FAS2040 Ontap upgrade from 7.3.7 to 8.1.3, will this be n NDU ?, as far as Licenses are concerned ?

[ASHWINPAWARTESL]

Hi,

I am planing to upgrade FAS2040 from ONTAP 7.3.7 to 8.1.3 7-mode (Major upgrade).

I have read this can be done Non-disruptively, but my only concern is about the licensing.

Will all the license be upgraded automatically ?

I read this KB, but there isn't any clear cut information on what would happen to the existing 7.3.7 licenses if I do NDU to 8.1.3 7-mode ?

https://kb.netapp.com/support/index?page=content&id=3013159

My questions is:

After downloading 8.1.3 7-mode exe on the boot device, when I perform takeover of 'B' node, 'A' will takeover the disks and continue to service requests for node B, however when I do 'giveback', will it break the services due to any licensing requirements for 8.1  ?

Only thing I noticed is that - With 8.1 onward, multistore licensing is no longer required, only registry enablement is needed. Is that the only thing I need to adjust before doing this upgrade, as far as 'LICENSING' is concerned.

Thanks & Regards,

-Ashwin

[radek_kubka]

Licensing in 8.1.x is fine - it starts to get messy when you upgrade to 8.2

Have you got access to My Autosupport portal? I recommend you run Upgrade Advisor for the systems in question & see what the report says.

Regards,

Radek

[ASHWINPAWARTESL]

Hi Radek,

Thanks for the reply.

I do have autosupport account, just that I don't have any system in my list of systems that are at 7.3.x, hence I would appreciate if someone can run it and tell me if upgrade adviser contains any advise on licensing for major upgrade to 8.1. Also, In cases where you can't afford two upgrades commercially, what are the sensible options here. Direct upgrade from 7.3.5 to 8.1 ?

Current situation::

I have a system that is sitting at 7.3.5, and I have a option to either go to 7.3.7 (most stable release for 7.3.x family), also this will be minor upgrade, so less thingbits to worry. FAS2040 has just 4GB RAM (of which 256MB is for NVMEM). Considering this limitation, I was more inclined to patch to 7.3.7. I am also aware that 8.0 was the most buggy, and had number of fixes. Though It introduces features that are good depending upon your future needs, which may or may not be required. On the other hand, Ontap 7.3.7 does NOT support certain OS levels , For example - Solaris 10 update 11 is only supported from 8.x onward. Hence there are many things to consider I guess before I upgrade to 8.x. 

8.1 is more attractive, as it allows in-place upgrade to 64bit aggr beyond 16TB limit. Hence, given just one upgrade I would be more tempted to do direct upgrade to 8.1 (freebsd based ontap)

Is there used cases on major upgrades and the advise from netapp when such situations comes.

Thanks

-Ashwin

[ASHWINPAWARTESL]

I found one HA Pair running 7.3.7 on FAS2040, and ran the upgrade adviser, it just generates the same typical steps of ontap upgrade. It is happy with direct upgrade, with absolutely no advise on licensing.

[radek_kubka]

As I already said - there are no major differences in 8.1 licensing, just few things became licensed / enabled by default.

8.2 is a different kettle of fish though.