I have a client that I am configuring a NetApp system for, but they played around with the system before I got there and have already assigned all of the disks to the aggr0 which is a 32-bit traditional volume.
In light of future upgrade/space concerns/maximization I want to migrate to a 64-bit aggr0 (with vol0 on it) but all of the disks have been assigned (with one free in the pool).
I am not on site so I don't want to do a maintenance restore if at all possible, so my question is since the aggr0 is RAID-DP can I use 'disk fail' to remove two drives and put the aggr0 into a double degraded state, then use the 3 free drives to make my new aggr00/vol00, ndmp copy, change the boot vol and carry on with a normal migration.
If anyone has experience failing disks intentionally to remove them from an aggr so they can be reallocated, please let me know.
Yes, you approach is absolutely viable and should do the trick, but the system won't let you do this unless you set
raid.min_spare_countto 0. After that it should work and the normal transfer root volume procedure should be applied. You can test it in a ONTAP 8 simulator just to make sure everything goes as expected.And tell your costumer that traditional volumes and aggregates on top of that are not what you want.