Will,

You're gonna get a lot of opinions on this, so let me offer mine for you to average out with all the others:

Maximum number of logical volumes, or partitions

Max number of *physical* volumes is 23. I consider qtrees to be *logical* volumes or partitions and if you make each qtree a share then you can have a max of 14,400 on a F740.

Maximum size of a logical volume or partition

900GB on a F740.

Maximum PRACTICAL size of a logical volume or partition

This really depends on your particular requirements and need for multiple volumes (due to different tape recovery windows, snapshot schedules, database log vs. data areas, etc...) but most of my customers don't have individual volumes larger than 500GB.

Minimum size of a logical volume or partition

2 disks are required and one is used for parity so you can do the math depending on the size of disk you have...

Minimum PRACTICAL size of a volume or partition

7 disks in one full shelf is the absolute minimum I (grudgingly) recommend. (as I really prefer 14 disk or higher configurations)

Again, total size depends on your individual disk size. FYI - In a single shelf, 1 parity drive and 1 hot spare leaves 5 data drives. 18GB Seagate drives format to 17GB real space and WAFL reserves 10% leaving you with 5*17*.9=76.5GB useable space. Remember that your default snapshot reserve will use 20% that 76.5GB useable space. You can of course modify that snapshot reserve percentage up or down anytime to your liking.

A URL pointer would also be helpful if anybody has one.

Multiple Volumes and Multiple RAID Groups on NetApp Filers: http://www.netapp.com/technology/level3/3027.html

-Val. ============================================== Val Bercovici Office: (613)724-8674 Systems Engineer Pager: (800)566-1751 Network Appliance valb@netapp.com Ottawa, Canada FAST,SIMPLE,RELIABLE ==============================================