Mixing disk sizes in an aggregate is not a problem as long as you create RAID groups for each kind of disk.  WAFL creates stripes at the RAID group level.  For best results create complete RAID groups each time you add disks to an aggregate.
 
Paulb


From: Jeff Mery [mailto:jeff.mery@ni.com]
Sent: Wednesday, September 20, 2006 3:30 PM
To: toasters@mathworks.com
Subject: Mixed disk sizes within a single aggregate


Greetings fellow toasters!
<Background>
We're looking at moving our 2 FAS940 systems from tradtional volumes to flexvols + aggregates.
</Background>

It would seem to me that the same rules and guidelines for creating traditional volumes now apply directly to the aggregate level (for the most part).  By rules and guidelines I mean things like trying not to mix disk sizes, try to avoid volumes (now aggregates?) that span FC adapters, etc.

Are any of these things still a concern on modern versions of ONTAP (7+)?  Does anyone have any best practices they'd be willing to share in regards to aggregate creation?  NOW says "make them as big as possible using as many spindles as possible", but that doesn't really help much.  We use our filers for unstructured data only; cifs + nfs but no databases, no snapmirror, no snapvault, etc..

TIA,
Jeff Mery - MCSE, MCP
National Instruments

-------------------------------------------------------------------------
"Allow me to extol the virtues of the Net Fairy, and of all the fantastic
dorks that make the nice packets go from here to there. Amen."
TB - Penny Arcade
-------------------------------------------------------------------------