Active/Passive Configuration

[marcelorf]

We recently bought a FAS2220's that was setup in 7-Mode with active/active configuration. So each controller manages half of the disks, with two aggregates existing on the appliance. My understanding is that for active/active there must be two aggregates. I want to delete one (or both if needed) of those aggregates so I can can have a single aggregate encompassing all disks. Would it be just a matter of destroying one aggregate, assigning the disks to the controller with the remaining aggregate and expanding it? I'm hesitant to do this and lose a controller's boot partition in the process. Are there any guidelines on how to do this. I've looked in the knowledge base but was unable to find an article that described the process. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

[billshaffer]

To maintain the cluster, you need at least two aggregates, one for each controller.  Your boot info is in the root volume of that aggregate.  There isn't really an active/passive concept with NetApp - both controllers in an HA setup are active, although only one controls a given aggregate at any one time (so I guess it really depends on how active and passive are defined ).  You can't remove all the drives from controller A to give to controller B, because then controller A would have no drives for it's root aggr/volume.  What you can do is destroy the aggregate on controller A, create a new 2 drive (raid4) aggregate for the root vol, and assign the rest of the drives to controller B.  This would require a reinstall of controller A.

Bill

[StorageAddict]

Bill is 90% correct. NetApp does have Active/Passive configs, where controller A owns most of the disks between the HA pair. Controller A has to stay in a RAID-DP config plus have 1x spare minimum.

The root aggregate on controller B can set a RAID4 config, but you'll still need 1x spare drive. Depending on the total disks in your configuration you may only gain 1x data disk by doing this setup.

Email me your contact info and we can discuss what your trying to accomplish.

/Mark

NetApp SE

Mclayton@netapp.com

[StorageAddict]

Bill is 90% correct. NetApp does have Active/Passive configs, where controller A owns most of the disks between the HA pair. Controller A has to stay in a RAID-DP config plus have 1x spare minimum.

The root aggregate on controller B can set a RAID4 config, but you'll still need 1x spare drive. Depending on the total disks in your configuration you may only gain 1x data disk by doing this setup.

Email me your contact info and we can discuss what your trying to accomplish.

/Mark

NetApp SE

Mclayton@netapp.com

[robert_acevedo]

Mclayton and Bill are correct.....but to give a complete answer more data is needed. take mclayton up on his offer.

Info needed

1) amount of disk spares. for both controllers

2) amount of aggregates for both controllers

3) size of disks in 1 and 2

4)are there any data or vols other than the root vol

5) you mentioned the system is new....has it been configured? if not that makes life easy