topic Which goes with what.... (newbie) in ONTAP Hardware

Which goes with what.... (newbie)

saxodreng — Wed, 04 Jun 2025 12:06:25 GMT

Hi Netapp community,

I am quite new to Netapp and it is not that easy to get to understand which goes with what.

I want to setup a lab for redundancy testing in vmware vsphere 6.x and would like to base it on some kind of SAN - also with redundancy can came accross an offer including 2 units of DS2246 with 48 disks in total.

Now what do I need to get hands on before I have a usable setup ?

FAS, Cables, Controllers, Software, Licenses etc.

Thanks in advance

Rgds

Thomas

Re: Which goes with what.... (newbie)

SpindleNinja — Wed, 11 Dec 2019 14:17:08 GMT

Physical hardware you'll need:

Some type of FAS (or AFF), which is 2 controllers + disks / disk shelves (DSxxx). They usually ship with basic cables needed. (power and cluster networking) From what you said in your post, you will need more than just the two DS2246 shelves.

You'll also need Network xor SAN Switch(s) and ESX host(s)

What protocol are you wanting to use? you said SAN, so FC or iSCSI? or something like NFS for vmware?

When you buy a new FAS all the licensing is included. However, getting a used FAS off sites like ebay for example, you could run in to issues getting valid licenses.

Re: Which goes with what.... (newbie)

saxodreng — Wed, 11 Dec 2019 15:45:41 GMT

Hi SpindleNinja,

Thanks for quick reply.

The test lab has to be as low cost as possible for the learning purposes.

Cant the DS2286 be controlled otherwise or does it have to be Netapp FAS?

I saw a FAS 2220 on Ebay but without any OS - so regarding to the License issue that you mentioned, I believe that the license follows the Software and some kind of activation to follow.

Which OS should I go for and can the OS be obtained through Netapp ?

I was thinking about iSCSI, NFS

I have 3 ESXI hosts (HP Gen8 servers) both with 4 x 1Gbit and 2 x 10Gbit NICs

The intention is to test Exchange and SQL on a SAN and test failover possibilities.

Any suggestions ?

Re: Which goes with what.... (newbie)

mjdalton1 — Wed, 11 Dec 2019 19:20:07 GMT

@saxodreng A couple of things.

If you were to purchase the FAS2220 from eBay. The highest version of ONTAP supported on that device would be ONTAP 9.1P19

The OS can be downloaded from the NetApp support site. https://mysupport.netapp.com/products/p/ontap9.html You would still need to purchase the necessary licenses you'd like to use.

Another option for you could be to use ONTAP Select which is software that can be installed on a white box or as a vm host. As long as it meets ONTAP Selects minimum requirements. This also would have a cost for just the desired licenses. This should be cheaper then Hardware and Licenses https://mysupport.netapp.com/products/p/ontap_select.html

Re: Which goes with what.... (newbie)

SpindleNinja — Wed, 11 Dec 2019 21:57:57 GMT

in addition to what mjdalton1 said, the Simulator might also help a bit. And there is also Labs on Demands for customers now as well. https://mysupport-beta.netapp.com/ui/#/tools

What type of failover are you trying to test? just to see if the storage it would failover ok?