topic Re: Adding a second controller in a FAS2220 in ONTAP Discussions

Adding a second controller in a FAS2220

freektrax — Thu, 05 Jun 2025 06:04:56 GMT

Hello,

We have currently a FAS2220 Ontap 8.1 working perfectly. We plan to upgrade from a single controller to a HA Pair. We kept 3 HDD in order to assign it to the new controller.

I was wondering if there is any procedure ?

Thank you very much.

Re: Adding a second controller in a FAS2220

Darkstar — Tue, 30 Apr 2013 12:15:15 GMT

If you still have 3 free disks it's no problem (It's probably best to use RAID 4 + Spare in that case, and remember that the "current" controller still needs at least one spare!)

However, you need a downtime/reboot for this procedure

just do this:

options disk.auto_assign off (this prevents the current controller from
priv set diag
disk remove_ownership <diskid> (for all 3 disks that you have leftover. Make sure that you get the right disks here!)
license add <licensekey> (you should have received this when you bought the second controller)
plug in the second controller and do a base setup via serial
do a reboot of the first controller to enable HA takeover features
make sure that you set up the partner VIFs correctly from here on (use any NetApp base setup guide as reference)
(mostly the "ifconfig" lines in /etc/rc need a "partner" definition, you need to do "cf enable", and test takeover/giveback)

-Michael

Re: Adding a second controller in a FAS2220

freektrax — Thu, 16 May 2013 07:57:17 GMT

Dear Michael,

Thank you very much for your reply.

I'm just concerne about the point 5.

I found this documentation "Adding a second controller module to create an HA pair" (https://library.netapp.com/ecm/ecm_download_file/ECMM1280363)

I'm just worried about the point when the system ask to initialize all disks. As the first head is already in production I don't want to lose my data.

Do you have any Advice ?

Thanks

Re: Adding a second controller in a FAS2220

aleksandar_stefanov — Thu, 16 May 2013 08:23:32 GMT

As I know, it will initialize just the three disks for which you will previously remove the disk ownership.

Re: Adding a second controller in a FAS2220

aborzenkov — Thu, 16 May 2013 08:26:31 GMT

It will initialize 3 disks from assigned to it. It will never automatically assign any disk during installation. So removing disk ownership is not enough - you have to also assign those disks to new controller.

Re: Adding a second controller in a FAS2220

aleksandar_stefanov — Thu, 16 May 2013 08:36:44 GMT

I'm not sure that that is true when you initialize disks using the boot menu. I searched also in the documents, but can't find step where you need to assign disk ownership to the new controller.

Re: Adding a second controller in a FAS2220

MARTVAVSTPN — Tue, 20 May 2014 15:06:27 GMT

Hi Freektrax,

We are in the same situation here. We have a fas2220 and planning to upgrade to a HA pair. including adding a extra diskshelf

I was wondering how the initialize all disk went...

-Thanks