Monitoring and protecting the file system consistency using NVFAIL

The -nvfail parameter of the volume modify command enables ONTAP to detect nonvolatile RAM (NVRAM) inconsistencies when the system is booting or after a switchover operation. It also warns you and protects the system against data access and modification until the volume can be manually recovered.

If ONTAP detects any problems, database or file system instances stop responding or shut down. ONTAP then sends error messages to the console to alert you to check the state of the database or file system. You can enable NVFAIL to warn database administrators of NVRAM inconsistencies among clustered nodes that can compromise database validity.

After the NVRAM data loss during failover or boot recovery, NFS clients cannot access data from any of the nodes until the NVFAIL state is cleared. CIFS clients are unaffected.