topic Re: FAS2020 Remove Drives in ONTAP Hardware

FAS2020 Remove Drives

KARLOCHACON — Thu, 05 Jun 2025 06:40:07 GMT

hi guys

I have a FAS2020 Dual Controller

While working on this Storage I assigned 9 Disk RAID-DP to Filer1 (Top) and 3 Disk RAID-4 to Filer2 (Bottom).

Now after reading and learning about this storage I decided to distribute the load and create 2 RAID-DP one in each controller and no hot spares to maximize space using:

options raid.min_spare_count 0

just to let you know I have no data at all in Filer1 which is aggr0 where vol0 for the root volume is presented.

so is there a way to remove 3 disks from my Filer1 and assign them to Filer2? by command line or something.

I know I can remove the current spare from Filer1 by

disk remove_ownership ....

but what about the other 2 Hard Disks?

thanks a lot

Re: FAS2020 Remove Drives

columbus_admin — Tue, 06 Dec 2011 18:08:09 GMT

Unfortunately not, once disks are assigned to an aggregate, the only way to get them back is to destroy the aggregate and build everything again. As you don't have any data in it, this is less of a problem, but not the solution you were hoping for.

- Scott

Re: FAS2020 Remove Drives

aborzenkov — Tue, 06 Dec 2011 18:10:01 GMT

But he has data - vol0 ...

Re: FAS2020 Remove Drives

aborzenkov — Tue, 06 Dec 2011 18:14:27 GMT

You have to options.

Reinstall one head. Shut it down, reassign disks from other head, start installation procedure on the remaining ones. As you have no user data, could be an option.
Convert two RAID_DP into RAID4 which gives you 2 spare disks. Assign them to the head, create new aggregate and move root volume to it. Then destroy old root aggregate and redistribute disks as needed. Convert back to RAID_DP when finally done. May be easier as it does not require to redo all settings.

Re: FAS2020 Remove Drives

columbus_admin — Tue, 06 Dec 2011 18:22:33 GMT

You have to take into account that when you create an aggregate, you are striping all of those disks as part of one large container. Each smaller part has been allocated to a part of the larger whole. If you pull out some of the smaller bits, you have to rebuild the whole. This is no different than a standalone server with a RAID controller.

- Scott

Re: FAS2020 Remove Drives

KARLOCHACON — Tue, 06 Dec 2011 19:15:18 GMT

Maybe I will go the DP to RAID 4 way.

I was looking for something else about netapp and found this

https://communities.netapp.com/message/30559#30559

Maybe I will be doing that....basically from scratch

just Please give me your inputs for RAID 4 and RAID DP with each 6 disks I posted above

Re: FAS2020 Remove Drives

KARLOCHACON — Tue, 06 Dec 2011 19:16:03 GMT

by the way guys any difference of advantage of using RAID-DP over RAID-4?

Configuration 1

RAID-DP , 6 Disks each controller

no hot spares

8 Disks for Data

Configuration 2

RAID-4, 5 Disks each controller

1 Hot Spare each controller

8 Disks for Data

any input? thanks

Re: FAS2020 Remove Drives

KARLOCHACON — Wed, 07 Dec 2011 00:46:22 GMT

hi again

I was thinking if going from scratch using Control+ C menu and 4a option will set everything to default? 4 and 4 disk for each controller?

(1) Normal boot.

(2) Boot without /etc/rc.

(3) Change password.

(4) Initialize owned disks (4 disks are owned by this filer).

(4a) Same as option 4, but create a flexible root volume.

(5) Maintenance mode boot.

thanks

Re: FAS2020 Remove Drives

columbus_admin — Wed, 07 Dec 2011 13:10:03 GMT

With no user data, that is the way I would go. Configuring the filer again would not be enough to warrant my changing raid types, changing disks around, moving the root vol, changing the raid type back.

- Scott