NetApp Fabric Pool Implementation and Management

NetApp brings in an innovation in Flash storage systems, the Fabric Pool aggregates. With FabricPool aggregates, you can move your cold data to external, less expensive storage solutions available today.

FabricPool is an all SSD aggregate that has an external capacity tier attached to it. Data that is written to the SSD aggregates is called as Performance tier and backup and/or snapshots that is moved to Amazon S3 or Netapp StorageGrid Webscale is called as Capacity Tier. 

FabricPool will be designed as an innovative technology that allows any workload (SAN or NAS) on an ONTAP system to keep hot data on all-Flash but tier inactive cold data off onto low-cost object storage, either on-premises or in the Cloud. This inactive data is often up to 80% of the overall storage footprint, leading to significant savings. 

You can attach capacity tiers to SSD aggregates and set tiering policies on the SSD volumes. Currently supported tiering policies are:

• Snapshot-only which is the default
• Backup – Data is tired to the capacity tier as snapmiror/snapvault destinations
• None

General considerations and requirements

• You must be running ONTAP 9.2 at the minimum to use FabricPool.
• You must be running ONTAP 9.4 or later releases for the following FabricPool functionality:
  • The auto tiering policy
    Specifying the tiering minimum cooling period
  • Inactive data reporting
  • Using Microsoft Azure Blob Storage for the cloud as the external capacity tier for FabricPool
  • Using FabricPool with ONTAP Select
• FabricPool supports the following platforms and aggregate types:
  • On AFF and FAS systems and ONTAP Select, you can use only all flash (all SSD) aggregates for FabricPool.
    You cannot use Flash Pool aggregates (which contain both SSDs and HDDs) or HDD aggregates.
  • On ONTAP Cloud, you can use either SSD or HDD aggregates for FabricPool.
    However, using SSD aggregates is recommended.
• FabricPool supports using the following object stores as the external capacity tier:
• Amazon Web Services Simple Storage Service (AWS S3)
• Microsoft Azure Blob Storage for the cloud
• NetApp StorageGRID Webscale 10.3 or later

Additional considerations for using AWS S3 with FabricPool

• You might need a FabricPool license.
  • Newly ordered AFF systems come with 10 TB of free capacity for using FabricPool.
    If you need additional capacity on an AFF system, if you use AWS S3 on a non-AFF system, or if you upgrade from an existing cluster, you need a FabricPool license.
  • If you use Amazon S3 as the capacity tier for ONTAP Cloud, you do not need a FabricPool license..

Configuring Fabric Pool:

Check the Fabric Pool Capacity License.

Login to OnCommand System Manager, select Storage Tiers and you can see the External Capacity Tier Link.

The LIF that ONTAP uses to connect with the AWS S3 object server must be on a 10 Gbps port.

Create an intercluster role LIF to connect to the S3 Object Storage.

Now Login to S3 Browser and Create a new Storage Bucket.

Create a new Bucket.

New S3 Bucket got created successfully.

Now From OnCommand System Manager, Configure the External Capacity Tier.

Select AWS S3 and Provide Access and login credentials.

Select the Inter Cluster Role LIF.

Then Click Save and Attach Aggregates.

Successfully 1TB External Capacity Tier created. Then we need to attach an aggregates.

Select and add the aggregates to Cloud .

FabricPool does not support attaching an external capacity tier to an aggregate that contains volumes using a space guarantee other than none.

External Capacity Tier created successfully.

Now aggregate space used in the S3 bucket space.