Migrating flexvolumes with snapshots and flexclones from 32bit Aggregate to 64bit Aggregate

[rhadfield]

Is there a netapp whitepaper for migrating existing flexvols, their snapshots and flexclones hanging from those snapshots from a 32bit aggregate to a 64bit aggregate?

Also when moving a flexclone will it fully hydrate or is there a way of avoiding this?

We are planning an upgrade from ONTAP 7.3.2 to 8.0.2 and from 32bit aggregates to 64bit aggregates.

[bsti]

Check out TR-3786 (Intro to 64-bit aggregates).

It does a pretty good job of what you can do and not do and how to migrate.

http://media.netapp.com/documents/tr-3786.pdf

[radek_kubka]

Hi and welcome to the Community!

ONTAP 8.1 (currently RC1) may help - if you are ready to grow your aggregates beyond 16TB limit, they will automatically be converted to 64-bit. But still (for a reason completely unknown to me) you can't simply convert sub-16TB aggregate from 32-bit to 64-bit.

You can use SnapMirror though for data & snapshots migration.

Regards,

Radek

[aborzenkov]

Data ONTAP 8.1 also allows you to do VSM from 32 to 64 aggregates which converts them to 64 bit on destination.

SnapMirror will preserve FLexClone space savings (there are some manual steps necessary to setup it).