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Storage limits in AWS

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Cloud Volumes ONTAP has storage configuration limits to provide reliable operations. For best performance, do not configure your system at the maximum values.

Maximum system capacity by license

The maximum system capacity for a Cloud Volumes ONTAP system is determined by its license. The maximum system capacity includes disk-based storage plus object storage used for data tiering. NetApp doesn't support exceeding this limit.

For some HA configurations, disk limits prevent you from reaching the capacity limit by using disks alone. In those cases, you can reach the capacity limit by tiering inactive data to object storage. Refer to capacity and disk limits below for more details.

License Maximum system capacity (disks + object storage)

Freemium

500 GiB

PAYGO Explore

2 TiB (data tiering is not supported with Explore)

PAYGO Standard

10 TiB

PAYGO Premium

368 TiB

Node-based license

2 PiB (requires multiple licenses)

Capacity-based license

2 PiB
For HA, is the license capacity limit per node or for the entire HA pair?

The capacity limit is for the entire HA pair. It is not per node. For example, if you use the Premium license, you can have up to 368 TiB of capacity between both nodes.

For an HA system in AWS, does mirrored data count against the capacity limit?

No, it doesn't. Data in an AWS HA pair is synchronously mirrored between the nodes so that the data is available in the event of failure. For example, if you purchase an 8 TiB disk on node A, Cloud Manager also allocates an 8 TiB disk on node B that is used for mirrored data. While 16 TiB of capacity was provisioned, only 8 TiB counts against the license limit.

Disk and tiering limits by EC2 instance

Cloud Volumes ONTAP uses EBS volumes as disks, with a maximum disk size of 16 TiB. The sections below show disk and tiering limits by EC2 instance type because many EC2 instance types have different disk limits. Disk limits are also different between single node systems and HA pairs.

The disk limits below are specific to disks that contain user data. The limits do not include the boot disk and root disk.

  • You can purchase multiple node-based licenses for a Cloud Volumes ONTAP BYOL single node or HA pair system to allocate more than 368 TiB of capacity, up to the maximum tested and supported system capacity limit of 2 PiB. Be aware that disk limits can prevent you from reaching the capacity limit by using disks alone. You can go beyond the disk limit by tiering inactive data to object storage. Learn how to add additional system licenses to Cloud Volumes ONTAP. Though Cloud Volumes ONTAP supports up to the maximum tested and supported system capacity of 2 PiB, crossing the 2 PiB limit results in an unsupported system configuration.

    • AWS Secret Cloud and Top Secret Cloud regions support purchases of multiple node-based licenses starting with Cloud Volumes ONTAP 9.12.1.

Single node with a Premium license

Instance family Max disks per node Max system capacity with disks alone Max system capacity with disks and data tiering

c5, m5, and r5 instances

22

352 TiB

368 TiB

c4, m4, and r4 instances

34

368 TiB

368 TiB

Single node with node-based licensing

Instance family Max disks per node Max system capacity with one license Max system capacity with multiple licenses

Disks alone

Disks + data tiering

Disks alone

Disks + data tiering

c5, m5, and r5 instances

22

352 TiB

368 TiB

352 TiB

2 PiB

c4, m4, and r4 instances

34

368 TiB

368 TiB

544 TiB

368 TiB x each license

Single node with capacity-based licensing

Instance family Max disks per node Max system capacity with disks alone Max system capacity with disks and data tiering

c5, m5, and r5 instances

22

352 TiB

2 PiB

c4, m4, and r4 instances

34

544 TiB

2 PiB

HA pairs with a Premium license

Instance family Max disks per node Max system capacity with disks alone Max system capacity with disks and data tiering

c5, m5, and r5 instances

19

304 TiB

368 TiB

c4, m4, and r4 instances

31

368 TiB

368 TiB

HA pairs with node-based licensing

Instance family Max disks per node Max system capacity with one license Max system capacity with multiple licenses

Disks alone

Disks + data tiering

Disks alone

Disks + data tiering

c5, m5, and r5 instances

19

304 TiB

368 TiB

304 TiB

2 PiB

c4, m4, and r4 instances

31

368 TiB

368 TiB

496 TiB

368 TiB x each license

HA pairs with capacity-based licensing

Instance family Max disks per node Max system capacity with disks alone Max system capacity with disks and data tiering

c5, m5, and r5 instances

19

304 TiB

2 PiB

c4, m4, and r4 instances

31

496 TiB

2 PiB

Aggregate limits

Cloud Volumes ONTAP uses AWS volumes as disks and groups them into aggregates. Aggregates provide storage to volumes.

Parameter Limit

Maximum number of aggregates

Single node: Same as the disk limit
HA pairs: 18 in a node 1

Maximum aggregate size

96 TiB of raw capacity 2

Disks per aggregate

1-6 3

Maximum number of RAID groups per aggregate

1

Notes:

  1. It is not possible to create 19 aggregates on both nodes in an HA pair because doing so would exceed the data disk limit.

  2. The aggregate capacity limit is based on the disks that comprise the aggregate. The limit does not include object storage used for data tiering.

  3. All disks in an aggregate must be the same size.

Logical storage limits

Logical storage Parameter Limit

Storage VMs (SVMs)

Maximum number for Cloud Volumes ONTAP
(HA pair or single node)

C5, M5, and R5 instances with BYOL
The following number of storage VMs are supported with C5, M5, and R5 instance types when you bring your own license (BYOL):

  • 12 storage VMs with single node systems

  • 8 storage VMs with HA pairs

Note A storage VM spans the entire Cloud Volumes ONTAP system (HA pair or single node)

An add-on license is required for each additional data-serving SVM beyond the first storage VM that comes with Cloud Volumes ONTAP by default. Contact your account team to obtain an SVM add-on license.

Storage VMs that you configure for disaster recovery (DR) don't require an add-on license (they are free of charge), but they do count against the storage VM limit. 1,2

All other configurations
One data-serving storage VM and one destination storage VM used for disaster recovery are supported. 2

A storage VM spans the entire Cloud Volumes ONTAP system (HA pair or single node).

Files

Maximum size

16 TiB

Maximum per volume

Volume size dependent, up to 2 billion

FlexClone volumes

Hierarchical clone depth 3

499

FlexVol volumes

Maximum per node

500

Minimum size

20 MB

Maximum size

100 TiB

Qtrees

Maximum per FlexVol volume

4,995

Snapshot copies

Maximum per FlexVol volume

1,023

Notes:

  1. For example, if you have 8 data-serving storage VMs on an HA pair, then you've reached the limit and can't create any additional storage VMs. The same is true for another HA pair that has 8 storage VMs configured for disaster recovery—​you've reached the limit and can't create any additional storage VMs.

  2. You can activate a destination storage VM for data access if there’s an outage on the source storage VM. Cloud Manager doesn't provide any setup or orchestration support for storage VM disaster recovery. You must use System Manager or the CLI.

  3. Hierarchical clone depth is the maximum depth of a nested hierarchy of FlexClone volumes that can be created from a single FlexVol volume.

iSCSI storage limits

iSCSI storage Parameter Limit

LUNs

Maximum per node

1,024

Maximum number of LUN maps

1,024

Maximum size

16 TiB

Maximum per volume

512

igroups

Maximum per node

256

Initiators

Maximum per node

512

Maximum per igroup

128

iSCSI sessions

Maximum per node

1,024

LIFs

Maximum per port

32

Maximum per portset

32

Portsets

Maximum per node

256