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What are the capabilities and differences of ASA r2 compared to ONTAP 9?

  1. Last updated
    Mar 27, 2025
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3/27/2025, 6:40:31 PM

Applies to

  • ASA r2 ONTAP personality
  • Unified ONTAP personality (ONTAP 9)

Answer

  • The NetApp ASA r2 systems deliver a unified hardware and software solution that creates a simplified experience specific to the needs of SAN-only customers
  • Learn more of the overall differences here: Compare ASA r2 systems to other ONTAP systems
  • A quick view of capabilities and differences as of ONTAP 9.16.1 can be found below:
  ASA r2 Unified ONTAP (ONTAP 9)
Platform Support • ASA A1K
• ASA A90
• ASA A70
• ASA A50
• ASA A30
• ASA A20		 See NetApp Hardware Universe
Platform Mixing With other ASA r2 platforms as outlined in NetApp Hardware Universe See NetApp Hardware Universe
Disk Partitioning Not required Root-data partitioning
Data Storage Space Storage Unit Flexvol and FlexGroup Volumes
ONTAP API Interface

REST API
  • REST API
  • ONTAPI (until disabled in ONTAP)
Protocol Support SAN SAN, NAS, and Object
SAN Path Failover
  • iSCSI, FC, NVMe/FC and NVMe/TCP protocols
    • active-active
  • iSCSI and NVMe/TCP protocols
    • Direct paths between the hosts and storage
 ALUA (Asymmetric Logical Unit Access) and MPIO (multipath I/O) 
Storage Layer Storage Availability Zone Aggregates
Storage Unit and LUN Provisioning Thin only Thin or Thick
Snapshot Manual or automatic Snapshots of volumes
Replication Snapshot replication to other ASA r2 systems SnapMirror
Storage Efficiency Compression begins without waiting for data to become cold Temperature-sensitive storage efficiency (TSSE)
Automatic Storage Rebalancing Supported for Storage Units Not Supported
MetroCluster Not Supported Supported
FabricPool Not Supported Supported
Consistency Group A consistency group is a collection of storage units that are managed as a single unit Not Supported

Additional Information

 

 

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