Re: SV: AFF-A220 9.8P1 default aggregates and root volumes

We're not serving any LUNs and have no plans to.

For all my weird-ass questions I'm actually a big fan of sticking with 
defaults unless there's a true need to "go snowflake" and our 
application is not exotic, pretty much just a plain old NFS NAS that 
serves up files and Xen datastores.

Testing now whether I can create a flexgroup as a DP type and make it a 
snapmirror target.

On 4/26/2021 7:58 AM, Heino Walther wrote:
>
> I think we agree that FlexGroups are the way forward, but one will 
> have to take care and verify that stuff like SnapMirror/Vault still 
> works (if this is used)… also I think FlexGroups does not support LUNS ?
>
> Anyway you are correct about the partitions… there are several ways to 
> change the configuration…  I have had many more or less hacky setups, 
> so normally it is possible to go out of the “box” NetApp has set as 
> default.
>
> Example is the possibility to create a root aggregate with a RAID4… 
>  and a way more hacky and “internal only” way is to create your own 
> partition sizes which involves non-documented commands…. But it’s 
> possible..
>
> But I have had issues with these hacky setups… for example, it is 
> possible to force to partitions from the same disk into the same RAID 
> group… it’s not clever, but possible non the less 😉.  But this will 
> cause issues if you were to play around with “disk replace” later on… 
> I had an issue with this, and NetApp support was required in order to 
> fix this… basically the disk replace commands hang, waiting for 
> something…  which causes all rebuild tasks etc. stall…. I think this 
> was a bug in ONTAP, but I bet they are not making much effort to fix 
> it, because if you choose to “hack” this much, you are basically on 
> your own..  but as always NetApp support is always ready to help, no 
> questions asked 😊
>
> One other remark… I really hope that NetApp is moving their root 
> aggregate onto local flash cards in the future, so that we can get rid 
> of these partitions 😊. Or if we can get back to the good old days 
> with root volumes “vol0” (which is no likely to happen).
>
> /Heino
>
> *Fra: *tmac <[email protected]>
> *Dato: *mandag, 26. april 2021 kl. 16.46
> *Til: *Heino Walther <[email protected]>
> *Cc: *Rue, Randy <[email protected]>, Toasters <[email protected]>
> *Emne: *Re: AFF-A220 9.8P1 default aggregates and root volumes
>
> Using "whole" or non-partitioned drives will use a minimum of 6 full 
> drives (at least to start, P+P+D with RAID-DP and drive size <10TB).
>
> If the drive size is 10T or larger, RAID-TEC is used instead.
>
> Not-knowing the size of the drives/SSDs in question make this a little 
> difficult to answer.
>
> It is trivial to get around the whole-drive/partitioned drive when 
> adding in the future.
>
> Set the "maxraidsize" to whatever is in the raidgroup now. any future 
> drives are always added as whole drives unless they are pre-partitioned.
>
>
> --tmac
>
> *Tim McCarthy, */Principal Consultant/
>
> *Proud Member of the #NetAppATeam <https://twitter.com/NetAppATeam>*
>
> *I Blog at **TMACsRack <https://tmacsrack.wordpress.com/>*
>
> On Mon, Apr 26, 2021 at 10:31 AM Heino Walther <[email protected] 
> <mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:
>
>     Hi Randy
>
>     There are two ways you can go… the correct way, and the “hacky” way…
>
>     When you boot up the system with the serial or Service-Processor
>     attached you can press “Ctrl-C” to get into the Maintaince menu
>     from where you can Zero all disks on the system.
>
>     This will build two root aggregates, one for each controller. 
>     They are typically build from 4 disks that are partitioned as
>     “Root-Data-Data” disks, that is a small Root partition and two
>     equal sized Data partitions.
>
>     Disk sizes of these may vary dependent on your disks and your
>     controller model. (I think more disks are used… maybe 8…)
>
>     All other disks are not touched, and are therefore spares, and the
>     2 x 4 data partitions are also presented as spare “disks” half the
>     size of the physical disk (minus the small root partition).
>
>     Each controller require a root aggregate, no matter what.
>
>     If you would like to have just one data aggregate on one of the
>     controllers, you can do so, but be aware that if you start your
>     aggregate with the partitioned disks, and add non-partitioned
>     disks later on, the disks will most likely be partitioned by
>     default, and the other partition is assigned to the partner
>     controller.
>
>     The way to get around this, is to either not use the partitioned
>     disks, and just start your new aggregate with unpartitioned disks,
>     which you will have to assign to one of the controllers.
>
>     If you would like to use the partitioned disks, you can create a
>     new raidgroup in the same aggregate using the partitions from one
>     of systems….
>
>     You will then have the partitioned that are assigned to the
>     passive node…  (this is where it gets hacky)…
>
>     You are infact able to assign these partitioned to the same node,
>     and you are able to add them to the same RAID group as the other
>     partitions… so a RAID group consisting of partitions of the same
>     disk 😊
>
>     If one disk fails you will have two partitions fail inside your
>     RAID group…  which is a bit scary for me… so I would suggest to
>     create a separate RAID group for them…
>
>     So: Example.. system with 24 disks… lets say the disks are 10TB large…
>
>     Ctrl-A:
>
>     RootAggr: Consists of 4 partitions (10G each)
>
>     Data Aggr: Consists of:
>
>     RAID Group 0: 19 x Physical disks (RAID-DP) 170TB
>
>     RAID Group 1: 4 x Partitions (RAID-DP) 9,98TB (10/2 minus 10G)
>
>     RAID Group 2: 4 x Partitions (RAID-DP) 9,98TB (10/2 minus 10G)
>
>     Ctrl-B:
>
>     RootAggr: Consists of 4 partitions (10G each)
>
>     I hope this makes sense… keep in mind that this example is not how
>     it is going to look, as there will be more partitioned disks,
>     because as a minimum the system needs 4 partitions for the root
>     aggregate… so is will more likely be 8 disks that are partitioned…
>
>     (I just didn’t want to correct the numbers above)
>
>     Now… that being said… there are ways to limit the number of
>     partitions or disks used for the root aggregate…. Once you are up
>     and running per default, you can create two new root aggregates
>     that are either smaller in size, or using RAID4 instead of
>     RAID-DP… of cause with the increased risk as a disk dies…. (the
>     information on the root aggregate can and should be backed up, and
>     is pretty easy to restore if they should fail). Your data
>     aggregates should be no less than RAID-DP.
>
>     The way to create smaller root aggregates and to create your own
>     partition sizes includes fairly hairy commands which require “priv
>     set diag”…  so unless you know what you are doing, I would suggest
>     against it. (but it is possible)
>
>     Basically I would suggest the default with a two node half and
>     half setup… maybe you can use some other features in order to
>     spread out your load on both aggregates?   I am pretty sure that
>     if you are just using CIFS or NFS, you should be able to “merge”
>     two volumes (one from each controller) into one logical workspace…
>      But since I have not been working with this that much, I would
>     let someone else explain this part… (I’m pretty sure you can set
>     this up from the GUI even…)
>
>     /Heino
>
>     *Fra: *Toasters <[email protected]
>     <mailto:[email protected]>> på vegne af Rue, Randy
>     <[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>>
>     *Dato: *mandag, 26. april 2021 kl. 15.59
>     *Til: *Toasters <[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>>
>     *Emne: *AFF-A220 9.8P1 default aggregates and root volumes
>
>     Hello,
>
>     We're setting up a new and relatively small SSD NAS and it's
>     arrived configured for two equally sized tiers with each node and
>     its root aggr/vol in each tier. Each tier is about 15TB in size
>     before compression.
>
>     We're hoping to avoid needing to manage two equally sized data
>     aggrs and moving data volumes around to balance them. For one
>     thing, our largest data volumes are larger than 15TB and
>     snapmirror doesn't seem to want to let us set up a relationship to
>     load the new volumes from our old cluster, even if the target has
>     ample room after the guaranteed 3X compression.
>
>     We're willing to lose the wasted space involved in creating one
>     tier/partition/aggr/root volume with the minimum number of disks
>     for raid-dp (3?) for one node if that will allow us to put the
>     rest on the other set and have a single large container for our
>     unstructured file volumes.
>
>     We tried moving all volumes to one tier and deleting the other.
>     But one node is still sitting on those disks.
>
>     Our old cluster is at 9.1P6 and I'm clear that some basic concepts
>     have changed with the introduction of partitions and whatnot. So
>     bear with me if I'm asking n00b questions even after a few years
>     running NetApp gear.
>
>       * Is what I've proposed above reasonable? (one minimum aggr and
>         one large one) Is it commonly done? Is it a good idea?
>       * Can you point me to any "change notes" type doc that explains
>         these new terms/objects to an otherwise experienced NetApp admin?
>       * If the above is viable, what do I need to do to get there?
>
>     For what it's worth, I've been noodling a bit with the "system
>     node migrate-root" command  (this new AFF is not in production
>     yet) and got a warning that my target disks don't have a spare
>     root partition (I specified some of the disks on the "old" aggr).
>     That warning says I can find available disks with the command
>     "storage disk partition show -owner-node-name redacted-a
>     -container-type spare -is-root true" but the CLI then complains
>     that partition is not a command (I'm at "advanced" privilege
>     level). Is the given command correct?
>
>     Hope to hear from you,
>
>     Randy in Seattle
>
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