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Guidelines for adding a new site in StorageGRID

Contributors netapp-pcarriga netapp-jsnyder
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You can expand your StorageGRID system by adding a new site.

Guidelines for adding a site

Before adding a site, review the following requirements and limitations:

  • You can only add one site per expansion operation.

  • You can't add grid nodes to an existing site as part of the same expansion.

  • All sites must include at least three Storage Nodes. They can be any combination of combined and metadata-only Storage Nodes. If there are more than three Storage Nodes, they can be any combination of combined, metadata-only, and data-only Storage Nodes, as long as three ADC services are available. For more information, refer to Required Storage Nodes per grid and per site.

  • When you add a new site, it doesn't automatically increase the number of objects you can store. The total object capacity of a grid depends on the amount of available storage, the ILM policy, and the metadata capacity at each site.

  • When sizing a new site, you must ensure that it includes enough metadata capacity.

    StorageGRID keeps a copy of all object metadata at every site. When you add a new site, ensure that it includes enough metadata capacity for the existing object metadata and enough metadata capacity for growth.

    For more information, refer to the following:

  • You must consider the available network bandwidth between sites, and the level of network latency. Metadata updates are continually replicated between sites even if all objects are stored only at the site where they are ingested.

    To help avoid poor performance due to latency:

    • Erasure coding isn't recommended between sites with a latency greater than 100 ms.

    • The sites in your StorageGRID system shouldn't span wide geographical distances, for example, across multiple continents.

  • Because your StorageGRID system remains operational during the expansion, you must review ILM rules before starting the expansion procedure. You must ensure that object copies aren't stored to the new site until the expansion procedure is complete.

    For example, before you begin the expansion, check if any rules use the default storage pool (All Storage Nodes). If they do, create a new storage pool with the existing Storage Nodes and update your ILM rules to use the new storage pool. Otherwise, objects are copied to the new site as soon as the first node at that site becomes active.

    For more information about changing an ILM policy when adding a new site, refer to the example for changing an ILM policy.