topic Upgrade FAS9000 to FAS9500 in ONTAP Hardware

Upgrade FAS9000 to FAS9500

ANTONIO_SANTOS — Mon, 28 Oct 2024 19:55:20 GMT

Hi guys,

I´m studying the process to upgrade customer´s FAS9000 to FAS9500 by ARL. This upgrade requires replacement of PCM and NVRAM, basically. I´d like to know if during the process, described in doc Upgrade by using ARL, can I also replace the NVMEM Flash Cache from 1TB to 4TB?

Thanks in advance!

Re: Upgrade FAS9000 to FAS9500

pmidhun — Tue, 29 Oct 2024 10:00:13 GMT

What I understood from your ask is that you want to also upgrade the existing NVMe Flash Cache of 1 TB to 4 TB during the head upgrade from FAS9000 to FAS9500 using ARL.
The answer is Yes.
The FAS9500 also supports a 4 TB NVMe Flash Cache (Part # X9172A)
If you are installing this on both nodes nin HA-pair, then it should not be a problem.

Re: Upgrade FAS9000 to FAS9500

ANTONIO_SANTOS — Tue, 29 Oct 2024 13:13:47 GMT

Hi pmidhun,

Thank you to answer my question. I saw in HWU that FAS9500 supports both Flash Cache models (1TB and 4TB), but I don´t found this information in ARL doc .
I´ll request an adjust to the doc.

Regards,

Re: Upgrade FAS9000 to FAS9500

andris — Tue, 29 Oct 2024 23:52:47 GMT

Hi Antonio,

You're free to submit document feedback, but it's somewhat covered in this topic in the procedure:

https://docs.netapp.com/us-en/ontap-systems-upgrade/upgrade-arl-auto-affa900/replace-node1-aff700-fas900.html#remove-the-aff-a700-or-fas9000-nvram-module

Move all flash cache modules installed in the FAS9000 NVRAM module to the FAS9500 NVRAM module.

It's an easy stretch to believe that you can swap in a different capacity flash cache drive or even add a 2nd flash cache drive in slot 6-2 at this time, too.