topic WAFL_EXEMPT in ONTAP Discussions

WAFL_EXEMPT

droach — Thu, 05 Jun 2025 06:45:45 GMT

Does anyone know what the WAFL_EXEMPT processes actually do? Are these background processes that the Filer uses to perform the standard I/O requests to/from the disk subsystems? Or, do these processes have some other special purpose? Not finding much information on the Filer's background processes.

Thanks,

Daryl

WAFL_EXEMPT

arunchak — Tue, 20 Sep 2011 05:03:23 GMT

Hi,

multi-processor safe wafl_exempt threads can run in parallel on multiple processors. These threads handle WAFL tasks such as writes, reads, readdir. AFAIK, the purpose is to increase WAFL performance.

Thanks,

Arun

WAFL_EXEMPT and other background processes...like disk_admin

droach — Thu, 22 Sep 2011 14:47:17 GMT

I would still like to know exactly what this process and a few other actually do. Does anyone know if NetApp has a paper that explains what their background processes do? I also see messages that the disk_admin process is a "long running process". Is this something to be concerned about?

mgr.stack.longrun.proc:notice]: Long running process: disk_admin