Initial configuration

How disks are initially configured

Disks are configured at the factory or at the customer site, depending on the hardware configuration and software licenses of the storage system. The configuration determines the method of disk ownership. A disk must be assigned to a storage system before it can be used as a spare or in a RAID group. If disk ownership is hardware based, disk assignment is performed by Data ONTAP. Otherwise, disk ownership is software based, and you must assign disk ownership.

Technicians install disks with the latest firmware. Then they configure some or all of the disks, depending on the storage system and which method of disk ownership is used.

If the storage system uses hardware-based disk ownership, they configure all of the disks as spare disks, which are in a pool of hot spare disks, named Pool0 by default.
If the storage system uses software-based disk ownership, they only configure enough disks to create a root volume. You must assign the remaining disks as spares at first boot before you can use them to create aggregates and volumes.

You might need to upgrade disk firmware for FC-AL or SCSI disks when new firmware is offered, or when you upgrade the Data ONTAP software. However, you cannot upgrade the firmware for ATA disks unless there is an AT-FCX module installed in the disk shelf.