NetApp cDOT – Clustered Data ONTAP Command Line

I would like to continue on introduction to Clustered Data ONTAP (often referred as NetApp cDOT, or NetApp c-mode). Today I would give you a short introduction to  CLI (command line interface). There is a good chance you have some experience with 7-mode NetApp – if not – do not worry. But just as a reminder. Within 7-mode Data ONTAP you could login as an administrator. This is the primary 7-mode CLI and it’s called the admin shell. You could set different privilege levels with priv set command (such as advanced, diag, etc.). Within diag user you could access also systemshell (I have described this process in NetApp OnTAP – add ssh keys post). Keep in mind – this is quite advance topic and in normal administration tasks you would never need to access systemshell, but it’s good to be aware it is possible and how to access it.

Command prompt 7-mode

7-mode command prompt is like:

netapp01>
netapp01> uptime
  9:00pm up  9:43 0 NFS ops, 13490 CIFS ops, 0 HTTP ops, 0 FCP ops, 0 iSCSI ops

Where netapp01 is a hostname in our storage array. This, primary 7-mode CLI is called the admin shell. No more than two sessions are allowed (one through ssh, second through management port).

Command prompt c-mode (cDOT)

NetApp cDOT (clustered Data ONTAP) prompt is a little bit different. the Clustered Data ONTAP has three different shells for CLI commands. Do not worry, in 99% of situations you are going to use one, default clustershell. However it’s good to be aware there is also a nodeshell and systemshell available.

clustershell

netapp01::> 
netapp01::> version
NetApp Release 8.2.1 Cluster-Mode: Fri Sep 16 13:30:32 PDT 2016

This prompt with ::>  is reserved for clustershell mode. This is the default shell, and this mode you will use for all your normal administrative tasks. All comands from clustershell are executed towards the cluster itself (which points to all nodes in the cluster). This shell provides all commands you need to configure and manage the cluster.

Clustershell has three privilege levels – similar to NetApp 7-mode. Those are:

  • admin  – this id the default level
  • advanced
  • diag

If you access either advanced or diag level, you can notice change of your prompt to:

netapp01::> set -privilege advanced
Warning: These advanced commands are potentially dangerous; use them only when directed to do so by NetApp personnel.
Do you want to continue? {y|n}: y
netapp01::*>

Those additional privileges levels gives you access to some advanced commands, which will be discussed in later posts.

nodeshell

If you wish to point and execute commands to single node in the cluster you have to use the node shell. You can either enter the node shell for an interactive session or execute individual commands with system node run <nodename> <command>.  If you access interactive session the prompt will change as well:

netapp01::> system node run -node node01
Type 'exit' or 'Ctrl-D' to return to the CLI
node01> hostname
node01
node01>

Please keep in mind netapp01 is the name of the cluster, where-as node01 is a name of the node within that cluster.

To execute individual commands:

netapp01::> system node run -node node01 hostname
node01
netapp01::>

systemshell

This is a low-level shell. This shell is used only for diagnostic and troubleshooting purposes – in most cases only NetApp support is asking to access this shell. The prompt for system shell looks like:

node01%

You can only enter systemshell for a specific node, not the whole cluster. If you find it a little bit confusing, do not worry. I can guarantee you will almost always need only standard, default clustershell. This post is only to show you there are different levels you can access within NetApp cDOT.

 

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