ONTAP Recipes: Do you know you can...?
Easily add 6 SSDs to a 8-SSD AFF-A200 HA-Pair
An AFF-A200 HA pair ordered with 8x SSDs uses the root-data-data partitioning scheme. Typically, the SSDs are provisioned into aggregates such that each controller uses 7 data partitions for filesystem data, and one data partition remains as a spare.
This recipes highlights the steps to add 6x SSDs to such a system.
1. Install the SSDs. They should be the same capacity as the existing SSDs.
2. Go to System Manager and select Hardware and Diagnostics -> Disks
3. Choose the Inventory tab, then Assign.
4. Assign all 6 SSDs to one of the two controllers in the HA pair. Let’s call it Node A.
5. Go to the Hardware and Diagnostics -> Aggregates screen, choose the data aggregate owned by Node A,
then Actions -> Add Capacity.
6. At this point, you will see one small SSD partition, and 6 whole SSDs.
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7. Add the smaller disk/partition to the aggregate. This is the spare partition from the original 8-drive configuration.
8. Repeat the Actions -> Add Capacity operation for 5 of the 6 remaining disks. As you provision the whole SSDs into the data aggregate, they will be partitioned to match the rest of the SSDs. One data partition per SSD will be used on this aggregate, and another spare data partition will be created and assigned to the partner node.
9. Return to the Aggregates screen and repeat the Actions -> Add Capacity operation for the data aggregate on the second node in the HA pair. If System Manager gives an error saying you have insufficient spare disks, you can resolve this by returning
to the Disks-> Inventory screen and assign the remaining spare disk back to the second node.
For more information, see the ONTAP 9 documentation center