NetApp ONTAP 8.3 Aggregate Mirror

Aggregate Mirror:

Mirrored aggregates have two plexes (copies of their data), which use the SyncMirror functionality to duplicate the data to provide redundancy.

When SyncMirror is enabled, all the disks or array LUNs are divided into two pools, and a copy of the plex is created. The plexes are physically separated (each plex has its own RAID groups and its own pool), and the plexes are updated simultaneously. 

This provides added protection against data loss if more disks fail than the RAID level of the aggregate protects against or there is a loss of connectivity, because the unaffected plex continues to serve data while you fix the cause of the failure. After the plex that had a problem is fixed, you can resynchronize the two plexes and reestablish the mirror relationship.

Creating Syncmirror for an existing aggregate.

List the aggregate show command to ensure that aggr got mirrored.

After sync state, it creates two plexes.

To list the plex information.

Now in this example, 4 disks in plex0 and 4 disks in plex2.

Now you can add disks to a mirroed aggregate by using the following command with two options (-disk-list and -mirror-disk-list).

Now you have 12 disks and each plex added by 2 disks.

NetApp ONTAP 9.1 FlexGroup

FlexGroup volume:

A FlexGroup volume is a scale-out NAS container that leverages the cluster resources to provide performance and scale. FlexGroup volumes provide high performance along with automatic load distribution and scalability.

A FlexGroup volume contains a number of constituents that automatically and transparently share a traffic load.

FlexGroup volumes provide the following benefits:

• FlexGroup volumes provide high scalability.
  The qualified limits for a FlexGroup volume in ONTAP 9.1 are 20 PB maximum size with 400 billion files on a 10-node cluster.
• FlexGroup volumes can leverage the resources of an entire cluster to serve high-throughput and low-latency workloads
• A FlexGroup volume is single name space container that allows simplified management that is similar to FlexVol volumes.

You can either deploy a FlexGroup volume where ONTAP automatically selects the aggregates based on best practices and configures the FlexGroup volume, or create a FlexGroup volume by manually selecting the aggregates and configuring it for data access. 

• Deploying a FlexGroup volume
  You can automatically deploy a FlexGroup volume by using the volume flexgroup deploy command. When you use this command, ONTAP creates and configures the FlexGroup volume by automatically selecting aggregates. Aggregates are selected based on the best practices for optimum performance.
• Creating a FlexGroup volume
  Creating a FlexGroup volume involves manually selecting the aggregates on which the FlexGroup volume must be created, and specifying the number of constituents on each aggregate. After creating the FlexGroup volume, you must then mount the FlexGroup volume for NFS and CIFS access.

In System Manager, select SVM - Volumes - Flexgroups - create.

Two options are available.

1. Recommended Best Practices

2. Manually select Aggregates 

Now Creating Flex Group.

Successfully Flexgroup got created.

Now you can create a NAS (NFS/CIFS) share.

List the complete information and Manage the FlexGroups.

NetApp ONTAP 9.1 Netgroup Configuration

You can use netgroups for user authentication and to match clients in export policy rules.

You can provide access to netgroups from external name servers (LDAP or NIS), or you can load netgroups from a uniform resource identifier (URI) into SVMs using the 

vserver services name-service netgroup load command.


Listing the netgroup file information.

Load the netgroup file from FTP server.

Listing the netgroup status.

Listing the netgroup file information.

Create a new policy and rule using netgroup.

Listing the netgroup client information.

Mount from the client side (RHEL).

ONTAP 9.1 Flash Pool Management

ONTAP 9.1 Flash Pool :

A Flash Pool is the newest addition to the NetApp® Virtual Storage Tier. It is a technology that allows Flash technology in the form of solid-state disks (SSDs) and traditional hard disk drives (HDDs) to be combined to form a single Data ONTAP® aggregate. When SSD and HDD technologies are combined in a Data ONTAP aggregate, the NetApp storage system takes advantage of the latency and throughput benefits of SSD while maintaining the mass storage capacity of HDD.

Requirements for using Flash Pools

The Flash Pool technology has some configuration requirements that you should be aware of before planning to use it in your storage architecture.

Flash Pools cannot be used in the following configurations:

• 32-bit aggregates
• Aggregates composed of array LUNs
• Aggregates that use the ZCS checksum type

Read-only volumes, such as SnapMirror destinations, are not cached in the Flash Pool cache.

How Flash Pools work

The Flash Pool technology enables you to add one or more RAID groups composed of SSDs to an aggregate that consists of RAID groups of HDDs.

The SSDs provide a high-performance cache for the active data set of the data volumes provisioned on the Flash Pool, which offloads I/O operations from the HDDs to the SSDs. For random workloads, this can increase the performance of the volumes associated with the aggregate by improving the response time and overall throughput for I/O-bound data access operations. 

The SSD cache does not contribute to the size of the aggregate as calculated against the maximum aggregate size. For example, even if an aggregate is at the maximum aggregate size, you can add an SSD RAID group to it. The SSDs do count toward the overall spindle limit.

The HDD RAID groups in a Flash Pool behave the same as HDD RAID groups in a standard aggregate, following the same rules for mixing disk types, sizes, speeds, and checksums.

Creating Flash Pool:

Create an aggregate first.

In this example i have used the aggr name is aggr_flash and disks are FCAL disks.

After creating Aggregate, check the hybrid-enabled ontion, by default is false.

Modify that Aggregate option to true.

Now check the RAID status of an aggregate.
At this list, this aggregate contains 4 disks.

Now add the SSD disks to an existing aggregate.

Now you have two raid group with FCAL and SSD disks also.

To design and caluculate the number of SSD disks need to add an existing aggregate, then run the AWA (Automated Workload Analyzer).

You can print the out put report and analyse the number of SSD disks.

And also you can change the volume that is using the flash pool with the following caching policies.

To list the statistics of falsh pool aggregate.

Using system manager also you can view the status of flash pool.

You can monitor the flash pool statistics also in System Manager.