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Decide which method to use to create local tiers in ONTAP

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Although ONTAP provides best-practice recommendations for adding local tiers automatically, you must determine whether the recommended configurations are supported in your environment. If they are not, you must make decisions about RAID policy and disk configuration and then create the local tiers manually.

When a local tier is created automatically, ONTAP analyzes available spare disks in the cluster and generates a recommendation about how spare disks should be used to add local tiers according to best practices. ONTAP displays the recommended configurations. You can accept the recommendations or add the local tiers manually.

Note Prior to ONTAP 9.7, System Manager uses the term aggregate to describe a local tier. Regardless of your ONTAP version, the ONTAP CLI uses the term aggregate. To learn more about local tiers, see Disks and local tiers.

Before you can accept ONTAP recommendations

If any of the following disk conditions are present, they must be addressed before accepting the recommendations from ONTAP:

  • Missing disks

  • Fluctuation in spare disk numbers

  • Unassigned disks

  • Non-zeroed spares

  • Disks undergoing maintenance testing

Learn more about storage aggregate auto-provision in the ONTAP command reference.

When you must use the manual method

In many cases, the recommended layout of the local tier will be optimal for your environment. However, if your environment includes the following configurations, you must create the local tier using the manual method.

Note Beginning with ONTAP 9.11.1, you can manually add local tiers with System Manager.

  • Local tiers using third-party array LUNs

  • Virtual disks with Cloud Volumes ONTAP or ONTAP Select

  • MetroCluster system

  • SyncMirror

  • MSATA disks

  • Flash Pool tiers

  • Multiple disk types or sizes are connected to the node

Select the method to create local tiers

Choose which method you want to use:

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