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Rebalance workloads between nodes on ASA r2 storage systems

Contributors netapp-aherbin
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Beginning with ONTAP 9.17.1, ONTAP automatically rebalances workloads between the nodes in an ASA r2 system HA pair for optimal performance. For example, if utilization on one node increases to 70% while utilization on its HA partner is only 30%, ONTAP automatically shifts the workloads so that utilization of each node is more closely matched. Because the nodes of the HA pair share the same storage availability zone, workload rebalancing is a copy-free operation with no impact on performance.

Modify the default evaluation period for automatic workload rebalancing

Automatic workload rebalancing is enabled by default 14 days after either upgrading to ONTAP 9.17.1 or initializing a new ONTAP 9.17.1 ASA r2 cluster. You can use the ONTAP command line interface (CLI) to increase or decrease the default evaluation period to suit your operational needs.

Note You cannot revert from ONTAP 9.17.1 on your ASA r2 system after automatic workload rebalancing is enabled.
Steps

  1. Verify the number of days remaining in the evaluation period:

    placement rebalance config show -fields evaluation-window

  2. Change the rebalancing evaluation period:

    placement rebalance config modify -evaluation-window <number_of_evaluation_days>

    The following example sets the remaining evaluation period to 10 days.

    placement rebalance config modify -evaluation-window 10

Modify the automatic workload rebalancing setting

Automatic workload rebalancing is enabled by default 14 days after either upgrading to ONTAP 9.17.1 or initializing a new ONTAP 9.17.1 ASA r2 cluster. You can change the default setting to disable automatic workload rebalancing or to set it to an advisory state to flag workloads that are imbalanced without automatically moving them.

Step

  1. Verify the rebalancing mode currently set on your nodes:

    placement rebalance config show -fields mode

  2. Modify the automatic workload rebalancing setting:

    placement rebalance config modify -mode <disabled|advisory|automated>

  3. Verify that the rebalancing mode is modified:

    placement rebalance config show -fields mode

Manually trigger workload rebalance

If you have disabled automatic workload rebalancing, you can still manually trigger a workload rebalance. This is useful if you want to rebalance workloads after a period of manual adjustments or if you have set the rebalancing mode to advisory and want to take action based on the workload flags.

Steps

  1. Verify the rebalancing mode currently set on your nodes:

    placement rebalance config show -fields mode

  2. If the rebalancing mode is not set to advisory, then set it to advisory:

    placement rebalance config modify -mode advisory

  3. Manually trigger a workload rebalance:

    balanced-placement rebalance execute

  4. View the status of the rebalancing operation:

    placement rebalance config show-evaluation
What's next?

If you want to set the rebalancing mode to automated or disabled, you can do so by using the placement rebalance config modify command.