I have one second-hand NetApp FAS2020, ONTAP 7.3.6, with 12 disks.
There is created 1 aggregate (aggr0) and all 12 disks are in this single aggregate (10 data, 1 parity, 1 dparity), no spare disks.
There is one volume (vol0) in this aggregate, which is root.
I'd like to reconfigure it, create several aggregates, different types of raid, but I am not able to do that. There is no data I have to keep so I can do anything with this filler.
How to reconfigure it?
Is root volume important?
Is there any way how to do "factory reset" or do initial setup?
Best Answer
You do need to reconfigure, because you definitely want spare disks. That said, you don't want more than one aggregate with that few disks, and when using regular disks (non-SSD), you always want only raid-DP. Netapp only offers raid 4 or raid DP, and raid 4 is not recommended for use on anything but SSDs, and they even prefer those to be raid DP. Raid 0 is for external LUNs on other storage where the raid is taken care of by the upstream storage, never for physical Netapp disks.
If you don't have support from Netapp, this could be a little hairy. You can't remove a disk from an aggregate, you can only add them. So you have no opportunity to move the rootvol to be able to delete and recreate that aggregate with fewer disks. Your best option is to reinstall the OS.
First, get the licenses that you have already installed with the license command. You need to connect through the console for this part- there's a port on the back with a wrench you can use for ethernet console access. When you reboot, you'll need to press ctrl-c to access the boot menu. The menu you get into allows you to clean your config and initialize all disks.
This menu changes depending on what version of the OS you're already running, and I don't remember what options it presents for 7.3.6. If you have an option for "traditional volumes", don't pick that. You want to use a flexvol for the root.
When it's creating the root aggregate, it should default to just 3 disks. That's fine initially- you will eventually want to add 8 more to total 11, leaving you one spare. You can do this once you're up and running.
A note on spares: I personally would keep 2 spares if I could afford the capacity because that second spare is used by the OS for certain background tasks that a single one isn't.
You might run into questions when you're doing this and if you can't ask Netapp, you should consider joining the toasters mailing list to ask other users.