I see from your badges your a netapp employee, so you have more resources than I would as a customer. I would check with your sources, but I don't see how it can be a requirement for 8.2.1. I searched the release notes but nothing jumped out at me.
As part of your deployment, no cluster, (unless 22xx) should go without acp. I suggest your customer cable it up as in
Universal SAS and ACP Cabling Guide
.
It takes a few minutes to setup acp, and then you will not have any issues