topic Re: Filer Head Swap - How to? in ONTAP Hardware

Filer Head Swap - How to?

peter1965 — Thu, 05 Jun 2025 06:20:13 GMT

Greetings - I need to perform a head swap from an old FAS3000x series to a 6210 and using the same disk shelves. no additional shelves were purchased. What would be the steps required for to perform this? The 6210 would be 8.04 7-mode coming from 7.x on the 3000 series.

Licenses required (this should not be a problem to obtain what i need)
can this be performed non disruptive with data-motion?
High level processes.

I am sure there is more bullet points need to be added. But by all means folks, feel free to enlighten me with your experiences and any gotcha's.

thanks for reading.

Re: Filer Head Swap - How to?

aborzenkov — Tue, 28 Aug 2012 03:02:15 GMT

1. There is no specific licenses needed for conversion. FAS62xx comes with own licenses and you are supposed to install them after upgrade. If old system has more (or different set of) licenses, you are supposed to delete those, that are not available for new one.

2. Head swap is always disruptive with 7-Mode.

3. Tough. See below.

As of now there is no real documentation I am aware of dealing with this. Simply booting 8.x on root volume with 7.x may work, but I have not seen official statement of support (if someone can correct me - excellent). The most bullet proof way I can think of is to loan a head supporting both 7G and 8.x and do two consecutive head swaps with Data ONTAP upgrade in between.

The task is simple to perform but non-trivial to plan. If you do not have good experience with NetApp it really makes sense to arrange for professional service to do it.

Re: Filer Head Swap - How to?

SVILLARDI — Tue, 28 Aug 2012 03:09:40 GMT

In the past I have done head swaps from 7.x to 8.x on filers that couldn't support 8.x. We did this by booting from the root volume after the head swap was done, this would upgrade the raid labels on the root volume to compatiable 8.x raid labels. Once that was done, then you would just install 8.x so it would upgrade the root vol, so it matches whats on the flash.

Re: Filer Head Swap - How to?

aborzenkov — Tue, 28 Aug 2012 03:13:04 GMT

That is exactly “booting 8.x on root volume from 7G”. Do you have statement from NetApp that this method is supported? This would make life much easier.

In 8.x Data ONTAP is no more kept on root volume, no post-swap upgrade is strictly speaking necessary (root volume content is udated automatically from archive on boot media).

Re: Filer Head Swap - How to?

SVILLARDI — Tue, 28 Aug 2012 03:18:18 GMT

It originally found that process from an upgrade guide on the Net2 library. I will try to pull it up and link to it.

Re: Filer Head Swap - How to?

aborzenkov — Tue, 28 Aug 2012 04:56:24 GMT

Net2 does not contain instructions for head swap from FAS3020/FAS3050 to FAS62xx. Unfortunately.

Sorry for confusion. Somehow I automatically assumed that it is an old model that does not support Data ONTAP 8.x. Of course you can upgrade from FAS3040/3070 just fine using standard procedure.

Re: Filer Head Swap - How to?

aborzenkov — Tue, 28 Aug 2012 05:09:47 GMT

Sorry for confusion. Which exact model of FAS3000 do you have? It makes difference.

Re: Filer Head Swap - How to?

radek_kubka — Tue, 28 Aug 2012 09:24:08 GMT

I think the latest doc on now site about head swap to 32xx describes this method as one of the two recommended approaches - haven't got link to hand at the moment.

Re: Filer Head Swap - How to?

peter1965 — Tue, 28 Aug 2012 13:42:07 GMT

I should of given more details: The filer I wanted to decommission is a FAS 3050 running 7.32. Let me know if there are any other details anyone needs. As I need to retire the 3050.

Re: Filer Head Swap - How to?

peter1965 — Tue, 28 Aug 2012 13:42:47 GMT

What "standard" procedure? I have not yet found one. Perhaps I am looking in the wrong place

Re: Filer Head Swap - How to?

peter1965 — Tue, 28 Aug 2012 13:43:45 GMT

I am familiar with Netapp, just not familiar with a head swap.

Re: Filer Head Swap - How to?

aborzenkov — Tue, 28 Aug 2012 13:58:11 GMT

Yes, after support site revamp it is pretty well hidden.

https://support.netapp.com/NOW/knowledge/docs/hardware/NetApp/cs_migration/index.htm?isLegacy=true

Re: Filer Head Swap - How to?

aborzenkov — Tue, 28 Aug 2012 14:02:23 GMT

Well, that’s the worst case. There is no documented procedure to directly head swap from FAS3050 to FAS62xx. And I was told that simply booting 8.0 with root volume from 7.3 was known to cause issues.

One possibility is to carve out several unused disks (take spare), install clean 8.x using FAS62xx and then reassign the remaining disks. Then it may be possible to mark old root volume as root and reboot ☺

Re: Filer Head Swap - How to?

peter1965 — Tue, 28 Aug 2012 14:14:19 GMT

Yikes. that figures I have to have the 'worst case' scenario.

Ok lets say i go that route, then what else would i have to do to make this a success and everything functioning fine.. (OMG will i be documenting this )

Re: Filer Head Swap - How to?

peter1965 — Tue, 28 Aug 2012 14:37:37 GMT

Thanks - argh the procedure is close but just a bit outside of the ball park. Not exactly my scenario (as you mentioned) sigh...

Re: Filer Head Swap - How to?

mglanville2 — Wed, 29 Aug 2012 03:40:17 GMT

I would be very upset at the salesperson, escalate this issue, maybe they can get you a SAS shelf to make up for the mistake, or at least a loaner one for the upgrade.

Re: Filer Head Swap - How to?

peter1965 — Wed, 29 Aug 2012 13:34:06 GMT

Scratching head and trying to figure out what I need again and where to start. But sounds like more disk would make it a easier transistion.. Gosh why was soemone telling me "ahh you can use datamotion..."

Re: Filer Head Swap - How to?

AGUMADAVALLI — Wed, 29 Aug 2012 17:26:39 GMT

Hi there,

There is no data motion in 7-mode, it is only available in the cluster-mode.

Moreover, You need to use the professional services to do the head swap, if you don't have a full fledge knowledge how to, obviously it will be hell. Please go for professional services.

thank you,

AK G

Re: Filer Head Swap - How to?

radek_kubka — Wed, 29 Aug 2012 17:36:40 GMT

There is no data motion in 7-mode

There is: http://www.netapp.com/us/communities/tech-ontap/tot-data-motion-1102.html

Not particularly useful in this case though.

Re: Filer Head Swap - How to?

AGUMADAVALLI — Wed, 29 Aug 2012 17:41:03 GMT

In 8.0.1 7-mode, it is partially supported which is most consumers use NFS and CIFS.

DataMotion for Volumes is designed to facilitate migration of any volume containing FC, FCoE, or iSCSI LUNs only. It does not support NFS or CIFS volumes.

thank you,

AK G