Changing disks

[UNDECIDED]

Hi guys, just a quick question here, I have a client with a FAS2020(I think it's this model) netapp, it has 12 disk slots and all slots are populated with 500GB disks, all disks belong to one aggregate. There is only one volume contained withing the aggregate and this is 250GB in size, the remainder of the space is going to be used for snapmirror. The client has now increased the source location Netapp to include a shelf but does not want to buy another shelf for the DR site. Instead they would like to remove potentially 5 of the 500GB disks and replace them with 1TB disks.

The question is, is there a way to remove 5 of the 500GB disks and replcae them with the 1TB disks without disrrupting the 250GB volume? Or will I have to backup the volume contents and trash the volumes on the aggregate before changing the disks out?

It's using RAID_DP, so my thinking was to fail a couple of the 500GB disks and then add the 1TB's into the aggregate but not sure if they place nice together or if I have to create a new aggregate?

Thanks

[aborzenkov]

There is no way to remove disks from aggregate (except by converting RAID_DP to RAID4 which frees up one disk per raid group) so yes, you will need to backup and restore.

[UNDECIDED]

Thanks, will I also have to create a new aggregate for the 1TB disks? Or can I mix disk sizes within an aggregate, I figure this cannot be done, just like it cannot be done within some raid types...but need to clarify?

[aborzenkov]

This can be done but is not recommended.

[LTDCLSERGAO]

Hello,

You can mixed, However, replacing a disk already in use in an aggregate with a larger disk does not result in any additional usable disk space; the new disk is capacity-restricted to be the same size as the smaller disk it replaced.

[adrianlowe]

Hello,

As Aborzenkov said you would need to trash the aggregate and re-create a new aggregate only consisting of the 5 disks with 1 spare you could then add the other 1TB drives within the or 5-6 emptied bays. You could then create a seperate aggregate. However I'm not 100% sure whether a single shelf/12 internal bays will support 2 aggregates with two different sizes... technically I don;t see why it wouldn't but you would still be loosing some disk for raid-dp & spares so you'll probably end up with almost the similar capacity anyway.
I'm assuming it is a single controller if all disk are within one aggregate. Alternatively if your trying to squeeze out more capacity then you could use RAID-4 but not recommended

I hope this helps,

Adrian

[UNDECIDED]

Thanks, that's what I will do, I will backup the volume then delete the aggregate and recreate the aggregate with less disks, I will likely use RAID4, but will check in the Synergy Sim to work out space with both raid types. It's a dual controller, but one controller will likely be looking after the replicated DR volumes while the other will contain the two aggregates as described above.

[adrianlowe]

Just out of interest what will the second controller disks be? if there either the sames as the internal disk... you may want to add them to the second controller aggregate to maximize on capacity else if there different disks go ahead. You may want to confirm with NetApp global support that the 2 different aggregates can be compiled within the same shelf and that the 1TB disks won't get downgraded to the rest of the disks in the shelf size (although I'm prettys sure i've seen this done with mulitple shelves many moons ago... whether it was supported...!? i'm not 100%).

Adrian