Summary: How to setup NetApp Operations Manager.
Date: Around 2015
Refactor: 7 March 2025: Checked links and formatting.

NetApp Operations Manager is a tool to monitor and manage your NetApp filers. It's a web based tool which can be installed on a Windows server. It's a great tool to monitor your filers, create reports and send alarms. It's also possible to create custom reports and alarms.

Note: Operations Manager is also known as Data Fabric Manager, although I understand it's the old name and should officially not be used anymore.

Installation is pretty straight forward so nothing about that. There are a couple of things though, you'll need to grant the Operations Manager server access to the filer, and you need to add the filers you want Operations Manager to, well you know, manage.
After the installation, before you can access the console center you'll have to open a required port in the Windows firewall:

When done the Operations Manager Control Center is available at this url:

http://dfm.company.local:8080

Also note that because Operations Manager is installed on an Active Directory Domain Member server you can logon using an Active Directory administrator account.

Adding filers can be done using the web interface of Operations Manager. After logging in, go to Home → Member Details → Physical Systems and click the “Add (New storage system)” button:

You can grant the Operations Manager access from the filer itself, from FilerView. Log on and go to Operations Manager → Access:

One of the best parts of Operations Manager is the option for creating reports of your filers. Besides some of the standard reports I also created some additional custom reports. Creating a custom report is pretty simple, log on to the Operations Manager Control Center, and click on Reports → Custom. You are instantly welcomed with the form for creating a custom report. If you've already created custom reports you can find them at the bottom of the page.

I wanted a custom reports to show me the usage, and expected usage of volumes. Besides setting the “Display Tab” to “File Systems” I added these fields to the report (in this order):

• Volume Full Name
• Volume Status
• Volume Space Breakout
• Volume Total Capacity (in GB, no decimal places)
• Volume Available (in GB, no decimal places)
• Volume Available % (no decimal places)
• Volume Rate/GB Last Month
• Volume Days to full

After saving and running the report this gives me a report which looks like this:

I wanted the same for aggregates. To create a report for aggregates teh “Display Tab” needs to be set to “Physical Systems” and I added these fields to the report:

• Aggregate Full Name
• Aggregate Status
• Aggregate Total Space (in GB, no decimal places)
• Aggregate Used Capacity (in GB, no decimal places)
• Aggregate Used Capacity % (no decimal places)
• Aggregate Daily Growth Rate (in MB, no decimal places)
• Aggregate Daily Growth Rate (%)(no decimal places)
• Aggregate Days to Full

It's also possible to have these reports created on fixed times, and have them emailed to you. Just click on Reports → Schedule and you can configure the schedule itself (what day and what time) and the report schedule. Scheduling reports can be done by clicking “Add New Report Schedule” after which you can configure a couple of things:

Most of the things that need to be filled in are clear but I do want to say something about the format. As you can see I've set it to html. It presents you the most prettiest result, but when it gets mailed it gets mailed as a zip file. So before you can use it, you'll have to save it, unpack it and then open it. For me that was a reason to not use it as a schedule anymore, since it is just too much hassle. It would be better if there was a pdf option for the report, but unfortunately there is none.

Don't forget to setup the mail server, that might come in hand when you want reports to be emailed. Go to Setup → Options → Events and Alerts and configure the mail server and the from field.

The other best part of Operations Manager is the possibility to send alarms. But before you do, there are two things that need to be considered. First, thresholds. Operations Manager comes with a default set of thresholds which will be sufficient for most environments, but certainly not for all. Secondly, from what filer do you want which information. For example, I have four filers, two in production and two in acceptance. From production I want everything from warning and higher, while on acceptance I'm not interested if it'd not at least an error. Because alarms are set on groups you'll first have to create groups if you need this difference as well. Also, because alarms can only be sent to Administrators we need to setup Administrators.

After logging in to Operations Manager Control Center click on Home → Member Details. Now select the filers you want to be together in a group and click “Add To Group”. The groups will be accessible under Global and can be used not only for alarms but also for reports.

In Operations Manager Control Center go to Setup → Administrative Users. Type in the (windows domain) user you want added, select the role (GlobalFullControl) and define the email address.

Now that we have groups we can configure alarms by going to Setup → Alarms. As you can see on the screenshot below, it's not that hard. Just select the group, the severity and the recipient:

As I mentioned before, Operations Manager is equipped with a set of default thresholds. To view and change them go to Setup → Options → Default Thresholds.