Effective storage capacity of FAS2220 with 12 x 600GB SAS

[GOETZ_FREYTAG]

Dear all,

total Netapp noob here. Am currently setting up our recently acquired FlexpodExpress; the Cisco part is fine, but I have a feeling that I don't understand the storage part quite correctly. Could somebody help me to understand whether my considerations are correct?

• we have a FAS2220 with 12 x 600 GB SAS drives
• 1 drive is spare
• 3 drives are aggr0 / root volume
• 8 drives are actually available for storage
• 2 of these are parity, 2 are dparity disks
• that leaves us with an effective capacity of 4 disks

In other words, this configuration leaves us with

     4 * 600 = 2,400 GB

                    base2: 2,235 GB

                         right-side: 1986.82 GB

That can't be right, can it?

Rgds.

Götz

[JGPSHNTAP]

Ok, so you have a very small configuration and you need to make some changes.

First things first, is your 2220 HA, or single head.  Sounds like it's a single head with no HA

If that's the case, you want to do the following (my opinion)

scrap aggr0 and another aggr, you need to roll in vol0 into the data aggregate because you have such a small configuration

So,  what I would do is roll the disks from the second aggr into aggr0, and create a 10 (or 11) disk aggr0

A 10 disk aggr0 will layout as the following

2 parity disks

8 data disks

Make sure you turn off snapshots and snap reserve on aggr0

snap reserve -A aggr0 0

snap sched -A aggr0 0

This configuration will give you 3.9TB of usable disk space

Hope this helps

[GOETZ_FREYTAG]

Hi JGPSHNTAP,

thanks for your suggestions!

The 2220 is actually HA, where partner 1 owns 9 disks and partner 2 owns 3 disks. This was configured following the recommended setup for FlexPod Express (small config). Knowing this, would you still recommend having vol0 and data volumes in one (then being the only) aggregate?

Cheers

Götz

[JGPSHNTAP · Accepted solution]

Ok, it's much better that you have HA, but the reality of the situation is you don't have enough disks.  It's virtually impossible to have anything of any value with what you are trying to do

Controller A  - 9 Disks

Controller B - 3 Disks.

Where's the spares?   So now you need to take one spare per controller (min), so now you are down to 7 disks on controller A   Seriously, what are you going to do with 7 disks.  That means you have 2 parity disks. (raid-dp), gives you 5 data disks for 1.4TB.   That's just awful

You neeed some more disks

[GOETZ_FREYTAG]

Aha! Thanks for confirming this; I was quite surprised to find out that the capacity is so low and just couldn't believe my eyes. The purchase was made ill-informedly, I suppose. Although, IMHO it seems strange that the small FlexPod Express Configuration is even sold like this.

We will have to get an additional shelf, then.

Cheers.

[JGPSHNTAP]

Well it does say express.. IMHO, useless b/c it's <2TB.  What are you going to do with that

[GOETZ_FREYTAG]

Absolutely. Thanks for your input, mate.

[JGPSHNTAP]

You will get a kick out of this.. I was telling my friend about this solution that they sold you and his response was "Thats when you turn around and punch whoever sold you this in the face"

[GOETZ_FREYTAG]

my sentiments exactly! although I should also like to have a talk with the guys who recommended / ok'd the purchase.

[Shyamap]

I am just exploring the possibilities and have couple of questions

1. In a FAS2220 HA configuration is it possible to have active/passive controller configuration while attaching all disks to one controller ( meaning i can access disks from the single host all the time)

2. In a single controller configuration is it possible to upgrade FW ( e.g. for disks or controllers ) without interuption to disk access

I have 12 x 600 GB and 9 diks + 2 DP + 1 Hot spare