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What a FlexGroup volume is

Contributors netapp-dbagwell johnlantz netapp-mwallis netapp-lenida netapp-aherbin
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A FlexGroup volume is a scale-out NAS container that provides high performance along with automatic load distribution and scalability. A FlexGroup volume contains several member volumes (constituents) that automatically and transparently share the traffic. Member volumes are the underlying FlexVol volumes that make up a FlexGroup volume.

FlexGroup volume represented as a group of FlexVol volumes called member volumes or constituents

FlexGroup volumes provide the following benefits:

  • High scalability

    Multiple FlexGroup volumes can be provisioned on a cluster as long as the number of member volumes does not exceed the node or cluster limits.

    Beginning in ONTAP 9.12.1P2, the maximum capacity for a single FlexGroup volume is 60PB, with 400 billion files on a 10-node cluster when large volume support is enabled. Without large volume support, the maximum capacity for a single FlexGroup volume is 20PB.

Note

Although the maximum capacity of a single FlexGroup volume is 60PB (200 member volumes x 300TB = 60PB), best performance is achieved when the used capacity of member volumes remains below 80% (200 member volumes x 240TB = 48PB).

  • High performance

    FlexGroup volumes can utilize the resources of the cluster to serve workloads that have high throughput and low latency.

  • Simplified management

    A FlexGroup volume is a single namespace container that can be managed in a similar way as FlexVol volumes.