Re-purpose FAS2220 - support expired

[brgsstm]

Hi All,

We recently moved away from SAN to a DAS VMware environment and as such our FAS2220 and shelf are in run off.  The support has expired now and they are ready to be de-racked.

I have enjoyed working with it over the last 4 years and I am a little disappointed that I didn't get more opportunity to dig deeper.  I have a plan to rectify that though.

We have a small 2016 Hyper-V cluster for dev/training purposes but the storage consists of a 2012 R2 box running the iSCSI target for a CSV.

I'm wanting to re-purpose the FAS to replace the storage on that environment but as the support has now expired I have a few concerns.  I want to flatten the FAS completely so I can get to grips with the configuration from scratch.

So, I notice in mysupport.netapp.com that I can no longer download the latest ONTAP and lots of the other plugins like SnapDrive and SnapMirror.  This isn't too much of a concern but I would have liked to update to the latest version (running 8.1.2 currently I believe).  My concern is that if I use option 4a in special boot to flatten the controllers, I might be disabling the device permanently?  Can anyone offer me any reassurance that that isn't the case?  Will I be able to pick up the existing licenses once "factory reset"?

I will be zeroing the disks too.

Thanks in advance.

[robinpeter · Accepted solution]

Option-4 will not disable the controller, It will re-initilize the system. erasing all existing configuration and re-create a new root volume.

If you are using "8.1.2" ill suggest you save your license codes before using the "option-4".

If your support is expired, you are pretty much out of luck to get the latest version of ontap or any other software from netapp.

But that should not stop you from re-configuring your controller.

Robin.

[SeanHatfield]

Running an option 4 will remove all the installed licenses.  You'll need to have those recorded somewhere or you won't make it very far when it comes back up.

[brgsstm]

Thanks for the replies, mind eased