topic Re: FAS 2554 to 2720: suggestions for hardware refresh in ONTAP Hardware

FAS 2554 to 2720: suggestions for hardware refresh

alessice — Wed, 04 Jun 2025 10:10:06 GMT

Hi,

I'm running 3 FAS2554 (4x400GB SSD + 20x4TB HDD) with Flash Pool and about 60TB of data used. I'm looking in these days for a hardware refresh. Each FAS2554 is doing about 8000 IOPS of peak, so 24000 IOPS total estimated.

With Fusion I have made some simulations and one of this is:

- 1 FAS2720 4x960SSD + 8x4TB HDD

- 3 DS212C with a total of 36x4TB HDD

where I can have 2 aggregates with Flash Pool and 16 disk per Raid Group and size around 45TB each (one more aggregate will be available due to local partitioned disk but will not be used for data). See attached images.

I have some questions:

- with 16 disk SATA is safe RAID-DP or should I use RAID-TEC?

- can I estimate the number of IOPS that can do this configuration?

- since 2554 aggregates are 22TB and FlashPool is based on 400GB SSD, will be sufficient 960GB of SSD for aggregates of 44TB (exactly double of each one)?

- where can I view how much space I'm using in my current Flash Pool configuration?

Any other suggestions will be appreciated.

Thanks

Re: FAS 2554 to 2720: suggestions for hardware refresh

Fabian1993 — Fri, 29 Oct 2021 06:40:55 GMT

with 16 disk SATA is safe RAID-DP or should I use RAID-TEC?

For 4TB Disk RAID-DP fits, you can think about RAID-TEC >8TB...

- where can I view how much space I'm using in my current Flash Pool configuration?

https://docs.netapp.com/ontap-9/index.jsp?topic=%2Fcom.netapp.doc.dot-cm-cmpr-910%2Fstorage__pool__show.html

Re: FAS 2554 to 2720: suggestions for hardware refresh

paul_stejskal — Fri, 29 Oct 2021 15:11:25 GMT

This may be lacking in HDDs. You're going from a total of 6x systems (2 HA pair) with 4 cores each (24 CPUs) with 60 HDDs to a single HA pair with 16 cores. Granted, the 2500s don't support AES-NI, so that may help some, but you are taking a big headroom cut here with the less disks.

I'm not sure if the performance is the issue or capacity, but would an AFF-C190 work? That way you don't have to worry about disk performance?

Re: FAS 2554 to 2720: suggestions for hardware refresh

alessice — Fri, 29 Oct 2021 15:28:54 GMT

Hi Paul,

the "issue" is not performance or capacity but End of support of 2554.

We are working to have the budget for buying 2 FAS2720 with 3 DS212C each, so have the total IOPS and capacity of 4 2554 in 2 2720, instead of 3 2554 in 1 2720.

Do you think that one FAS2720 with 3 DS212 can have the performance of two 2554 with half drives?

CPU: FAS2554 have 2CPU x2 core (4 core in total), FAS2720 64 core in total

RAM: FAS2554 have 36GB RAM (shared with NVRAM), FAS2720 64GB dedicated

NVRAM: FAS2554 have 4GB RAM (shared with RAM), FAS2720 8GB dedicated

FAS2720 have 1TB of FlashCache

So theoretically the double of computing.

Re: FAS 2554 to 2720: suggestions for hardware refresh

paul_stejskal — Fri, 29 Oct 2021 15:39:25 GMT

You have 3 HA pairs of 2554s. Keep that in mind.

I'm just thinking a small AFF may do just as well. But I don't know the needs of performance or capacity for the customer.

Re: FAS 2554 to 2720: suggestions for hardware refresh

alessice — Fri, 29 Oct 2021 15:52:46 GMT

Hi paul,

probably I have not explained me better, I will buy 2 HA pairs of 2720, for a total of 4 controllers.

AFF also small are very expensive because the SSD have a software price about 10x of HDD.

Re: FAS 2554 to 2720: suggestions for hardware refresh

paul_stejskal — Fri, 29 Oct 2021 15:57:17 GMT

Ok it was worth mentioning. Yeah 2x HA pair of 2720 should be fine. If you are buying a total of 6 shelves, you may not need that many shelves.

You may be able to get by with 8TB disks in theory, but I do worry about perf overhead.

I thought the cost of 1x C190 may be doable if capacity is doable.