Migrate an AFX storage system SVM
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You can migrate an SVM from one ONTAP cluster to another. SVM migration with AFX operates the same as with Unified ONTAP, although there are several interoperability considerations and restrictions. Refer to the Unified ONTAP documentation for details about performing an SVM migration.
Interoperability considerations
Before planning and performing an SVM migration, you should be aware of the interoperability considerations including capabilities and limitations.
Use cases
Cluster administrators can relocate an SVM from a source cluster to a destination cluster. You might do this as part of capacity management and load balancing, or to allow for equipment upgrades or data center consolidations. Because the AFX storage system does not support in-place upgrades from Unified ONTAP, SVM migration is an important use case.
You can move your application workloads from a Unified ONTAP cluster to AFX clusters without disruption. In addition, SVMs can be migrated in other ways including from an AFX cluster to a Unified ONTAP cluster as well as among AFX clusters.
Version interoperability
The following table describes the allowable SVM migrations based on the ONTAP personality and release of the source and destination cluster.
| Direction | Source version | Destination version |
|---|---|---|
Unified to AFX |
9.15.1 - 9.17.1 |
9.17.1 |
AFX to Unified |
9.17.1 |
9.17.1 |
AFX to AFX |
9.17.1 |
9.17.1 |
Prechecks
Unified ONTAP includes several prechecks that are also implemented with AFX. In addition, several new prechecks are added to flag features that aren't supported with AFX, including:
-
FabricPool (volumes residing on composite aggregates)
-
Thick provisioned volumes
Volume provisioning
The volumes are provisioned to balance their placement across the Storage Availability Zone (SAZ) of the AFX cluster.
- Space guarantee
-
AFX does not support thick provisioning. A precheck is used to fail a migration if any volume in the SVM being migrated is thick provisioned.
- Encryption
-
An AFX system supports NetApp volume encryption (NVE) but not NetApp aggregate encryption (NAE). Because of this, any NAE volumes at a Unified ONTAP cluster are converted to NVE volumes when migrated to AFX. The following table summarizes the compatibility and conversion.
| Source volume | Destination volume |
|---|---|
Plain text |
Plain text |
NVE |
NVE |
NAE |
NVE |
Additional restrictions
There are additional restrictions you should consider before migrating an SVM.
- MetroCluster
-
The AFX storage system does not support NetApp MetroCluster. This creates a limitation when migrating an SVM. You cannot migrate an AFX SVM to or from an AFF or FAS system (or any NetApp system running the Unified ONTAP personality) that is configured to use MetroCluster. While these migration scenarios are not supported, they are also not explicitly blocked by the AFX prechecks and so you need to be careful not to attempt them.