#Converting AFF to FAS?

1 messages · Page 1 of 1 (latest)

finite stirrup
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Hi, we have an old A300 that we would like to do a few tests as a FAS. I know that when you do a headswap the new spare parts from NetApp comes as a FAS8200, and you have to set an envisonment value (can't remember it 100%) but it turns the controller into an AFF... But can this be reversed?

honest basalt
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Honestly if someone shares this information on how they know they are likely in some form of violation.

It’s not a supported change

I’ve personally done it once. I had an aff flip to a fas during an upgrade. Support worked with us (my customer) to set it back. They warned us then not to share the information.

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If you can convince support to give you the info then you are fine.

finite stirrup
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Hey I understand, we are just trying to get the most out of our hardware. The support is very close to expire so I guess they would not help us out with this... Personally I find it sad that old equipment has to be thrown out and cannot be reused (without support of cause)... the way licenses are locked to the motherboard is a "clever" trick. I know why they did it, and everybody else does it too.. but I find it sad that a homelab'er cannot buy used hardware from ebay with original licenses attached... or at least not in the US... I think that in the EU is should be legal to sell the licenses, yet I doubt NetApp agrees 😉

vocal arch
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@honest basalt Spot on. Not a supported operation and would definitely open to a host of violations. In short, don't do it....even with legacy hardware.

silk gazelle
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yes you can technically switch between FAS and AFF personalities. And it is not at all illegal, however, you will lose support from NetApp.

No other violations involved. And it is entirely possible that even NetApp doesn't notice (we had a system shipped with the wrong personality and installed it at the customer's site... Nobody noticed for a year or so 😅)

velvet owl
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I have switched AFF to FAS long time ago, I can only recall that change the setting in LOADER
LOADER> printenv

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and something to do with bootarg

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I'll check tomorrow office time

silk gazelle
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yeah, that only goes one way, you cannot easily revert that (at least not with a simple unsetenv)

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We had a controller replacement once where the broken controller was an C190, but the replacement had the FAS personality (FAS27xx). We had to work with support, and they had to dig rather deep and changed something via undocumented commands, and then suddenly the replacement controller was a FAS500f. After two or three escalations it was finally fixed. But it took like a week or so until they got it right

finite stirrup
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...on another note, I once (by mistake) updated a Lenovo branded E-Series storage system with a NetApp firmware... the customer had a mix of controllers and I uploaded the wrong one by mistake... but it just updated with no problems and the Lenovo logos was replaced with NetApp 🙂 Thankfully I was able to update with the correct firmware to bring it back again... 🙂

coarse mulch
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So, what's the point of an "AFF" if you can just run a FAS with all flash drives in it? Is it all just semantics / smoke in mirrors?

half stump
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Other "design-center". The advertised explanation is that if it's an AFF there are code-optimizations in ONTAP since everything regarding HDDs can be ignored. So... AFF A400 vs. FAS8300 (which both have the same controller-hardware) with the same SSD-configuration --> AFF A400 should have better peak IOPS and maybe latencies.

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Oh an some efficiency-features only work with AFF (or need to manually enabled on FAS for SSD-aggrs).

coarse mulch
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interesting, and there are different ONTAP downloads for each, right? That would kinda answer everything as far as I'm concerned

half stump
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Nope, it's the same ONTAP image for all hardware appliances, so FAS, AFF and ASA. (ONTAP Select and CVO uses different images but the code should be mostly the same)

coarse mulch
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so then there must be something coded into ONTAP saying if model==AFFxxxx then skip all the HDD operations
if model==FASxxx then keep looking for HDD

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weird, but alright i guess 😛 thanks!

marsh arrow
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The personality arguments are: "bootarg.init.flash_optimized" true or false, for AFF or FAS. "bootarg.init.san_optimized" true or false, for All SAN Array.

finite stirrup
silk gazelle
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yeah, setting the argument is easy, it's unsetting it that's problematic (note that simply setting it to "false" also doesn't work)

silk gazelle
finite stirrup
silk gazelle
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btw there are also some more flags for C-Series vs A-Series, and a special flag for the FAS500f that are also all read-only and unable to be cleared once they're set

silk gazelle
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not sure you should be posting this here though

frank dove
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Agreed. Deleted.