compatible with Cloud Volumes ONTAP 9.8 and later. The n1 series machines, however, will be available for new deployments performed through the API.

Supported configurations in Google Cloud.

BlueXP now supports AWS Local Zones for Cloud Volumes ONTAP high availability (HA) deployments in private mode. The support that was earlier limited to only standard mode has now been extended to include private mode.

For more information on AWS Local Zones with HA Deployments, refer to AWS Local Zones.

You can now manage Cloud Volumes Service for Google Cloud directly from BlueXP:

It's now easier to navigate between Cloud Manager and Spot.

A new Storage Operations section in Spot enables you to navigate directly to Cloud Manager. After you're done, you can get back to Spot from the Compute tab in Cloud Manager.

By leveraging Spot's Cloud Analyzer, Cloud Manager can now provide a high-level cost analysis of your cloud compute spending and identify potential savings. This information is available from the Compute service in Cloud Manager.

Learn more about the Compute service.

We updated the BlueXP copy and sync service and the data broker to fix a few bugs. The new data broker version is 1.0.56.

We updated the BlueXP copy and sync service and the data broker to fix a few bugs. The new data broker version is 1.0.55.

We updated the BlueXP copy and sync service and the data broker to fix a few bugs. The new data broker version is 1.0.54.

You can now view the storage firmware, SP/BMC firmware, and Autonomous Ransomware Package (ARP) that are recommended for an update. Learn how to view firmware update recommendations.

NetApp SupportEdge Basic service offering now includes all Digital Advisor features available in SupportEdge Advisor and SupportEdge Expert, except for Full-Stack Topology (VMware), which does not provide visibility into VMware full-stack monitoring, even if enabled.

The 7-Mode Upgrade Advisor Plans report is no longer available as 7-Mode systems have reached the end of limited support. For more information, see Software Version Support. Learn more about upgrading the Data ONTAP storage systems operating in 7-Mode.

The BlueXP digital wallet now enables you to manage licenses for BlueXP disaster recovery. You can add licenses, update licenses, and view details about licensed capacity.

Learn how to manage licenses for BlueXP data services

Several improvements to the Cloud Volumes ONTAP usage reports are now available:

For more information about the usage reports, refer to Download usage reports.

The BlueXP digital wallet now identifies Google Cloud Marketplace subscriptions that are associated with a private offer and shows the end date and term of the subscription. This enhancement enables you to verify that you've successfully accepted the private offer and to validate its terms.

Now you can find out what you're being charged for when you're subscribed to capacity-based licenses. The following types of usage reports are available for download from the BlueXP digital wallet. The usage reports provide capacity details of your subscriptions and tell you how you're being charged for the resources in your Cloud Volumes ONTAP subscriptions. The downloadable reports can be easily shared with others.

For more information about the usage reports, refer to Download usage reports.

You can now generate and download reports to help you analyze your landscape. Predesigned reports summarize failovers and failbacks, show replication details on all sites, and show job details for the past seven days.

Refer to Create disaster recovery reports.

You can now sign up for a 30-day free trial of BlueXP disaster recovery. Previously, free trials were for 90 days.

Refer to Set up licensing.

A previous release included updates to the failover test schedule structure, which was needed to support daily and weekly schedules. This update required that you disable and re-enable all existing replication plans so that you will be able to use the new daily and weekly failover test schedules. This is a one-time requirement.

Here's how:

When you create a replication plan and map compute resources, you can now map folders so that VMs are recovered in a folder you specify for datacenter, cluster, and host.

For details, refer to Create a replication plan.

When a failure occurs and you are starting a failover, performing a failback, or testing the failover, you can now see details of the VMs and identify which VMs did not restart.

Refer to Fail over applications to a remote site.

When you create a replication plan, you can now set a boot delay for each VM in the plan. This enables you to set a sequence for the VMs to start to ensure that all your priority one VMs are running before subsequent priority VMs are started.

For details, refer to Create a replication plan.

When you create a replication plan, you can now see the operating system for each VM in the plan. This is helpful in deciding how to group VMs together in a resource group.

For details, refer to Create a replication plan.

When you create a replication plan, you can now add a prefix and suffix to the VM names on the disaster recovery sit. This enables you to use a more descriptive name for the VMs in the plan.

For details, refer to Create a replication plan.

You can delete any snapshots that are no longer needed beyond your specified retention count. Snapshots might accumulate over time when you lower your snapshot retention count, and you can now remove them to free up space. You can do this anytime on demand or when you delete a replication plan.

For details, refer to Manage sites, resource groups, replication plans, datastores, and virtual machines information.

You can now reconcile snapshots that are out of sync between the source and target. This might occur if snapshots are deleted on a target outside of BlueXP disaster recovery. The service deletes the snapshot on the source automatically every 24 hours. However, you can perform this on demand. This feature enables you to ensure that the snapshots are consistent across all sites.

For details, refer to Manage replication plans.

This release includes support for VMs mounted on VMware vSphere virtual machine file system (VMFS) datastores for iSCSI and FC protected to on-premises storage. Previously, the service provided a technology preview supporting VMFS datastores for iSCSI and FC.

Here are some additional considerations regarding both iSCSI and FC protocols:

This release includes a technology preview of support for VMs mounted on VMware vSphere virtual machine file system (VMFS) datastores for FC protected to on-premises storage. Previously, the service provided a technology preview supporting VMFS datastores for iSCSI.

With this release, you can now cancel a job in the Job Monitor UI.

Refer to Monitor jobs.

You can now discover your E-Series systems directly from BlueXP. Discovering E-Series systems provides you with a complete view of data across your hybrid multicloud.

Some BlueXP economic efficiency features have been temporarily disabled:

If you have existing assets in place and want to determine whether a technology needs to be updated, you can use the BlueXP economic efficiency technology refresh options. You can either review a short assessment of your current workloads and get recommendations, or if you sent AutoSupport logs to NetApp within the past 90 days, the service can now provide a workload simulation to see how your workloads perform on new hardware.

You can also add a workload and exclude existing workloads from the simulation.

Previously, you could only take an assessment of your assets and identify whether a technology refresh is recommended.

The feature is now part of the Tech refresh option in the left navigation.

Learn more about the Evaluate a technology refresh.

This release of BlueXP economic efficiency includes a new option to take an assessment of your assets and identify whether a technology refresh is recommended. The service includes a new Tech refresh option in the left navigation, new pages where you can take an assessment of your current workloads and assets, and a report that provides recommendations to you.

You have had the ability to view Google Cloud Storage buckets on the BlueXP Canvas for quite a while. Now you can add new buckets and change properties for existing buckets directly from BlueXP. See how to add new Google Cloud Storage buckets.

You can now discover NetApp ASA r2 systems when using BlueXP in private mode. This support is available starting with the 3.9.46 private mode release of BlueXP.

You can now discover NetApp ASA r2 systems in BlueXP when using BlueXP in standard mode or restricted mode. After you discover a NetApp ASA r2 system and open the working environment, you're brought directly to System Manager.

No other management options are available with ASA r2 systems. You can't use the Standard view and you can't enable BlueXP services.

Discovery of ASA r2 systems is not supported when using BlueXP in private mode.

You can no longer create a volume from a template. This action was associated with the BlueXP remediation service, which is no longer available.

Using the new BlueXP operational resiliency service and its automated IT operational risk remediation suggestions, you can implement suggested remediations before an outage or failure occurs.

Operational resiliency is a service that helps you analyze alerts and events to maintain the health, uptime, and performance of services and solutions.

Learn more about BlueXP operational resiliency.

With this release, you can enable BlueXP classification, a core component of the BlueXP family, to scan and classify data in your file share workloads. Classifying data helps you identify whether your data includes personal or private information, which can increase security risks. This process also impacts workload importance and helps you ensure that you are protecting workloads with the right level of protection.

Scanning for PII data in BlueXP ransomware protection is generally available to customers who deployed BlueXP classification. BlueXP classification is available as part of the BlueXP platform at no extra charge and can be deployed on-premises or in the customer cloud.

Refer to Configure BlueXP ransomware protection settings.

To initiate scanning, on the Protection page, click Identify exposure in the Privacy exposure column.

Scan for personally identifiable sensitive data with BlueXP classification.

You can now send data to your security and event management system (SIEM) for threat analysis and detection using Microsoft Sentinel. Previously, you could select the AWS Security Hub or Splunk Cloud as your SIEM.

Learn more about configuring BlueXP ransomware protection settings.

With this release, new deployments of BlueXP ransomware protection now have 30 days for a free trial. Previously, BlueXP ransomware protection provided 90 days as a free trial. If you are already in the 90-day free trial, that offer continues for the 90 days.

Before you restore an application workload at the file level, you can now view a list of files that might have been impacted by an attack and identify those you want to restore. Previously, if the BlueXP Connectors in an organization (previously an account) were using Podman, this feature was disabled. It is now enabled for Podman. You can let BlueXP ransomware protection choose the files to restore, you can upload a CSV file that lists all the files impacted by an alert, or you can manually identify which files you want to restore.

Learn more about recovering from a ransomware attack.

With this release, you can now group file shares into groups to make it easier for you to protect your data estate. The service can protect all volumes in a group at the same time. Previously, you needed to protect each volume separately.

Learn more about grouping file share workloads in ransomware protection strategies.

BlueXP ransomware protection now gathers information about high and critical security risks related to a cluster from NetApp Digital Advisor. If any risk is found, BlueXP ransomware protection provides a recommendation in the Dashboard's Recommended actions pane: "Fix a known security vulnerability on the cluster <name>." From the recommendation on the Dashboard, clicking Review and fix suggests to review Digital Advisor and a Common Vulnerability & Exposure (CVE) article to resolve the security risk. If there are multiple security risks, review information in Digital Advisor.

Refer to Digital Advisor documentation.

With this release, you can set a backup destination to a Google Cloud Platform bucket. Previously, you could add backup destinations only to NetApp StorageGRID, Amazon Web Services, and Microsoft Azure.

Learn more about configuring BlueXP ransomware protection settings.

The service now supports Cloud Volumes ONTAP for Google Cloud Platform for storage protection. Previously, the service supported only Cloud Volumes ONTAP for Amazon Web Services and Microsoft Azure along with on-premises NAS.

Learn about BlueXP ransomware protection and supported data sources, backup destinations, and working environments.

You can now limit access to specific activities with role-based access control (RBAC). BlueXP ransomware protection uses two roles from BlueXP: BlueXP Account Admin and Non-Account Admin (Viewer).

For details about the actions that each role can perform, see Role-based access control privileges.

You can now replicate data from an Amazon FSx for ONTAP file system to Cloud Volumes ONTAP.

Learn how to set up data replication.

You can now replicate data from an Amazon FSx for ONTAP file system to the following destinations:

Learn how to set up data replication.

You can now replicate data from a Cloud Volumes ONTAP system or an on-premises ONTAP cluster to an Amazon FSx for ONTAP file system.

Learn how to set up data replication.

The BlueXP software updates service provides a seamless update experience to users by mitigating risks, and ensuring customers can fully leverage ONTAP features.

Learn more about BlueXP software updates.

Starting with StorageGRID 11.8, you can use the familiar Grid Manager interface to manage your StorageGRID system from BlueXP.

Learn how to administer StorageGRID using the advanced view.

You now have the ability to review and approve a StorageGRID management interface certificate when discovering the StorageGRID system from BlueXP. You can also review and approve the latest StorageGRID management interface certificate on a discovered grid.

Learn how to review and approve the server certificate during system discovery.

You can now discover your StorageGRID systems directly from BlueXP. Discovering StorageGRID provides you with a complete view of data across your hybrid multicloud.

In the past you needed to use the default "fabric-pool" prefix when defining the bucket name, for example, fabric-pool-bucket1. Now you can use a custom prefix when naming your bucket. This functionality is available only when tiering data to Amazon S3. Learn more.

If you are using multiple Connectors to manage all the storage systems in your environment, some clusters on which you want to implement tiering may be in different Connectors. If you are not sure which Connector is managing a certain cluster, you can search across all Connectors using BlueXP tiering. Learn more.

When you activate BlueXP tiering, ONTAP can use an unlimited amount of network bandwidth to transfer the inactive data from volumes in the cluster to object storage. If you notice that tiering traffic is affecting normal user workloads, you can throttle the amount of bandwidth that can be used during the transfer. Learn more.

The tiering event "Tier additional data from cluster <name> to object storage to increase your storage efficiency" now appears as a notification when a cluster is tiering less than 20% of its cold data - including clusters that are tiering no data.

This notification is a "Recommendation" to help make your systems more efficient and to save on storage costs. It provides a link to the BlueXP tiering total cost of ownership and savings calculator to help you calculate your cost savings.

The Licensing tab has been removed from the BlueXP tiering interface. All licensing for Pay-as-you-go (PAYGO) subscriptions are accessed from the BlueXP tiering On-Premises Dashboard now. There is also a link from that page to the BlueXP digital wallet so that you can view and manage any BlueXP tiering bring-your-own-licenses (BYOL).

The "Clusters Dashboard" tab has been renamed to "Clusters", and the "On-Prem Overview" tab has been renamed to "On-Premises Dashboard". These pages have added some information that will help you evaluate if you can optimize your storage space with additional tiering configuration.

Volume caching, a feature of ONTAP 9 software, is a remote caching capability that simplifies file distribution, reduces WAN latency by bringing resources closer to where your users and compute resources are, and lowers WAN bandwidth costs. Volume caching provides a persistent, writable volume in a remote place. You can use BlueXP volume caching to speed up access to data or to offload traffic from heavily accessed volumes. Cache volumes are ideal for read-intensive workloads, especially where clients need to access the same data repeatedly.

With BlueXP volume caching, you have caching capabilities for the cloud, specifically for Amazon FSx for NetApp ONTAP, Cloud Volumes ONTAP, and on-premises as working environments.

Learn more about BlueXP volume caching.

You now have the ability to use workload factory from the BlueXP console. The BlueXP console experience provides the same functionality as the workload factory console.

Learn how to access workload factory from the BlueXP console