topic Re: Eseries disk shelf mixing in ONTAP Discussions

Eseries disk shelf mixing

ORCUN_USTURALI — Wed, 04 Jun 2025 09:40:20 GMT

hi to all

a project for a customer, the new system will be E5700 with Disk shelf DE460C with 4tb sata disks.

And later on we will add old disk shelves to the above system ,the old shelves are DE6600 with 4tb and 1.2tb disks .

We plan to hot add the old shelves later on, the speeds of IOMs are different.

In normal Ontap environment,this is supported,but i dont know what will be in the Eseries environment.

any experience something similar to this one

Regards

Re: Eseries disk shelf mixing

ahmadm — Mon, 04 Mar 2024 15:07:52 GMT

@ORCUN_USTURALI

Hi,

Configuring the DE6600 underneath a E5700 controller tray (DE460C) is supported. It is covered under this documentation page: https://docs.netapp.com/us-en/e-series/upgrade-controllers/reconfigure-sas-task.html

The main step is to clear the configuration on the 1.2TB disks in DE6600 before relocating them from the old system to the E5700.

Were you looking to move the shelf along with its data? or are you ok with wiping those drives before moving them?

Re: Eseries disk shelf mixing

ORCUN_USTURALI — Tue, 05 Mar 2024 06:52:05 GMT

Thanks Ahmadm ;

we will migrate the data first, and then we will move the disks to the new controller. This is easy with ONTAP, i have done lots of time.

But with eseries, it seems a little bit more complex (from the link you provided, that is how i understand). From the link , i read "You must have a Feature Product Variance Request (FPVR). To file an FPVR, contact NetApp Professional Services." This is the first time i read something like that.

Also i think we need a different cable type (minisas-to-sas) to attach the old DE6600 with new system.

thanks

Re: Eseries disk shelf mixing

ahmadm — Tue, 05 Mar 2024 14:05:22 GMT

Correct, you need those cables because the DE6600 shelf uses 6Gbps SAS-2 connections while the E5700 and use 12Gbps SAS-3 connections.

The FPVR is mainly to provide full NetApp Support of the adjusted hardware configuration, but it doesn't require any special firmware or configuration.

And to cable the DE6600 enclosure, we recommend installing it in a separate stack from any SAS-3 expansion trays you may have attached to the E5700 DE460C shelf. This helps ensure the SAS-3 expansions are still running with 12Gbps connections.

Screenshot pulled from the legacy hardware cabling guide. Complete document: https://library.netapp.com/ecm/ecm_download_file/ECMLP2773533

E5760 page: https://library.netapp.com/ecmdocs/ECMLP2773533/html/GUID-FE33ED52-A688-4E47-B601-9A206A2FD98E.html

Re: Eseries disk shelf mixing

ORCUN_USTURALI — Thu, 07 Mar 2024 07:03:47 GMT

Ahmadm,

you helped me so much, thanks for answering and helping.

have a good day ,appeciated all of your help

regards