Thanks to everyone who responded. It looks like I can do the following to move disk shelves from a FAS3050 CF pair to a FAS3170 CF pair.

1) Upgrade the FAS3050 pair to ONTAP 7.3.2, which is on the FAS3170s.

2) Run "options disk.auto_assign off" on FAS3170s (to be safe).

3) Shut down the FAS3050s and FAS3170s.

4) Connect each shelf chain from the FAS3050s to just one of the FAS3170 heads.

5) Boot FAS3170s into maintenance mode and run "disk assign all" to assign software disk ownership. (Why must this be done in maintenance mode? Because the disks are not spares? Because the FAS3050s do not use software disk ownership?)

6) Shut down FAS3170s and connect the shelf chains to both heads.

7) Boot FAS3170s normally. Should see foreign aggregates. Run "aggr online" to bring online. (I will not have any aggr or vol name conflicts.) Also run "options disk.auto_assign on".

Steve Losen scl@virginia.edu phone: 434-924-0640

University of Virginia ITC Unix Support