LUNs - qtrees - VServer

[CHRISTOPHULRICH]

Hello NetApp Community,

I've attached an illustration of the hierarchy of the NetApp "storage fragmentation" which I made for the intern usage in my company. Now I want to know three things of which I am not really sure about:

1. On which position in the illustration can I put a qtree and what is the qtree for? I've read that its analog to a subdirectory in e.g. the Windows filesystem.
2. Is the position of the LUN properly? I've read the following about a LUN and the reason of its usage:

• "Some applications need local storage, they just can't seem to write data into a NAS (think CIFS or NFS) share.  Microsoft Exchange and SQL are this way.  They require local hard drives. So the solution is a LUN."
• What else can I do with LUNs?

   3.  On which position in the illustration can I put a VServer and what is the VServer for? I've read the following about VServers:

• "VServers are needed to serve data in a cluster. At least one VServer is needed in a cluster to serve data to the clients. A VServer can be stretched over more than one aggregate."
• Could you tell me some more about VServers? Why do I need them, why can't a Windows client just map a CIFS share to get data?

I hope you can throw light on these topics for me.

Thank you in advance!

Greetings,

Christoph Ulrich

[radek_kubka]

Hi Christoph and welcome to the Community!

Qtrees are basically folders/subdirectories within a NetApp volume - you can share a qtree, instead of a whole volume. You can also apply quotas to qtrees

You can also put a LUN inside a qtree, but it doesn't make much practical difference - unless you use SnapVault and/or Qtree SnapMirror replication.

VServer is specific to Cluster-Mode only (there is similar thing called vFiler in 7-Mide) & it is a sort of a virtual filer - you can do logical separation of your resources using it.

Regards,

Radek