I’ve twice posted now on Data ONTAP 8.0 shortcomings and this evening I did a little more research with the IBM version of Netapp’s hardware, the N-Series products. Fortunately, IBM are slightly more generous and informative in their documentation than Netapp and this document (freely available online) provides more background information on the “DOT8″ transition process. So, I’ve tried to produce a more in-depth objective view of the steps to move to “DOT8″. Firstly the following diagram provides a clue as to how Data ONTAP has migrated to the current release.