You have used the Installation and Setup Instructions included with the controller shelves to install the hardware.

You have connected cables between the optional drive shelves and the controllers.

You have applied power to the storage system.

You have installed all other hardware (for example, management station, switches) and made the necessary connections.

You have made a connection between the storage system and the data host.

You have installed the host operating system.

You are not using Windows as a virtualized guest.

You are not configuring the data (I/O attached) host to boot from SAN.

You are using a 1 Gbps or faster management network.

You are using a separate station for management rather than the data (I/O attached) host.

You are using out-of-band management, in which a storage management station sends commands to the storage system through the Ethernet connections to the controller.

You have attached the management station to the same subnet as the storage management ports.

You have installed and configured a DHCP server.

You have not yet made an Ethernet connection between the management station and the storage system.

You will not use shared volumes.

You will create pools rather than volume groups.

You have made all host-side FC connections and activated switch zoning.

You are using NetApp-supported FC HBAs and switches.

You are using FC HBA driver and firmware versions as listed in the NetApp Interoperability Matrix Tool.

You are using Ethernet switches capable of transporting iSCSI traffic.

You have configured the Ethernet switches according to the vendor's recommendation for iSCSI.

You are using NetApp-supported SAS HBAs.

You are using SAS HBA driver and firmware versions as listed in the NetApp Interoperability Matrix Tool.