In the current versions, it does not help. The goal of flexgroups is to distribute. DBs and VMDKs are generally large(r) files. Flexgroups work with files and will distribute a file to a constituent. It will monitor space usage to help with the distribution.
When large files are in play, it will drop a chunk onto a flexgroup member but that plays a little on the algorithms for placement of normal (smaller) files.
--tmac
*Tim McCarthy, **Principal Consultant*
*Proud Member of the #NetAppATeam https://twitter.com/NetAppATeam*
*I Blog at TMACsRack https://tmacsrack.wordpress.com/*
On Tue, Jul 7, 2020 at 4:21 PM John Stoffel john@stoffel.org wrote:
"tmac" == tmac tmacmd@gmail.com writes:
tmac> Also, if you are doing NAS data (and unstructured, like home tmac> dirs, NOT databases or VMDKs) you should upgrade to 9.7P5 and tmac> use FlexGroups which would utilize your entire system: tmac> aggregates on both nodes, Networking on both nodes, CPU/RAM on tmac> both nodes. Actually can improve performance!
Unfortunately there's no hope of me getting to that release any time soon, but do DBs and VMDKs lose performance with FlexGroups? And does it really help on just two node clusters? I would assume it might help on four node clusters on up.
John