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Disks and local tiers (aggregates) overview

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You can manage ONTAP physical storage using System Manager and the CLI. You can create, expand, and manage local tiers (aggregates), work with Flash Pool local tiers (aggregates), manage disks, and manage RAID policies.

What local tiers (aggregates) are

Local tiers (also called aggregates) are containers for the disks managed by a node. You can use local tiers to isolate workloads with different performance demands, to tier data with different access patterns, or to segregate data for regulatory purposes.

  • For business-critical applications that need the lowest possible latency and the highest possible performance, you might create a local tier consisting entirely of SSDs.

  • To tier data with different access patterns, you can create a hybrid local tier, deploying flash as high-performance cache for a working data set, while using lower-cost HDDs or object storage for less frequently accessed data.

    • A Flash Pool consists of both SSDs and HDDs.

    • A FabricPool consists of an all-SSD local tier with an attached object store.

  • If you need to segregate archived data from active data for regulatory purposes, you can use a local tier consisting of capacity HDDs, or a combination of performance and capacity HDDs.

FabriPool data tiering

Working with local tiers (aggregates)

You can perform the following tasks:

You perform these tasks if the following are true:

  • You do not want to use an automated scripting tool.

  • You want to use best practices, not explore every available option.

  • You have a MetroCluster configuration and you are following the procedures in the MetroCluster documentation for initial configuration and guidelines for local tiers (aggregates) and disk management.

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