topic Data ONTAP 8 takeover-giveback information in VMware Solutions Discussions

Data ONTAP 8 takeover-giveback information

ThomasBebee — Thu, 05 Jun 2025 07:24:58 GMT

From the presentations I have seen, it appears that the takeover-giveback process in Data ONTAP 8 will be a significant improvement over the 7.3x process. I have been trying to find some additional detail on what these improvements are, but have not found anything yet. If someone is aware of any write-ups on this topic, could you please point me to where it exists, as I would like to learn more of the specifics.

Thank you.

Tom

Re: Data ONTAP 8 takeover-giveback information

amiller_1 — Thu, 13 Aug 2009 21:50:30 GMT

Nothing publicly I'm aware of I'm afraid.....I'd check with your NetApp or partner sales engineer to see if they have info they can pass on informally or under NDA....

Re: Data ONTAP 8 takeover-giveback information

droach — Fri, 08 Oct 2010 14:08:15 GMT

Don't know of any docs, but here are some results of my testing. Testing to see how ESX and its clients react to takeover and giveback.

nSeries 7900 active/active configuration
OnTap v8.0 7-Mode
ESX - vSphere 4 Enterprise Plus
Initiator group configured with ALUA on.
ESX host with two single port Qlogic QLE2460 HBA's
ESX host using Round Robin and Storage Array Type:WMW_SATP_ALUA
ESX host zoned to both Heads - ESX automatically and correctly identified its 2 primary paths (Head-A), and 2 secondary paths (Head-B) (see insert below)
Using IOMETER on Windows guest to generate I/O to SAN-attached LUNS
Using PERFMON on Windows guest to monitor I/O

Taking over Head-A - issuing takeover command FROM Head-B

Perfmon shows a 10 second loss of connectivity (no I/O) to its LUNS on Head-A

Issuing giveback -f command FROM Head-B

Perfmon shows a 30-40 second loss of connectivity (no I/O) to its LUNS on Head-A

This is the first time we are using a Filer strictly for FC-attached back-end storage. I am not sure if this loss of connectivity is considered "normal". Does anyone have any suggestions to eliminate this connectivity loss during takeover and giveback? We are seeing similar results for physical Windows servers.

Re: Data ONTAP 8 takeover-giveback information

masaru_ryumae — Sun, 19 Feb 2012 18:11:44 GMT

Sorry, this is a late reply, but we are also seeing similar issues of losing paths lately. I don't think we saw this before, but we are now seeing it (or we have been seeing this, but I didn't pay fully attention to notice it).

I am told by NetApp support to make sure clients (ESX/i, Linux/Windows) have Host Utilities (5.3 or 6.0 based on support compatibility matrix), and multipath configurations are fully correct. I will be going through my client systems to make sure clients are fully compliant, but have you tried host utilities with proper multipath config for ALUA? Does lun check_config -A show FC clients with partner paths used regularly?

If you have used host utilities, has it helped to handle well during fail-over/giveback?

I will report out what I find out on our next fail-over/giveback opportunity.

Thanks!