Just bear in mind that any aggregate will only perform as well as the slowest RAID group. Spanning an aggregate across multiple adaptors will improve fault tolerance. WAFL will automatically select disks across adapters to maximise that.


From: owner-toasters@mathworks.com [mailto:owner-toasters@mathworks.com] On Behalf Of Kelley Green
Sent: 21 September 2006 05:07
To: Brosseau, Paul
Cc: Jeff Mery; owner-toasters@mathworks.com; toasters@mathworks.com
Subject: RE: Mixed disk sizes within a single aggregate


What about aggregates across FC adapters?  Recommended, not recommended, or not an issue?

Kelley

Kelley R. Green
IT Specialist
Global Technology Services - Storage
Access Line 801-415-0449
Cell 801-916-1273
e-mail: krgreen@us.ibm.com



"Brosseau, Paul" <Paul.Brosseau@netapp.com>
Sent by: owner-toasters@mathworks.com

09/20/2006 06:04 PM

To
"Jeff Mery" <jeff.mery@ni.com>, <toasters@mathworks.com>
cc
Subject
RE: Mixed disk sizes within a single aggregate





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

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