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System Manager Classic

Storage recommendations for creating aggregates with System Manager - ONTAP 9.7 and earlier

Contributors netapp-aoife netapp-thomi

Beginning with System Manager 9.4, you can create aggregates based on storage recommendations. However, you must determine whether creating aggregates based on storage recommendations is supported in your environment. If your environment does not support creating aggregates based on storage recommendations, you must decide the RAID policy and disk configuration, and then create the aggregates manually.

System Manager analyzes the available spare disks in the cluster and generates a recommendation about how the spare disks should be used to create aggregates according to best practices. System Manager displays the summary of recommended aggregates including their names and usable size.

In many cases, the storage recommendation will be optimal for your environment. However, if your cluster is running ONTAP 9.3 or earlier, or if your environment includes the following configurations, you must create aggregates manually:

  • Aggregates using third-party array LUNs

  • Virtual disks with Cloud Volumes ONTAP or ONTAP Select

  • MetroCluster configurations

  • SyncMirror functionality

  • MSATA disks

  • Flash Pool aggregates

  • Multiple disk types or sizes are connected to the node

In addition, if any of the following disk conditions exist in your environment, you must rectify the disk conditions before you use the storage recommendation to create aggregates:

  • Missing disks

  • Fluctuation in spare disk numbers

  • Unassigned disks

  • Non-zeroed spares (for ONTAP versions earlier than 9.6)

  • Disks that are undergoing maintenance testing

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