topic Re: Storage Available after Formatting in ONTAP Hardware

Storage Available after Formatting

todd_horne — Thu, 05 Jun 2025 07:07:08 GMT

I just added two new trays to my V-3170. I have one tray of 2TB SATA drives and I'm wondering what would be the most efficient way to distrubute the disks. I want to get the most space out of my aggregates so would I be better served to create on large aggr? Or split the tray into a couple different aggregates? I will be using RAID-DP.

We currently don't have any existing aggregates with 2TB drives so expanding an existing is not an option.

Re: Storage Available after Formatting

nigelg1965 — Tue, 12 Oct 2010 15:05:51 GMT

I think you are going to hit the limit for aggregate size of 16TB, so you can only have 10 or may be 12 disks in a Raid Group, and have to have at least 2 probably 3 aggregates.

Re: Storage Available after Formatting

radek_kubka — Tue, 12 Oct 2010 15:34:05 GMT

Hi,

What ONTAP version are you on?

64-bit aggregates can help you a lot with utilising 2TB drives 'properly', but you need ONTAP version 8.x.

Some more info in this thread:

http://communities.netapp.com/message/30810#30810

Regards,
Radek

Re: Storage Available after Formatting

todd_horne — Tue, 12 Oct 2010 18:58:37 GMT

Our V-3170 is on 7.3.2P4.

So if I create 2 aggregates I'm going to lose 4 disks for parity, right? I'm just trying to figure out the best way to get the most out of this tray, any input is appreciated.

Thanks!

Re: Storage Available after Formatting

radek_kubka — Tue, 12 Oct 2010 19:23:38 GMT

Yes, 2 aggregates mean in this case 4 parity disks (assuming we are talking RAID-DP) - so usable capacity really sucks

That's why 64-bit aggregates are almost a must for 2TB drives.

Re: Storage Available after Formatting

todd_horne — Tue, 12 Oct 2010 20:04:43 GMT

So considering this is our first tray of 2TB drives, we'll lose one of the 14 disks as a hot spare. Leaving us with a total of 13 useable disks. So I'd create one aggregate with 7 disks and the other with 6 disks, guess I really have no other options. Thoughts on this?