NetApp Not Failing Over Even Though NICs Are Configured For Failover ~ Bauer-Power Media

Jun 24, 2014

NetApp Not Failing Over Even Though NICs Are Configured For Failover

7:00 AM

Paul B

(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

At my company we use a few NetApp SAN's. One was configured before I came on board by a consulting firm. The second one was configured by my Systems Administrator with assistance from the consulting firm, and the third we just got my Systems Administrator and I configured it ourselves.

Well we did the initial setup and configued the NICs for failover (Or Takeover in NetApp land) but when we tested failover by unplugging the network cables it didn't trigger a takeover. Naturally I called NetApp support to find out what I was missing. Well it was simply that I didn't mark my network interfaces for failover. You can do that by running:

ifconfig <interfacename> nfo

So, if you are only using interfaces e0a and e0b on both controllers, you would run:

ifconfig e0a nfo
ifconfig e0b nfo

When do your setup you should also run the following on each controller to ensure takeover works correctly:

options cf enable

options cf.takeover.on_network_interface_failure on

options cf.takeover.on_failure on

options cf.takeover.on_panic on

options cf.takeover.on_reboot on

options cf.takeover.on_short_uptime on

options cf.takeover.on_network_interface_failure.policy any_nic

options cf.giveback.auto.enable on

It was a good thing I called NetApp support, because I checked the second NetApp that was configured by my Systems Administrator and the consultant and it was missing the network failover options as well.

Do you use NetApps? How do you like them? Do you prefer other SANs? If so which ones? Let us know in the comments.