How to get OnCommand 5.0 to create a new volume

[ckeith]

I'm using OnCommand 5.0 with a FAS3270 with a maximum sized aggregate (94TiB usable).  The maximum volume size should be in the 70TiB range, but for some reason DOT 8.1 is limiting it to 62.51TiB.  I'm okay with that, however OnCommand fails to provision any new data containers because it keeps trying to increase the size of the volume.  When DOT refuses, OnCommand stops with an error: 'Failed to resize volume XYZ (1432)" (note I abbreviated the volume name).  How can I get OnCommand to accept that it can't grow the volume and simply create a new one to put the container into?  The aggregate has an additional 30TiB in it, so there is more than enough room to create another volume.

Thanks,

Keith

[reide]

Keith,

Based on your description, I suspect you're hitting a known issue where OnCommand 5.0 doesn't have resource limits defined for newer FAS controllers and the most recent versions of Data ONTAP.  These resouce limits (reslimits) tell OnCommand details about a given combination of FAS controllers and ONTAP versions such as the number of FlexVols, Deduplication limits, etc...  When these aren't defined for newer products, OnCommand defaults to settings that may be much lower than what your platform is capable of.  For the FAS3270 and ONTAP 8.1, these reslimits were added in OnCommand 5.1 which is available for download on the NetApp support site.

I'd suggest you upgrade to OnCommand 5.1 to gain access to these newer reslimits and then try this again.  If the problem persists, we can rule-out the reslimits as a source of the problem.

[ckeith]

Hi Reid,

Unfortunately, for various reasons, upgrading is not an option.  I am familiar with reslimit though, I've used that to adjust the allowable volume size with dedup turned on, but I don't see a field for maximum volume size.  For example:

Id	496
ONTAP Version	8.0.1
Product Model	N3240
Availability	None

Maximum number of FlexVols per storage controller

Maximum CPU utilization threshold of storage controller

Maximum Disk utilization threshold of an aggregate

Maximum Deduplication size of a storage system model and ONTAP version (in GB) 16384

Is there a hidden field that allows you to set the maximum volume size?  If you don't want to post it to the general forum, feel free to send it to me at my @netapp.com email account.

Thanks!

Keith

[reide]

Not exactly.  But I still suspect the missing reslimit has something to do with it.  Try and create a new reslimit specifically for your FAS3270 and DataONTAP 8.1 and see if they problem persists.  I'm not sure off the top of my head what the limits are for a FAS3270 so you'll need to look them up and specify them.

# dfpm reslimit create -c 8.1 FAS3270

(get the resulting reslimit-ID number from the create command)

# dfpm set reslimit <reslimit-id> maxFlexVols=nnn

# dfpm set reslimit <reslimit-id> maxDedupeSizeInGB=nnnnnn

[ckeith]

Nope, that doesn't help.  I was hoping for a reslimit for the maximum size of a volume, without that it seems OnCommand will continue to think that the maximum volume can be much bigger than reality.

Fortunately for me I know of a trick to force OnCommand to create a new volume, and that is if you request a data container with the same name of an existing one, it will create a new volume to put it into.  The first time I did that I expected it to return on error, but instead it created a new volume.  So, I just did that to work around this issue.  I was hoping I was only going to have to do this once, and OnCommand would start using the new volume, but unfortunately not, every time I tried to use a new volume name, it would go back to trying to increase the first volume and fail.