I would recommend running upgrade advisor. I am not an expert on upgrades, but I can give you some pointers as to what you can do prior to running the upgrade.
- Read the Release Notes as well as the Upgrade Guide of the Data ONTAP 7.3.7 for important information and technical detail before beginning your upgrade.
- If you are running SnapDrive software on Windows hosts connected to this filer, check the comaptability with the upgrade os. If you are using SnapDrive with SnapManager for Exchange/SQL/Oracle/SAP/SharePoint/Domino, please check the compatibility between your SnapDrive and SnapManager before implementing the upgrade.
- Before upgrading Data ONTAP, monitor CPU and disk utilization for 30 seconds by entering the following command at the console of each storage controller:
sysstat -c 10 -x 3
Note: The values in the CPU and Disk Util columns are strongly recommended not to exceed 50% for all ten measurements reported. Ensure that no additional load is added to the storage system until the upgrade completes.
- Make a back up of /etc/rc and /etc/hosts
- Download perfstat and run it on a client as follows:
perfstat -f filername -t 4 -i 5 > perfstatname.out
Save this output file for a couple of weeks after the upgrade is complete
- Modify the storage failover policy to disable auto-giveback of storage. This is a NetApp best practice, to prevent automated fallback until the upgrade is confirmed to be successful.
- Run - options autosupport.doit "starting_NDU 7.3.7"
This way you have configruration report before the upgrade, which could be handy when troubleshooting issues related to upgrade. I hope this helps.
As I said I am not an expert....but hope this helps.