The NetApp unified driver is a block storage driver that supports multiple storage families and protocols. A storage family corresponds to storage systems built on different NetApp technologies such as clustered Data ONTAP, Data ONTAP operating in 7-Mode, and E-Series. The storage protocol refers to the protocol used to initiate data storage and access operations on those storage systems like iSCSI and NFS. The NetApp unified driver can be configured to provision and manage OpenStack volumes on a given storage family using a specified storage protocol. The OpenStack volumes can then be used for accessing and storing data using the storage protocol on the storage family system. The NetApp unified driver is an extensible interface that can support new storage families and protocols.
![[Note]](../common/images/admon/note.png) | Note |
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With the Juno release of OpenStack, OpenStack Block Storage has introduced the concept of "storage pools", in which a single OpenStack Block Storage back end may present one or more logical storage resource pools from which OpenStack Block Storage will select as a storage location when provisioning volumes. In releases prior to Juno, the NetApp unified driver contained some "scheduling" logic that determined which NetApp storage container (namely, a FlexVol volume for Data ONTAP, or a dynamic disk pool for E-Series) that a new OpenStack Block Storage volume would be placed into. With the introduction of pools, all scheduling logic is performed completely within the OpenStack Block Storage scheduler, as each NetApp storage container is directly exposed to the OpenStack Block Storage scheduler as a storage pool; whereas previously, the NetApp unified driver presented an aggregated view to the scheduler and made a final placement decision as to which NetApp storage container the OpenStack Block Storage volume would be provisioned into. |
