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.

You can download a report from the Tier Volumes page so you can review the tiering status of all the volumes on the clusters you are managing. BlueXP tiering generates a .CSV file that you can review and send to other people in your company as needed. See how to download the tiering report.

Because of a change in BlueXP tiering, you need to change the following Connector endpoints for successful BlueXP tiering operation:

See the full list of endpoints for your AWS, Google Cloud, or Azure cloud environment.

If the Azure Blob, Google Cloud Storage, or StorageGRID tiering destination exists as a working environment on the Canvas, you can drag your on-prem ONTAP working environment onto the destination to initiate the Tiering setup wizard.

In previous releases it was very time-consuming to provide this secure way of connecting your cluster to an S3 bucket through a VPC endpoint. Now you can follow the prerequisite steps to configure your system for a private connection using a VPC endpoint interface, and then you can select the PrivateLink during the Tiering setup wizard in the Networking page.

Review the requirements and steps to tier inactive data to Amazon S3.

If the Amazon S3 tiering destination exists as a working environment on the Canvas, you can drag your on-prem ONTAP working environment onto the destination to initiate the Tiering setup wizard.

When removing the mirror object store from a MetroCluster configuration, you’ll be prompted whether you want to remove the primary object store as well. You can choose to keep the primary object store attached to the aggregate, or to remove it.

The Cloud Tiering UI has added a new set of pages for object storage configuration. You can add new object stores, connect multiple object stores to an aggregate for FabricPool Mirroring, swap the primary and mirror object stores, delete object store connections to aggregates, and more. Learn more about the new object storage functionality.

Cloud Tiering licenses can now be shared with your clusters that are in MetroCluster configurations. You no longer have to use the deprecated FabricPool licenses for these scenarios. This makes it easier to use the "floating" Cloud Tiering licenses on more of your clusters. See how to license and configure these types of clusters.

Cloud Tiering licenses can now be shared with your clusters that are in Tiering Mirror configurations (not including MetroCluster configurations) and with clusters that are tiered to IBM Cloud Object Storage. You no longer have to use the deprecated FabricPool licenses for these scenarios. This makes it easier to use the "floating" Cloud Tiering licenses on more of your clusters. See how to license and configure these types of clusters.

When setting up Cloud Tiering, now you can configure a lifecycle rule so your inactive data transitions from the Standard storage class to Glacier Instant Retrieval after a certain number of days. This will help reduce your AWS infrastructure costs. See the supported S3 storage classes.

In addition to tiering data from your AFF and FAS systems, now you can tier inactive data from your ONTAP Select systems to cloud storage.