A company donated some NetApp san/nas equipment to us and I've been put in charge of setting it up. I haven't a clue where to start!

They donated two FAS920C filers and six DS14MK2 disk shelves. The plan is to set up one filer and 3 disk shelves on one site, set up the remaining equipment across town at another site, and mirror the data on one to the other.

First, they didn't provide any cables. I'm utterly confused on how to connect everything together. I know that everything is chained like so...

Filer --> Disk Shelf 1 --> Disk Shelf 2 --> etc. etc.

However, the interfaces on the shelves are confusing. It's all Fibre Channel, but there are two fiber LC ports and two copper Fibre Channel specific ports. The LC ports are labeled "In", and the copper ports are labeled "out". Are these labels superfluous, or do I really need to be connecting copper to fiber ?

I suppose I'll stop there. Figuring out how to connect everything together is step 1 .

 

I suppose not.

I was able to get the hardware set up, assign drives to the filer, and set up the root volume.

Now...I need to install the OS (Data ONTAP) and NetApp really has their site locked down. I'm hoping that we can take ownership of this equipment and obtain the minimal licensing needed to use this stuff.

On hold with their tech support now.

 

Yes

We have about a petabyte of Netapp storage.
If you do get it unlocked, install 8.01 of Data Ontap.

Also you will want Server manager 1.1 to help administer it.

If you have any specific questions I have taken the NCDA course and might be able to help.

 

I've got the filer set up as far as I can w/o any licensing. So, now I'm waiting to hear back from the donor to see if they can provide any.

The filer I have set up is currently running NetApp Release 7.2.5.1P6.

Is licensing strictly on a feature by feature basis?

A rep from NetApp e-mailed me (I tried to create a NOW account on their site) and after explaining the situation and giving him the serial numbers to all of the equipment, he said that they're in the process of "upgrading" my account. I'm not sure what access it'll give me...but if even if it's only documentation, that'll be better than nothing! Though, I hope I'll have access to some software.

In the end, I'd like to set everything up like this:

3 disk shelves and one filer at one site, and the other 3 disk shelves and filer at another site across town. I'd like to have both NAS sets replcate each other...basically be mirrors. This way, if some sort of disaster occurs that affects one of the NASes, our data will be ok. Is this possible?

I'm not sure how I want to organize the space volume/aggregate wise. I want to point our server that performs data backups to one of the the NetApps and have it store backups there. I suppose I could create volumes that are structured similarly to tape...like "Monday", "Tuesday", "Wednesday", "Thursday", "Friday", "Weekly", and "Monthly" volumes...but I'd like to use the space as efficiently as possible. My ideal thought was to create one large volume and simply do incremental backups since everything will be available all the time....but I'm not sure.

We were given six terabytes of space, but since we're dividing that in half to do replication, and to account for parity/spare drives, we probably only have 2.5 TB or so of storage.

It's been recommended that I take a NetApp course. What do those typically run cost wise?

 

Yes it is on a feature by feature basis.

You will need snap mirrors set up to do the replication across sites. and deduplication, as most of the data you will be backing up is duplicated so you wouldn't want different volumes as the dedup is only on the volume. You should look into qtrees as they reside on the same volume.

The NCDA course is around 6k.
I took it from Fastlane (they are the ones that train Netapp employees as well)

 

Grasshopper, do your best to get everything out of this opportunity that has been presented to you. Take the training, learn those devices inside and out. Your long term IT career path will thank you later.

 

Absolutely, take any training that you can get.

 

Well, I highly doubt my employer will pay for a $6k training .

We have two filers. What's a ballpark figure for the cost of a feature license? For CIFS, as example?

 

Which filer.

The pricing is different for every model.

This is a good site for pricing. They don't have everything but it can give you a ballpark.

http://storagemojo.com/storagemojos-pricing-guide/

 

We have two FAS920c's. Doesn't look like it's listed on that site. I'll have to do more research.

 

I just looked at a recent quote for a new FAS2040 the software for that was about 20k

SW,Complete Bndl,NetApp
Select,2040A,‐C
this is cifs, nfs, dedup, snap vol, snap mirror, flex clone...

 

We also just looked at a new 6280.

only 1.7 million
The support was actually more than the hardware itself.

 

WOW! Is this per filer? I highly doubt we can spend 4 figures (let alone 5) on software for these things. Hmm. If the donor company doesn't have any licensing to accompany the donation, we may be re-selling it.

I'm waiting to hear back from them. One of our contacts said he thinks they have licensing to go with them...I suppose we'll just have to wait and see.

 

Yes that is for 1 filer.

although a 920 is a little smaller so it might not be that much.

 

Maybe I'll call 'em next week to get a quote.