Hello, ONTAP gurus!
Help find the best layout for this equipment and load:
- original FAS2552 dual-controller DS2246 with 4x400GB SSDs and 20x1TB SAS - shelf 1.0
- later added additionsl disk shelf DS2246 with 24x1TB SAS drives - shelf 1.1.
Main goal is to get maximim storage flexibility and feature usage (Flash Pool) for small data center with following loads:
- user data access via CIFS/NFS
- small vitrual cluster with 2-4 Hyper-V nodes with SMB 3 data VM storage.
This is current ONTAP 9.8 configuration recommentation and system state when use System Manager/ONTAP auto-configuration:
SSDs 1.0.0-1.0.3 - untouched by recomendation and not used at all, but want to use Flash Cache for user data access;
HDDs 1.0.4-1.0.23 partitioned to store node1/2 root agregates and have raid group 0 for each node data aggregate.
HDDs 1.1.0-1.1.19 equally assigned to each node and have raid group 1 for each node data aggreagate.
Two aggregates auto created with two raid groups each for node 1 and node 2 - see picture
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We have 4 unused SSDs and 4 HDDs reserved for spares (hm, why not 2?).
Each created data aggregate on node 1 and node 2 have two RAID groups rg0 (10 partitions on shelf 1.0)and rg1 (10 drives on shelf 1.1).
Auto-partition function says that in can not reccomend what to do with SSDs and have created total two new data aggregates (1 for each node).
My questions are:
1. Can we manually switch/recreate such configuration for aggregates without conflicting optimal ONTAP recommendations:
- create SSD pool using 4xSSDs;
- create for both nodes two different partitions for used data access and some cata center loads:
aggr_NodeA_01 - with SSD flash pool caching for user data access via CIFS/NFS - 10 partitions on shelf 1.0;
aggr_NodeA_02 - Hyper-V VM storage with SMB 3 access - 10 drives on shelf 1.1;
aggr_NodeB_01 - with SSD flash pool caching for user data access via CIFS/NFS - 10 pertitions on shelf 1.0
aggr_NodeB_02 - Hyper-V/SQL etc. storage for data center loads (NAS or SAN) - 10 drives on shelf 1.1.
2. Does configuration in (1) conflicts with optimal NetApp raid group values or creates some performance issues?
3. Because of 4 aggregates we now have some flexibility to turn on/off Flash Pool for aggregates on shelf 0 (we have to recreate aggregate to turn off Flash Pool, so its flexibility to move volumes) - isn't it?
4. Having experience with traditional RAID controllers, I want to know how data volume stored on default created aggregate which consists of two raid-dp groups rg0 (10 partitions) and rg1 (10 drives) - does volume on such aggregate use only one rg or both?
5. Are there any chances to use two more spares for data?
Thanks for any help!