ONTAP Discussions

Advice, please, on creating a hybrid aggregate?

rh
3,209 Views

Hi

 

On a new 2650HA with 4 x 400GB SSDs and 20 x 1.2 TB SATA drives (as well as 24 SAS drives), how would you go about creating a hybrid aggregate from the SSDs and the SATA drives, please?

 

From past experience, 4 SSDs seems too few (for lack of spares and the size of the RAID group).

 

Regards,

 

Richard.

3 REPLIES 3

colsen
3,190 Views

Hello,

 

We built our first FlashPool aggregates just a few months ago (i.e. be wary of any advice I might have) but we did research it a bunch beforehand.  Anyway, we ended up creating storage pools so that we can easily add SSD capacity on down the road.  Our build ended up being:

 

Storage Pool:  11X3.8TB SSD (1 spare) - 38.4TB total

Aggr1:  42X6TB SATA + 19.2TB SSD (50% of the storage pool) 

Aggr2:  42X6TB SATA + 19.2TB SSD (50% of the storage pool) 

 

Essentially, provisioning a storage pool allows you to add "capacity" to the SSDs (in the form of new disks inserted into the shelf) and then distribute that capacity to the spinning disks.  We gathered that the common logic is that if you're not going to be changing the SSD capacity, you can just add the SSDs to the spinning disk aggregate and call it good.

 

So the steps are basically to build the SATA aggregate(s) as you see fit and then build the storage pool (if you want to go down that path).  Once both sets are provisioned you can add the hybrid capacity (or SSDs) to the spinning disk.  

 

Quick storage pool write-up:  https://library.netapp.com/ecmdocs/ECMP1636022/html/GUID-6F50251B-8D13-40FA-A17B-510320CF2E3C.html

 

Hope that helps,

 

Chris

rh
3,184 Views

Chris,

 

Many thanks for the prompt reply!

 

Regards,

 

Richard.

colsen
3,171 Views

I should have provided the following links (just to clarify the difference between using storage pools vs. physical SSDs) from the very useful ONTAP 9 documentation center.

 

Physical SSDs:  http://docs.netapp.com/ontap-9/index.jsp?topic=%2Fcom.netapp.doc.dot-cm-psmg%2FGUID-3D373998-8E07-4B83-8855-F195667EF60D.html

 

Storage Pool:  http://docs.netapp.com/ontap-9/index.jsp?topic=%2Fcom.netapp.doc.dot-cm-psmg%2FGUID-B0E27F87-CB58-4337-B16F-D52C48BA655C.html

 

Parent topic:  http://docs.netapp.com/ontap-9/index.jsp?topic=%2Fcom.netapp.doc.dot-cm-psmg%2FGUID-52712AB1-B237-468E-97D6-55204504DAF3.html&cp=3_4_4

 

The one comment I read somewhere talked about storage pools allowing you to add SSD capacity to "two or more HDD aggregates" - I can't tell from your scenario whether you're intending on creating two FlashPool aggregates or just one, so I'd pull that thread a bit more before deciding on your plan of attack...

 

Good luck,

 

Chris

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