Planning overview

Plan which gFiler has read and write privileges to a LUN on a storage subsystem

Data ONTAP imposes a software control to allow only one gFiler to write to or read from a single LUN. You must determine which gFiler is to have read and write privileges to each LUN that has been made available on the storage subsystem to gFilers. See Requirement for enabling gFilers to read from and write to LUNs for more information.

If you are using the SyncMirror^TM product, plan how to configure each gFiler so that each of your storage subsystems has an exact copy of the data

A specific parameter is required when you configure the gFilers to support SyncMirror. See Planning for RAID mirroring for data protection.

If you are using a switch in your deployment, plan for limiting commands (read and write requests) on the storage subsystem port

Performance can be affected by too many commands on the storage subsystem port being sent by the gFiler and non-gFiler hosts. See Setup if your deployment includes a shared switch.

Determine your strategy for volumes and LUNs

Volumes function as containers to help you manage data on your storage subsystem. You determine how to allocate LUNs into volumes based on your requirements for performance and capacity. See Chapter 6, Managing Volumes, RAID Groups, and LUNs for more information.

Plan for changing workload distribution by moving vFiler^TM logical units

The volume of requests that a specific gFiler is required to handle might change after initial deployment. If you want the capability of easily changing the workload distribution by moving vFilers, you need to plan and configure Data ONTAP before you need to change the distribution. See Chapter 7, Managing Workload Distribution with SnapMover.

Complete a worksheet of information that the setup program prompts you for

The setup program requires basic system information. See Gathering data needed for the setup program.