How to move aggregates between NetApp controllers

 

DISCLAMER: I ACCEPT NO RESPONSIBILITY FOR ANY DAMAGE OR CORRUPTION OF DATA THAT MAY OCCUR AS A RESULT OF CARRYING OUT STEPS DESCRIBED BELOW. YOU DO THIS AT YOUR OWN RISK.

 

We had an issue with high CPU usage on one of the NetApp controllers servicing a couple of NFS datastores to VMware ESX cluster. HA pair of FAS2050 had two shelves, both of them owned by the first controller. The obvious solution for us was to reassign disks from one of the shelves to the other controller to balance the load. But how do you do this non-disruptively? Here is the plan.

In our setup we had two controllers (filer1, filer2), two shelves (shelf1, shelf2) both assigned to filer1. And two aggregates, each on its own shelf (aggr0 on shelf0, aggr1 on shelf1). Say, we want to reassign disks from shelf2 to filer2.

First step is to migrate all of the VMs from the shelf2 to shelf1. Because operation is obviously disruptive to the hosts accessing data from the target shelf. Once all VMs are evacuated, offline all volumes and an aggregate, to prevent any data corruption (you can’t take aggregate offline from online state, so change it to restricted first).

If you prefer to reassign disks in two steps, as described in NetApp Professional Services Tech Note #021: Changing Disk Ownership, don’t forget to disable automatic ownership assignment on both controllers, otherwise disks will be assigned back to the same controller again, right after you unown them:

> options disk.auto_assign off

It’s not necessary if you change ownership in one step as shown below.

Next step is to actually reassign the disks. Since they are already part of an aggregate you will need to force the ownership change:

filer1> disk assign 1b.01.00 -o filer2 -f

filer1> disk assign 1b.01.01 -o filer2 -f

…

filer1> disk assign 1b.01.nn -o filer2 -f

If you do not force disk reassignment you will get an error:

Assign request failed for disk 1b.01.0. Reason:Disk is part of a failed or offline aggregate or volume. Changing its owner may prevent aggregate or volume from coming back online. Ownership may be changed only by using the appropriate force option.

When all disks are moved across to filer2, new aggregate will show up in the list of aggregates on filer2 and you’ll be able to bring it online. If you can’t see the aggregate, force filer to rescan the drives by running:

filer2> disk show

The old aggregate will still be seen in the list on filer1. You can safely remove it:

filer1> aggr destroy aggr1

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NetApp Active/Active Cabling

Cabling for active/active NetApp cluster is defined in Active/Active Configuration Guide. It’s described in detail but may be rather confusing for beginners.

First of all we use old DATA ONTAP 7.2.3. Much has changed since it’s release, particularly in disk shelves design. If documentation says:

If your disk shelf modules have terminate switches, set the terminate switches to Off on all but the last disk shelf in loop 1, and set the terminate switch on the last disk shelf to On.

You can be pretty much confident that you won’t have any “terminate switches”. Just skip this step.

To configuration types. We have two NetApp Filers and four disk shelves – two FC and two SATA. You can connect them in several ways.

First way is making two stacks (formely loops) each will be built from shelves of the same type. Each filer will own its stack. This configuration also allows you to implement multipathing. Lets take a look at picture from NetApp flyer:

Solid blue lines show primary connection. Appliance X (AX) 0a port is connected to Appliance X Disk Shelf 1 (AXDS1) A-In port, AXDS1 A-Out port is connected to AXDS2 A-In port. This comprises first stack. Then AY 0c port is connected to AYDS1 A-In port, AYDS1 A-Out port is connected to AYDS2 A-In port. This comprises second stack. If you leave it this way you will have to fully separate stacks.

If you want to implement active/active cluster you should do the same for B channels. As you can see in the picture AX 0c port is connected to AYDS1 B-In port, AYDS1 B-Out port is connected to AYDS2 B-In port. Then AY 0a port is connected to AXDS1 B-In port, AXDS1 B-Out port is connected to AXDS2 B-In port. Now both filers are connected to both stacks and in case of one filer failure the other can takeover.

Now we have four additional free ports: A-Out and B-Out in AXDS2 and AYDS2. You can use these ports for multipathing. Connect AX 0d to AXDS2 B-Out, AYe0d to AXDS2 A-Out, AX 0b to AYDS2 A-Out and AY 0b to AXDS2 B-Out. Now if disk shelf module, connection, or host bus adapter fails there is also a redundant path.

Second way which we implemented assumes that each filer owns one FC and one SATA disk shelf. It requires four loops instead of two, because FC and SATA shelves can’t be mixed in one loop. The shortcoming of such configuration is inability to implement multipathing, because each Filer has only four ports and each of it will be used for its own loop.

This time cabling is simpler. AX 0a is connected to AXDS1 A-In, AX 0b is connected to AYDS1 A-In, AY 0a is connected to AXDS2 A-In, AY 0b is connected to AYDS2 A-In. And to implement clustering you need to connect AX 0c to AXDS2 B-In, AX 0d to AYDS2 B-In, AYe0c to AXDS1 B-In and AY 0d to AYDS1 B-In.

Also I need to mention hardware and software disk ownership. In older system ownership was defined by cable connections. Filer which had connection to shelf A-In port owned all disks in this shelf or stack if there were other shelves daisy chained to channel A. Our FAS3020 for instance already supports software ownership where you can assign any disk to any filer in cluster. It means that it doesn’t matter now which port you use for connection – A-In or B-In. You can reassign disks during configuration.