topic Re: hot removal of shelf in ONTAP Discussions

hot removal of shelf

eric_barlier — Thu, 05 Jun 2025 07:23:43 GMT

Hi,

I know its not supported to hot remove shelves but I need to qualify something. Is it still not supported if ALL the disks on that shelf are spares only, so they

are not part of a RAID group/aggr. etc. Would it not simply be a case of taking the adapter down over CLI and remove it?

Eric

Re: hot removal of shelf

scottgelb — Fri, 25 Sep 2009 06:31:28 GMT

I have asked for clarification many times over the years...and the official answer is no we can't hot remove even if disks are spares...even if unassigned. Someone please correct me if I am wrong (please make me wrong )... I have hot removed without issue (lab/dev system) but there is risk it could crash the controller so it is not supported in production. There was an update at one time with a new power supply and firmware that would allow this but I haven't heard about that in several months...

Bottom line that I have heard is currently no hot removal of shelves so the controller must be halted...but anxiously waiting for someone to correct me that this is no longer the case.

Re: hot removal of shelf

BrendonHiggins — Fri, 25 Sep 2009 13:00:14 GMT

When I was testing our disk shelf 'FT' I removed the power and FC links to the shelf and both filers stayed up but the event log had an alert every minute or so. So yes you can hot remove a shelf but don't, would be my advise. Apart from that, what is your boss going to say if your filer dies for another reason in 3 weeks time and NetApp point the finger at you for hot removing the self. Even if you can prove it had nothing to do with the failure, you are toast.

Bren

Re: hot removal of shelf

amiller_1 — Fri, 25 Sep 2009 14:23:42 GMT

Yes -- same answer I'm afraid....basically my understanding is that there are some corner cases which could crash the filer...so likely to work but not guaranteed (therefore unsupported).

It has more to do with the shelf modules (AT-FCX/ESH4) connection into the back-end FC loop than the disks themselves.

Now....what I don't know is if that recommendation might ever change with the new SAS shelves....that would be interesting to know.

Re: hot removal of shelf

erick_moore — Sun, 27 Sep 2009 19:57:42 GMT

It is my understanding that you can do it, but your system will panic at somepoint. I was told if you then do a takeover/giveback after the shelf removal you should be fine, but again this is a "procede at your own risk" type of scenario.

Re: hot removal of shelf

eric_barlier — Mon, 28 Sep 2009 04:14:27 GMT

Thank you guys. More or less as expected. yes it can work but not worth the risk