New and updated FlexGroup Technical Reports now available for ONTAP 9.4!

ONTAP 9.4 is now available, so that means the TRs need to get a refresh.

Here’s what I’ve done for FlexGroup in ONTAP 9.4…

New Tech Report!

First, I moved the data protection section of the best practices TR (TR-4571) into its own dedicated backup and data protection TR, which can be found here:

TR-4678: Data Protection and Backup – FlexGroup volumes

Why? Well, that section is going to grow larger and larger as we add more data protection and backup functionality, so it made sense to proactively create a new one.

Updated TRs!

TR-4557 got an update of mostly just what’s new in ONTAP 9.4. That TR is a technical overview, which is intended just to give information on how FlexGroups work. The new feature payload for FlexGroup volumes in ONTAP 9.4 included:

• QoS minimums and Adaptive QoS
• FPolicy and file audit
• SnapDiff support

TR-4571 is the best practices TR and got a brunt of the updates. Included in the TR (aside from details about new features), I added:

• More detailed information about high file count environments and directory structure
• More information about maxdirsize limits
• Information on effects of drive failures
• Workarounds for lack of NFSv4.x ACL support
• Member volume count considerations when dealing with small and large files
• Considerations when deleting FlexGroup volumes (and the volume recovery queue)
• Clarifications on requirements for available space in an aggregate
• System Manager support updates

Most of these updates came from feedback and questions I received. If you have something you want to see added to the TRs, let me know!