This release of the BlueXP Connector includes minor security improvements and bug fixes.

At this time, the 3.9.50 release is available for standard mode and restricted mode.

NetApp Keystone will soon be available from BlueXP and is now in beta. You can access the sign-up page for the NetApp Keystone beta from the left navigation bar of BlueXP.

This release of the BlueXP Connector includes minor security improvements and bug fixes.

At this time, the 3.9.49 release is available for standard mode and restricted mode.

This release of the BlueXP Connector includes minor security improvements and bug fixes.

At this time, the 3.9.48 release is available for standard mode and restricted mode.

After you register BlueXP for support, you can create a support case directly from the BlueXP web-based console. When you create the case, you need to select the service that the issue is associated with.

Starting with this release, you can now create a support case and associate it with additional BlueXP services:

Learn more about creating a support case.

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.

Anytime you use CloudShell to execute FSx for ONTAP operations from BlueXP Workloads, the events appear in Tracker.

Learn how to monitor and track FSx for ONTAP operations in BlueXP

After BlueXP integration in November 2024, newly created FSx for ONTAP file systems were not associated with one workspace in BlueXP. Now when you create or discover FSx for ONTAP file systems, they are associated with one workspace within a BlueXP account.

If you have existing FSx for ONTAP file systems that are not associated with a workspace, we will help you associate them with a workspace in BlueXP. You can create a case with NetApp Support from within the BlueXP console. Select Workload Factory as the service.

You can now remove an FSx for ONTAP file system from a workspace in the BlueXP canvas. This operation dissociates the file system from one workspace so that you can associate it with another workspace within the same BlueXP account.

Learn how to remove an FSx for ONTAP file system from a workspace in BlueXP

Tracker, a new monitoring capability, is available in BlueXP Amazon FSx for NetApp ONTAP. You can use Tracker to monitor and track the progress and status of credentials, storage, and link operations, review details for operation tasks and subtasks, diagnose any issues or failures, edit parameters for failed operations, and retry failed operations.

Learn how to monitor and track FSx for ONTAP operations in BlueXP

CloudShell is available when you're in BlueXP Workloads within the BlueXP console. CloudShell allows you to use the AWS and ONTAP credentials you've provided in your BlueXP account and execute AWS CLI commands or ONTAP CLI commands in a shell-like environment.

Use CloudShell

NetApp now provides CloudFormation resources that allow customers to utilize advanced ONTAP components which are not exposed within the AWS console. CloudFormation is the infrastructure-as-code mechanism for AWS. You'll be able to create replication relationships, CIFS shares, NFS export policies, snapshots, and more.

Manage Amazon FSx for NetApp ONTAP file systems using CloudFormation

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.

When configuring a volume in Azure NetApp Files from BlueXP, you can now indicate network features. This aligns with functionality available in native Azure NetApp Files.

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.

This BlueXP backup and recovery update resolved an issue that prevented customers from browsing local snapshots in an SMB environment.

This BlueXP backup and recovery update fixed an issue that prevented the UI from connecting to an AWS GovCloud environment due to TLS certificate errors. The issue was resolved by using the BlueXP Connector host name instead of the IP address.

Previously, the BlueXP backup and recovery UI limited backups to 999 copies, while the CLI allowed more. Now, you can attach up to 4,000 volumes to a backup policy and include 1,018 volumes not attached to a backup policy. This update includes additional validations that prevent exceeding these limits.

This update ensures that SnapMirror Cloud resync cannot be started from BlueXP backup and recovery for unsupported ONTAP versions after a SnapMirror relationship has been deleted.

BlueXP backup and recovery introduces an updated indexing feature that makes the indexing of data on the source working environment more efficient. The new indexing feature includes updates to the UI, improved performance of the Search & Restore method of restoring data, upgrades to global search capabilities, and better scalability.

Here’s a breakdown of the improvements:

The new indexing feature is available to all new customers.

Before you can use the Search & Restore method of restoring data, you need to enable "Indexing" on each source working environment from which you're planning to restore volumes or files. This allows the Indexed Catalog to track every volume and every backup file, making your searches quick and efficient.

Enable indexing on the source working environment by selecting the "Enable Indexing" option when you are performing a Search & Restore.

For more information, see the documentation how to restore ONTAP data using Search & Restore.

The new indexing feature supports the following:

This release also includes enhancements to global search performance. You will now see progress indicators and more detailed search results, including the count of files and the time taken for the search. Dedicated containers for search and indexing ensure that global searches are completed in under five minutes.

Note these considerations related to global search:

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:

This BlueXP classification release includes general improvements and bug fixes. It also includes:

BlueXP classification now tracks the real time progress of the initial mapping and classification scans on a volume. Separate progressive bars track the mapping and classification scans, presenting a percentage of total files scanned. You can also hover over a progress bar to view the number of files scanned and the total files. Tracking the status of your scans creates deeper insights into the scan progress, enabling you to better plan your scans and understand resource allocation.

To view the status of your scans, navigate to Configuration in BlueXP classification then select the Working Environment configuration. Progress is displayed in line for each volume.

This BlueXP classification release includes the following updates.

This release provides support for Red Hat Enterprise Linux v9.5 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, 9.4, and 9.5.

When conducting mapping-only scans, you can prioritize the most important scans. This feature helps when you have many working environments and want to ensure high priority scans are completed first.

By default, scans are queued based on the order in which they are initiated. With the ability to prioritize scans, you can now move scans to the front of the queue. Multiple scans can be prioritized. Priority is designated in a first-in, first-out order, meaning the first scan you prioritize moves to the front of the queue; the second scan you prioritize becomes second in the queue, and so forth.

Priority is granted on a one-time basis. Automatic rescans of mapping data occur in the default order.

Prioritization is limited to mapping-only scans; it's not available for map and classify scans.

To change the priority:

BlueXP classification now supports the ability to batch retry all failed scans.

You can now reattempt scans in a batch operation with the Retry all function. If classification scans are failing due to a temporary issue such as a network outage, you can retry all scans at the same time with one button instead of retrying them individually. Scans can be retried as many times as needed.

To retry all scans:

The accuracy of the machine learning model for predefined categories has improved by 11%.

This BlueXP classification release updates the export process for the Data Investigation report. This export update is useful for performing additional analyses on your data, creating additional visualizations on the data, or sharing the results of your data investigation with others.

Previously, the Data Investigation report export was limited to 10,000 rows. With this release, the limit has been removed so that you can export all of your data. This change enables you to export more data from your Data Investigation reports, providing you with more flexibility in your data analysis.

You can choose the working environment, volumes, destination folder, and either JSON or CSV format. The exported filename includes a timestamp to help you identify when the data was exported.

The supported working environments include:

Exporting data from the Data Investigation report has the following limitations:

For details about data investigation and the report, see Investigate data stored in your organization.

This BlueXP classification release includes general improvements and bug fixes.

The following regions now support HA multiple availability zone deployments in Azure for Cloud Volumes ONTAP 9.12.1 GA and later:

For a list of all regions, refer to the Global Regions Map under Azure.

You can now use the BlueXP APIs to create, rename, and delete additional data-serving storage VMs for Cloud Volumes ONTAP in Azure. Using the APIs automates the process of storage VM creation, including the configuration of the required network interfaces, LIFs, and a management LIF, if you need to use a storage VM for management purposes.

Create data-serving storage VMs for Cloud Volumes ONTAP in Azure

You can now use BlueXP to deploy and manage the Cloud Volumes ONTAP 9.16.1 General Availability release in Azure and Google Cloud. However, this version is not available for deployment and upgrade in AWS.

Learn about the new features included in this release of Cloud Volumes ONTAP.

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.

The data broker is now supported on hosts running Red Hat Enterprise 9.4, Ubuntu 23.04, and Ubuntu 24.04.

View Linux host requirements.

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.

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.

The AutoSupport widget has been added to the main dashboard screen to alert customers about the AutoSupport status-related issues.

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.

You can now remove subscriptions from the digital wallet if you have unsubscribed from them.

When viewing PAYGO subscriptions, you can now view the consumed capacity of the subscription.

The digital wallet homepage has an updated dashboard of your NetApp licenses and Marketplace subscriptions, with the ability to drill-down into specific services, license types and required actions.

The BlueXP digital wallet now allows you to configure your subscriptions to provider credentials. Typically you do this when you first subscribe to a Marketplace subscription or annual contract. Previously changing the subscription's credentials could only be done on the Credentials page.

You can now update the organization to which a subscription is associated directly from digital wallet.

You now manage Cloud Volumes ONTAP licenses through the home page or the Data service licenses tab. Use the Marketplace subscriptions tab to view your subscription information.

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.

This release of BlueXP disaster recovery provides support for ASA r2 for VMs and datastores on VMFS storage. On an ASA r2 system, ONTAP software supports essential SAN functionality while removes features not supported in SAN environments.

This release supports the following features for ASA r2:

The support for ASA r2 in BlueXP disaster recovery uses ONTAP 9.16.1.

While datastores can be mounted on an ONTAP volume or an ASA r2 storage unit, a resource group in BlueXP disaster recovery cannot include both a datastore from ONTAP and one from ASA r2. You can select either a datastore from ONTAP or a datastore from ASA r2 in a resource group.

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:

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, simulate a ransomware attack to test your response to a ransomware alert. This feature helps you know that you are prepared in the event of an actual ransomware attack by testing alert notification, response, and recovery processes.

For details, refer to Conduct a ransomware attack readiness drill.

This release includes enhancements to the selective discovery and rediscovery processes:

For details, refer to Discover newly created workloads for previously selected working environments and Configure fetaures with the Settings option.

With this release, you can view alerts when high encryption is detected on your workloads even without high file extension changes. This feature, which uses ONTAP Autonomous Ransomware Protection (ARP) AI, helps you identify workloads that are at risk of ransomware attacks. Use this feature and download the entire list of impacted files with or without extension changes.

For details, refer to Respond to a detected ransomware alert.

With this release, you can use Data Infrastructure Insights Storage Workload Security to detect anomalous user behavior in your storage workloads. This feature helps you identify potential security threats and block potentially malicious users to protect your data.

For details, refer to Respond to a detected ransomware alert.

Before you use Data Infrastructure Insights Storage Workload Security to detect anomalous user behavior, you need to configure the option by using the BlueXP ransomware protection Settings option.

Refer to Configure BlueXP ransomware protection settings.

With this release, you can now do the following:

Refer to Discover workloads.

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.

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.

CloudShell is available from anywhere in the BlueXP workload factory console. CloudShell allows you to use the AWS and ONTAP credentials that you've provided in your BlueXP account and execute AWS CLI commands or ONTAP CLI commands in a shell-like environment.

Use CloudShell

The following permission is now available in read mode for Databases: iam:SimulatePrincipalPolicy.

Permissions reference change log

You can now view the permissions that BlueXP workload factory uses to execute various operations starting from the discovery of your storage environments to deploying AWS resources such as file systems in Storage or knowledge bases for GenAI workloads. You can view IAM policies and permissions for Storage, Databases, VMware, and GenAI workloads.

BlueXP workload factory permissions

Service accounts are now supported in BlueXP workload factory. You can create service accounts to act as machine users that automate infrastructure operations.

Create and manage service accounts