Can someone from NetApp comment on these following concerns?
It seems...inconvenient for those who upgraded to ONTAP 6 on F760s to have to revert back to 5.3.6.x in order to upgrade to the F840s. The release of ONTAP 6 couldn't wait until a port to the x86 code was ready for the F840s?
And, also, why won't 5.3.6H1 run on an alpha-based filer? I couldn't test 5.3.6H1 *anywhere* in my environment, except on my new F840 which I needed immediately on a high-visibilty filer. I upgraded and went live with 5.3.6H1 and crossed my fingers that there would be no problems with this new release. Very unnerving. I'm now running with two different ONTAP versions on a group of filers, and hoping I don't run into any inconsistencies across my environment due to this. Again, a port of 5.3.6H1 couldn't have been made for the alpha-based filers coincident with the x86-based F840?
Lastly, could the boot process be made smarter to load the appropriate microkernel, x86 or alpha, if *both* were included on disk? These gyrations to install and download x86- or alpha-based code from *floppy* (slllooowwwww) just seems so...so...kludgy. Probably not, but I'm just asking. Makes a simple head-swap upgrade not so simple.
In summary, in comparison to the usual elegant and quick upgrades and downgrades for previous ONTAP versions, these points above just increased my downtime [0] and decreased my comfort level.
(BTW, the 840 is taking the load of our previous 760 without even breaking a sweat. Yipee!)
[0] Just one of these migrations or ugprade/downgrades takes you far below a 99.999% uptime metric.
Until next time...
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