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Disks and local tiers

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Local tiers, also called aggregates, are logical containers for the disks managed by a node. You can use local tiers to isolate workloads with different performance demands, to tier data with different access patterns, or to segregate data for regulatory purposes.

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.

  • For business-critical applications that need the lowest possible latency and the highest possible performance, you might create a local tier consisting entirely of SSDs.

  • To tier data with different access patterns, you can create a hybrid local tier, deploying flash as high-performance cache for a working data set, while using lower-cost HDDs or object storage for less frequently accessed data.

    • A Flash Pool consists of both SSDs and HDDs.

    • A FabricPool consists of an all-SSD local tier with an attached object store.

  • If you need to segregate archived data from active data for regulatory purposes, you can use a local tier consisting of capacity HDDs, or a combination of performance and capacity HDDs.

FabriPool data tiering

Working with local tiers in a MetroCluster configuration

If you have a MetroCluster configuration, you should following the procedures in the MetroCluster documentation for initial configuration and guidelines for local tiers and disk management.

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