Skip to main content

NetApp ONTAP 9.3 Simulator Deployment – Part 2


In Part 1 of the deployment guide, we learned how to deploy a single NetApp simulator on ESXi. For this post, I’d like to detail the process of adding a second simulator to the cluster. We did a lot of the legwork for the first node’s deployment, so adding the second node is a much shorter process.



1. Go through the steps to deploy the OVA package again just like the first simulator (refer to Part 1 steps 7-11 if needed)

2. Once the OVA has been deployed, boot the second simulator. This time, however, we’ll need to interrupt the boot process to access the LOADER prompt in order to change the system ID and serial number of the second simulator (two systems can’t have the same serial/system ID).

 Press Space Bar when you see the Hit [Enter] to boot immediately, or any other key for command prompt. Booting in 10 seconds... message. You’ll see a VLOADER> prompt.

3. Run the setenv SYS_SERIAL_NUM 4034389-06-2 and setenv bootarg.nvram.sysid 4034389062 commands to set the serial number and system ID, respectively.






You can run the printenv SYS_SERIAL_NUM and printenv bootarg.nvram.sysid commands to verify that the values were updated accordingly.

4. Enter the boot command at the VLOADER prompt to boot the node.

5. When you see “Press Ctrl-C for Boot Menu”, press Ctrl-C.

6. At the Boot Menu, choose option 4.












7. Hit y when asked if you want to zero the disks, reset the config, and install a new filesystem. Hit y again to confirm. The node will reboot. As with the first node, this process will take several minutes.

8. Type yes to enable AutoSupport and hit Enter.










9. Hit Enter to accept e0c as the node management interface and fill in the IP/netmask details for the second node.









As with the first node, we'll be using the CLI to join the secondary node to the cluster.

 10. Type join when asked whether you want to create a new cluster or join an existing cluster.



11. Accept the system defaults at the next screen. The cluster interfaces will be created.







12. Hit Enter to join the existing cluster (in my environment, the cluster name is labcluster1).

 13. Assign all unowned disks to the second node by running the storage disk assign -all true -node <second node name> command.

 14. Assign the secondary node licenses from the text file that you used during the setup of the first node.

15. The setup of the second node is complete. Run a cluster show command to verify that the cluster is healthy.












That concludes the process for adding a second node to the NetApp Simulator environment! My simulators are running the GA version of 9.3 at the moment, but there have been some updates to 9.3 since its release - I'll cover upgrading the cluster to the latest 9.3 release in a future post.

 Thanks for reading!

Popular posts from this blog

Step up your HTTP security header game with NetScaler Rewrite Policies

There are a number of HTTP response headers that exist to increase web site security. If set properly, they can ensure that your site is less exposed to many common web vulnerabilities. By no means are these descriptions exhaustive, so I have included some references that can provide a more in-depth explanation at the bottom of each section. I'd also like to give a shout-out to the OWASP Secure Headers Project and Scott Helme of securityheaders.com - thank you!

Note: Screenshots are from a NetScaler VPX 12.1 - if you are running a different version, the screenshots may look different, but the logic is the same. So that I have something to bind these policies to, I've also already created a load-balancing virtual server named lb_web_ssl and a Service Group for two TurnKey LAMP servers on the back-end.

X-Frame-Options
The X-Frame-Options header is designed to guard against clickjacking (an attack where malicious content is hidden beneath a clickable button or element on a web si…
Read more

ONTAP Configuration Compliance Auditing with PowerShell and Pester

I have been looking for a way to validate NetApp cluster configuration settings (once a configuration setting is set, I want to validate that it was set properly in a programmatic fashion) and prevent configuration drift (if a setting is different than its expected value, I want to know about it). I needed it to be able to scale out to dozens of clusters as well, so it needed to be something that I could run both automatically and on an ad-hoc basis if necessary.

NetApp PowerShell Toolkit

The core of the solution is the NetApp PowerShell Toolkit, without which this would likely not be possible. It contains 2300+ cmdlets for provisioning and managing NetApp storage components. It can be downloaded from the ToolChest on the NetApp MySupport site (with a valid login). You'll find exhaustive documentation there as well for each of the cmdlets along with syntax examples and sample code. It is a fantastic and easy way to automate common storage tasks - we use it in our environment for e…
Read more

How To: Unjoin NetApp Nodes from a Cluster

Let me paint you a word picture:

You've upgraded to a shiny new AFF - it's all racked, stacked, cabled and ready to rock. You've moved your volumes onto the new storage and your workloads are performing beautifully (of course) and it's time to put your old NetApp gear out to pasture.

We're going to learn how to unjoin nodes from an existing cluster. But wait! There are several prerequisites that must be met before the actual cluster unjoin can be done.


Ensure that you have either moved volumes to your new aggregates or offlined and deleted any unused volumes.Offline and delete aggregates from old nodes.Re-home data LIFs or disable/delete if they are not in use.Disable and delete intercluster LIFs for the old nodes (and remove them from any Cluster Peering relationships)Remove the old node's ports from any Broadcast Domains or Failover Groups that they may be a member of.Move epsilon to one of the new nodes (let's assume nodes 3 and 4 are the new nodes, in th…
Read more