FAS2050 to FAS3210

[dorseyfoga]

We purchased a new FAS3210 HA head and along with it two shelves.  One DS2246 shelf and one DS4243 shelf has already been hooked up to the new head.  I'm looking to move, and keep the data intact, from the current FAS2050 head, 5 DS14 MK2 AT shelves.  Their are 4 aggr's that are currently living on these shelves.  They are all dedicated to one half of the FAS2050 HA head.  The other half has a DS14 MK2 FC head that is going to be migrated over to one of the new shelves using snapmirror.  The FAS2050 is currently running 7.3.4 and the FAS3210 is running 8.0.1P3.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.  Please let me know what information I can provide.

Thank you for your time.

[ogra]

Well, not sure what you actually intended to ask. But if you are using SnapMirror to migrate the data just keep 1 thinkg in mind : You can only use QSM ( If migrating from 32-bit Aggregat to 64-bit Aggregates).

I recommend using 64-bit aggregate if you are limited any spindles ( 16TB aggregate). If not go ahead and replicate your setup in 32-bit aggregate.

If you are migrating 32-bit -> 64-bit aggregate ( You can only use QSM and VSM is ruled out).

If you are migrating from 32-bit -> 32-bit aggregate ( you can use both VSM and QSM).

FYI : VSM is faster than QSM ( In case you environment has loads of files in it, millions I mean).

I hope it clears your doubt, if not let us know !

[dorseyfoga]

Sorry, I should have explained things a little better...

The main question is that we have 5 shelves hooked up to a FAS2050 head that we want to move over to a FAS3210 head.  We want to keep the data and aggr's intact.  Is it a matter of just moving over the connection to the new head?  Anything we need to do to prepare the shelves before we move them?  Will the difference in ontap versions going to cause a problem?

[ogra · Accepted solution]

Thanks for the explaination.

Well it's very logical if you try to think.

We are trying to : FAS2050 -> FAS3210

Now, To put the new Head i.e FAS3210 in place of FAS2050 ( It's very much possible). However their is 1 catch. Where is your root volume sitting for FAS2050 ??

In your setup you have FAS2050 (internal disks) along with 5 Disk shelfs.  Now, you can physically connect FAS3210 with your 5 disk shelfs, but what about internal disks ??

Well actually you can't connect FAS2050 internal disks to FSA3210 physically and hence they would never be attached.

It can be done in various ways, my way would be :

1) Find some free space on the 5 external disk shelfs, and move your root volume from internal disks to external. ( For that matter, you may move all the data from internal disks to external as you can't use your internal disks after this head swap).

2) See to it, you have the same Data ONTAP version on FAS2050 root volume and FAS3210 compact Flash card. Ideally FAS3210 would be shipped with Data ONTAP 7.3.5.

3) There are critical bug fixed in Data ONTAP version 7.3.5.1, and I would recommend you to install Data ONTAP 7.3.5.1 on FAS2050.

4) Follow the Head swap procedure available in NOW site

5) And perform a final upgrade of Data ONTAP so that CF card of FAS3210 will have version 7.3.5.1 as well.

If any time you think it's complicated for you to perform it, you can contact NetApp PS or it's partners to do it for you.

Cheers !

[dorseyfoga]

For some of the data, we plan on snapmirring it over to the new NetApp that has two shelves already.  So the internal data should not be a problem.

The problem I see is that we are running two different versions of Data ONTAP.

On the FAS2050 we have version 7.3.4.

On the FAS3210 we have version 8.0.1P3 7-Mode, which it was shipped with.

That's the thing that I'm worried about is that the two different versions of the OS.

[dorseyfoga]

I finally stumbled upon the documentation I have been looking for that answers most of my questions.  

The last question I have concerning this is, is there a major difference between a FAS2050 and FAS2040?  The reason why I ask is that I found directions for a FAS2040 to a FAS32xx but not FAS2050.  It appears that it's a faster and more robust machine over all, so I just want to find out if the directions would work for the situation I'm in.

Thanks.

[ogra]

Well, yes FAS2050 is older compared to Fas2040. ( But someone will be old or new).

The hardware difference is, FAS2050 is a 32-bit hardware and FAS2040 is 64-bit.

Hence, FAS2050 won't support Data ONTAP 8.0.1 ( Since it's a 64-bit OS). But FAS2040 will.

Can you post you main steps which you have found out at NOW ? I'll have a look at it and may be give my opinion as well.

Thanks !

[dorseyfoga]

Hrm... so I guess the better thing to do would be downgrade the new ones to match the old ones... I wonder why if you get the steps from Auto support it says that it can be done, it's just not supported.

Anyways, the directions I was looking at are on this page:

http://now.netapp.com/NOW/knowledge/docs/hardware/NetApp/cs_migration/index.htm

The two I was looking at are

http://now.netapp.com/NOW/knowledge/docs/hardware/NetApp/cs_migration/FAS2xxx/FAS2040_internal_storage_to_FAS32xx_single-controller/frameset.html

Since we have a single controller head with internal storage and then:

http://now.netapp.com/NOW/knowledge/docs/hardware/NetApp/cs_migration/FAS2xxx/FAS2040_internal_storage_to_32xx_ha/frameset.html

Since we have a single head, dual enclosure at our main site.

[shaunjurr]

Hi,

Moving the disks over should be relatively unproblematic.  There are a few things to remember that might make it easier. Frankly, if the 3210 isn't running in production yet, I'd upgrade to 8.0.1P3 first.

1. If you want things to come up right away, make sure you have the newest shelf and disk firmware in place.  Often enough that is most easily done with an upgrade and the point made with having your 2050 at 7.3.5.1 is probably a good idea, but you can also manually upgrade such things by downloading and copying over the new firmware to their respective directories in the vol/etc directory. Also make sure that your shelf types and modules are supported under 8.x

2. You are going to have to assign the disks to the new systems.  This can be a bit of a pain if the 3210 is in production, but you can script that.  I normally just script a list of "disk assign  .... -f " commands and paste them on the command line. It's low-tech, but it allows you to watch how the system reacts.

3. The new aggregates will first show up as "foreign".  You really want to make sure that you have no duplicate volume or aggregate names.  If you happen to move vol0 with the disks, this isn't really a problem at all because the system will just rename it to vol0(1) (if I remember correctly) if the 3210 is running, if it isn't running you will have more problems booting as the system as there will be two volumes marked as "root".  Just take the aggregates online and the system will start modifying the filesystems to be 8.x filesystems.

4. You sort of really need to be sure that you aren't going to have to go back to a 7.x system as that will be a bigger bucket of worms trying to revert the disks back to a 7.x system.  Ideally, you should have the systems at the same OS level so a fallback to the previous hardware is possible without a lot of extra work.

5. Make sure that your new systems have had a "diag" run done on them (boot the diag kernel) and that the nvram battery is at full charge.  Basically, you should be confident that the 3210 systems are in good working order before the migration.

Much of this might be in the procedures that you found.  There should be no real difference in a migration of external shelves from a 2050 or a 2040.

I hope at least some of this helps.  Good luck.

[stm_italy]

Hello,

it seems I have to do the very same migration (mirror + move external shelves from a fas2050 to a fas3210  from ontap 7 to 😎

Can you please tell me if it worked in your case?  I prefer also not to downgrade the fas3210  system to 7.3 and 32 bit aggregates.

Many thanks,

Giuseppe