topic Re: 10 things you wish you knew when your first started with NetApp in NetApp Learning Services Discussions

10 things you wish you knew when your first started with NetApp

IBBLEIT_ — Thu, 05 Jun 2025 05:44:17 GMT

Hey guys!

I'm just doing a presentation to my colleagues and I was writing a slide on things I wish I knew when I first started working on the NetApp. I thought it might be an interesting point of discussion for established users as well as maybe people who are just starting out with NetApp, maybe we can save a headache

Here's a few of mine:

You don’t need to have snapshots enabled on any volume that is protected in DFM

When setting a schedule in DFM, there are 3 “types” of event, hourly, daily and weekly. Be careful with this when setting your retention policies. <---- This one is a partciular favourite as it took me a week to work out why even though I'd set the retention policy, snapshots weren't following it...

ODA comes into effect based on the disks associated with an aggregate NOT the capcity in use. If you add 10 ODA disks to an aggregate, you pay for them whether they have data on or not.

When you add a disk to an aggregate, you cannot remove it unless you destroy the aggregate and create a new one.

What do you know now that you wish you knew as a NetApp rookie?

Haze

Re: 10 things you wish you knew when your first started with NetApp

craigbeckman — Wed, 05 Feb 2014 04:43:42 GMT

The root volume (vol0) shouldn't share an aggregate with other busy volumes and should have a dedicated aggregate if possible!

Re: 10 things you wish you knew when your first started with NetApp

lhoffman1 — Wed, 05 Feb 2014 08:53:54 GMT

let me make a note: " You don’t need to have snapshots enabled on any volume that is protected in DFM"

keep in mind, you don't protect your data within DFM. DFM is only the "portal" to execute the necessary commands and safe config in their database.

Before any protection is started, an snapshot is always required.