vFiler tunneling is a feature that enables an API to be invoked on a vFiler through the physical storage system on which the vFiler is contained. To access a vFiler, a user requires the IP address, user name, and password of the physical storage system alone.

This feature is supported by the -v option of the ontapi utility in the SDK.

vFiler tunneling is supported by Data ONTAP 7.2.1 and later. While using the API na_server_set_vfiler, the client has to specify the ONTAPI version 1.7 or later.

Before this feature was introduced, a user needed the IP address, user name, and password of both the actual storage system and the vFiler on which an API was to be invoked. It was a difficult task to maintain the details of the storage system and all the vFiler units on a network with a large number of vFiler units.