Netapp interview questions

NetApp Interview Q & A

Related Links: Interview Q&A-1 Netapp Hardware InterView Q&A-2
1. What is QTree..?
Ans: - A qtree is different from the traditional directory on a UNIX system
in many ways including
1. A qtree can be assigned a security style. We can create a qtree with
UNIX, NT or mixed security style.
2. CIFS oplocks can be enabled on the qtree. CIFS oplocks help the client
to buffer data locally, performing read ahead from an open file. The
nature of buffering depends on the nature of oplocks granted.
3. We can set disk space & file limits at qtree level, allowing control over
resource allocation to multiple projects.
Say we have 3 departments, finance, HR, sales and each function has
separate qtree's. We can then assign 20 GB to sales, 100 GB to HR, since
it contains training videos etc. and 75 GB to finance.
2. What is difference between Traditional volume and Flex
volume..?

Ans: 1. Traditional
2. Flexvol
Volume important stuff:
The name of the volume
The size of the volume
A security style, which determines whether a volume can contain files
that use UNIX security, files that use NT file system (NTFS) file security,
or both types of files
Whether the volume uses CIFS oplocks (opportunistic locks)
The type of language supported
The level of space guarantees (for FlexVol volumes only)

Disk space and file limits (quotas)

A snapshot schedule
Whether the volume is designated as a SnapLock volume
Whether the volume is a root.

Traditional volume
The smallest possible 2 disk raid4 3 disk raiddp
A traditional volume is contained by a single, dedicated,
aggregate.
The only way to increase the size of a traditional volume is to add entire
disks to
its containing aggregate
it is impossible to decrease the size of a traditional
volume.
Flexible volume (FlexVol):
Because the volume is managed separately from the aggregate,
FlexVol volumes give you a lot more options for managing the size of the
volume.
You can create FlexVol volumes in an aggregate nearly instantaneously.
They can be as small as 20 MB and as large as the volume capacity that
is
supported for your storage system
You can increase and decrease the size of a FlexVol in small increments
(as
small as 4 KB), nearly instantaneously

3.

Difference between Volume Snap Mirror and Qtree Snap Mirror..?

Ans:Volume SnapMirror

Qtree SnapMirror

Synchronous or asynchronous
replication is supported for
volumes.

Only asynchronous replication is

supported for qtrees.

Destination volume is read-only.

Destination qtree is read-only.

However, the volume on which the
qtree is located must be online and
writable.

Source and destination volumes

must both be either traditional
volumes or FlexVol volumes.

Source and destination qtrees can be

on any type of volumes, traditional
volumes or FlexVol volumes.

Replicates Snapshot copies of a

source volume and all its qtrees,
to the destination volume

Replicates only the contents of an

individual qtree to a destination

You need to set a destination

volume to restricted, read-only
status, before setting it up for
replication.

The destination volume for qtree

replication is writable, and must not
be read-only.

Replication of a volume on the

destination takes up the space
allocated to the source volume,
irrespective of how much of the
volume is used for storing data.

If you need to mirror only the data

stored on an individual qtree, then
SnapMirror replication of that
individual qtree uses slightly more
disk space and directories on the
destination qtree than the source
qtree.

Replication can be set up to a

Replication can be set up for a
destination volume from only one maximum of 255 qtrees on any one
source volume. This implies that volume.
one destination volume cannot be
used for replicating multiple
source volumes.
Block-for-block replication
It transfers the file system
verbatim. Therefore, older
releases of Data ONTAP cannot
understand file system transfers
from a later release of Data
ONTAP.

Logical replication
All the files and directories in the
source file system are created in the
destination file system. Therefore,
you can replicate data between
astorage system running an older
version of Data ONTAP and a storage
system running a newer version.

Note: If the source file system

contains a file type that cannot be
represented on the destination file
system, the replication will fail. For
example, Data ONTAP 7.0 supports
files up to 16 TB in size, whereas
earlier versions of Data
ONTAP support files up to 4 TB. If the
source system is running Data
ONTAP 7.0, the qtree you want to
replicate contains a file greater than 4
TB, and the destination system is
running an earlier version of Data
ONTAP, the replication will fail.
4.

Difference between Hard Zoning and Soft Zoning..?

Ans:- Here's what I thought was correct:

Hard zoning is done by the switches, disallowing certain WWNs (or ports) from talking by examining
source and destination information, regardless of knowledge of one another's existence. I compare
this to conventional IP firewalls (only certain IPs can talk to one another - I know Google's IP but I
still cannot reach it).

Soft zoning allows everything to reach everything else, but prevents discovery of everything in the
fabric by limiting what information the name server will respond with when a new HBA wants to know
what it can talk to. I compare this to a DNS server that provides different responses based on the
querying host - hosts can still talk if they know one another's IP address.

WWN and port-based zoning are unrelated to the above - they simply imply how you identify
members of a zone.

5.

How to Create Traditional Volume..?

Ans:- Aggr status -v

(Optional) Determine the free disk resources on your filer by entering
the following command:
aggr status -s
3 To create a traditional volume, enter the following command:
aggr create trad_vol -v ndisks[@disksize]
Example:
aggr create new_tvol -v 16@72g

4 (Optional) To verify the creation of the traditional volume named

new_tvol, enter the following command:
vol status new_tvol -v 16@72g
All volumes, including traditional volumes, must be uniquely
named within the same filer.
you can create a maximum of 100 traditional volumes within
one storage system.
Minimum traditional volume size depends on the disk capacity
and RAID protection level
6.

Define the SAN Switch Ports..?

Ans:Port

Full Name

Port Function

N-port network port Node port used to connect a node to a Fibre Channel
or node port switch
F-port

fabric port

Switch port used to connect the Fibre Channel fabric to

a node

L-port

loop port

Node port used to connect a node to a Fibre Channel

loop

NL-port network +
loop port

Node port which connects to both loops and switches

FL-port fabric + loop Switch port which connects to both loops and switches
port
E-port extender
port

Used to cascade Fibre Channel switches together

G-port general port General purpose port which can be configured to

emulate other port types
EX_portexternal port Connection between a fibre channel router and a fibre
channel switch; on the switch side, it looks like a
normal E_port -- but on the router side, it is a EX_port
TE_port trunking Eport

Povides standard E_port functions and allows for

routing of multiple virtual SANs by modifying the
standard Fibre Channel frame upon ingress/egress of
the VSAN environment

7.

Can you describe SAN in your won word?

Ans:- A storage area network (SAN) is a high-speed special-purpose

network (or subnetwork) that interconnects different kinds of data
storage devices with associated data servers on behalf of a larger
network of users. Typically, a storage area network is part of the overall
network of computing resources for an enterprise. A storage area
network is usually clustered in close proximity to other computing
resources such as IBM Power5 boxes but may also extend to remote
locations for backup and archival storage, using wide area network carrier
technologies such as ATM or SONET .
A storage area network can use existing communication technology such
as IBMs optical fiber ESCON or it may use the newer Fibre Channel
technology. Some SAN system integrators liken it to the common storage
bus (flow of data) in a personal computer that is shared by different kinds
of storage devices such as a hard disk or a CD-ROM player.
SANs support disk mirroring, backup and restore, archival and retrieval of
archived data, data migration from one storage device to another, and
the sharing of data among different servers in a network. SANs can
incorporate subnetworks with network-attached storage (NAS) systems.
8.

So you mention NAS, but What is NAS?

Ans:Network-attached storage (NAS) is hard disk storage that is set

up with its own network address rather than being attached to the
department computer that is serving applications to a networks
workstation users. By removing storage access and its management from
the department server, both application programming and files can be
served faster because they are not competing for the same processor
resources. The network-attached storage device is attached to a local
area network (typically, an Ethernet network) and assigned an IP
address. File requests are mapped by the main server to the NAS file
server.
Network-attached storage consists of hard disk storage, including
multi-disk RAID systems, and software for configuring and mapping file
locations to the network-attached device. Network-attached storage can

be a step toward and included as part of a more sophisticated storage

system known as a storage area network (SAN).
NAS software can usually handle a number of network protocols,
including Microsofts Internetwork Packet Exchange and NetBEUI, Novells
Netware Internetwork Packet Exchange, and Sun Microsystems Network
File System. Configuration, including the setting of user access priorities,
is usually possible using a Web browser.
9.

What is SMTP and how it works?

Ans:- SMTP (Simple Mail Transfer Protocol) is a TCP/IP protocol used in

sending and receiving e-mail. However, since it is limited in its ability to
queue messages at the receiving end, it is usually used with one of two
other protocols, POP3 or IMAP, that let the user save messages in a
server mailbox and download them periodically from the server. In other
words, users typically use a program that uses SMTP for sending e-mail
and either POP3 or IMAP for receiving e-mail. On Unix-based systems,
sendmail is the most widely-used SMTP server for e-mail. A commercial
package, Sendmail, includes a POP3 server. Microsoft Exchange includes
an SMTP server and can also be set up to include POP3 support.
SMTP usually is implemented to operate over Internet port 25.
10. Do you have any idea about NAT?
Ans:- Short for Network Address Translation, an Internet standard that
enables a local-area network (LAN) to use one set of IP addresses for
internal traffic and a second set of addresses for external traffic. A NAT
box located where the LAN meets the Internet makes all necessary IP
address translations.
NAT serves three main purposes:
Provides a type of firewall by hiding internal IP addresses
Enables a company to use more internal IP addresses. Since theyre used
internally only, theres no possibility of conflict with IP addresses used by
other companies and organizations.
Allows a company to combine multiple ISDN connections into a single
Internet connection.
Explain DHCP and its uses to an environment?

Short for Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol, a protocol for assigning

dynamic IP addresses to devices on a network. With dynamic addressing,
a device can have a different IP address every time it connects to the
network. In some systems, the devices IP address can even change while
it is still connected. DHCP also supports a mix of static and dynamic IP
addresses.
Dynamic addressing simplifies network administration because the
software keeps track of IP addresses rather than requiring an
administrator to manage the task. This means that a new computer can
be added to a network without the hassle of manually assigning it a
unique IP address. Many ISPs use dynamic IP addressing for dial-up
users.
11. What does SNMP stands for?
Ans:- Short for Simple Network Management Protocol, a set of
protocols for managing complex networks. SNMP works by sending
messages, called Protocol Data Units, to different parts of a network.
SNMP-compliant devices, called Agents, store data about themselves in
Management Information Bases and return this data to the SNMP
requesters.
12. What do you know about TCPDump?
Ans:- TCPdump is a common computer network debugging tool that runs
under the command line. It allows the user to intercept and display
TCP/IP and other packets being transmitted or received over a network to
which the computer is attached. Tcpdump works on most Unix-like
platforms: Linux, Solaris, BSD, Mac OS X, HP-UX and AIX among others.
On Windows, WinDump can be used; its a port of tcpdump to Windows.
You must have a root or super user authority to use TCPdumps in UNIX
like envrionment.
13. What is software RAID Levels do?
Ans:- Redundant Arrays of Independent Disks (RAID) is formally
defined as a method to store data on any type of disk medium.
LDAP

The Light Directory Access Protocol (LDAP) defines a standard method for
accessing and updating information in a directory (a database) either
locally or remotely in a client-server model.
14. What are the benefits of fibre channel SANs?
Ans:- Fibre Channel SANs are the de facto standard for storage
networking in the corporate data center because they provide exceptional
reliability, scalability, consolidation, and performance. Fibre Channel SANs
provide significant advantages over direct-attached storage through
improved storage utilization, higher data availability, reduced
management costs, and highly scalable capacity and performance.
15. What environment is most suitable for fibre channel SANs?
Ans:- Typically, Fibre Channel SANs are most suitable for large data
centers running business-critical data, as well as applications that require
high-bandwidth performance such as medical imaging, streaming media,
and large databases. Fibre Channel SAN solutions can easily scale to
meet the most demanding performance and availability requirements.
16. What customer problems do fibre channel SANs solve?
Ans:- The increased performance of Fibre Channel enables a highly
effective backup and recovery approach, including LAN-free and serverfree backup models. The result is a faster, more scalable, and more
reliable backup and recovery solution. By providing flexible connectivity
options and resource sharing, Fibre Channel SANs also greatly reduce the
number of physical devices and disparate systems that must be
purchased and managed, which can dramatically lower capital
expenditures. Heterogeneous SAN management provides a single point of
control for all devices on the SAN, lowering costs and freeing personnel to
do other tasks.
17. How long has fibre channel been around?
Ans:- Development started in 1988, ANSI standard approval occurred in
1994, and large deployments began in 1998. Fibre Channel is a mature,
safe, and widely deployed solution for high-speed (1 GB, 2 GB, 4 GB)
communications and is the foundation for the majority of SAN
installations throughout the world.

18. What is the future of fibre channel SANs?

Ans:- Fibre Channel is a well-established, widely deployed technology
with a proven track record and a very large installed base, particularly in
high-performance, business-critical data center environments. Fibre
Channel SANs continue to grow and will be enhanced for a long time to
come. The reduced costs of Fibre Channel components, the availability of
SAN kits, and the next generation of Fibre Channel (4 GB) are helping to
fuel that growth. In addition, the Fibre Channel roadmap includes plans to
double performance every three years.
19. What are the benefits of 4gb fibre channel?
Ans:- Benefits include twice the performance with little or no price
increase, investment protection with backward compatibility to 2 GB,
higher reliability due to fewer SAN components (switch and HBA ports)
required, and the ability to replicate, back up, and restore data more
quickly. 4 GB Fibre Channel systems are ideally suited for applications
that need to quickly transfer large amounts of data such as remote
replication across a SAN, streaming video on demand, modeling and
rendering, and large databases. 4 GB technology is shipping today.
20. How is fibre channel different from ISCSI?
Ans:- Fibre Channel and iSCSI each have a distinct place in the IT
infrastructure as SAN alternatives to DAS. Fibre Channel generally
provides high performance and high availability for business-critical
applications, usually in the corporate data center. In contrast, iSCSI is
generally used to provide SANs for business applications in smaller
regional or departmental data centers.
21. When should I deploy fibre channel instead of ISCSI?
Ans:- For environments consisting of high-end servers that require high
bandwidth or data center environments with business-critical data, Fibre
Channel is a better fit than iSCSI. For environments consisting of many
midrange or low-end servers, an IP SAN solution often delivers the most
appropriate price/performance.
22. Name some of the SAN topologies ?
Ans: - Point-to-point, arbitrated loop, and switched fabric topologies.

Whats the need for separate network for storage why LAN cannot be
used?
LAN hardware and operating systems are geared to user traffic, and LANs
are tuned for a fast user response to messaging requests.
With a SAN, the storage units can be secured separately from the servers
and totally apart from the user network enhancing storage access in data
blocks (bulk data transfers), advantageous for server-less backups.
23. What are the advantages of RAID?
Ans:- Redundant Array of Inexpensive Disks
Depending on how we configure the array, we can have the
- data mirrored [RAID 1] (duplicate copies on separate drives)
- striped [RAID 0] (interleaved across several drives), or
- parity protected [RAID 5](extra data written to identify errors).
These can be used in combination to deliver the balance of performance
and reliability that the user requires.
24. Define RAID? Which one you feel is good choice?
Ans: - RAID (Redundant array of Independent Disks) is a technology to
achieve redundancy with faster I/O. There are Many Levels of RAID to
meet different needs of the customer which are: R0, R1, R3, R4, R5, R10,
R6.
Generally customer chooses R5 to achieve better redundancy and speed
and it is cost effective.
R0 Striped set without parity/[Non-Redundant Array].
Provides improved performance and additional storage but no fault
tolerance. Any disk failure destroys the array, which becomes more likely
with more disks in the array. A single disk failure destroys the entire
array because when data is written to a RAID 0 drive, the data is broken
into fragments. The number of fragments is dictated by the number of
disks in the drive. The fragments are written to their respective disks
simultaneously on the same sector. This allows smaller sections of the
entire chunk of data to be read off the drive in parallel, giving this type of
arrangement huge bandwidth. RAID 0 does not implement error checking

so any error is unrecoverable. More disks in the array means higher

bandwidth, but greater risk of data loss
R1 Mirrored set without parity.
Provides fault tolerance from disk errors and failure of all but one of the
drives. Increased read performance occurs when using a multi-threaded
operating system that supports split seeks, very small performance
reduction when writing. Array continues to operate so long as at least one
drive is functioning. Using RAID 1 with a separate controller for each disk
is sometimes called duplexing.
R3 Striped set with dedicated parity/Bit interleaved parity.
This mechanism provides an improved performance and fault tolerance
similar to RAID 5, but with a dedicated parity disk rather than rotated
parity stripes. The single parity disk is a bottle-neck for writing since
every write requires updating the parity data. One minor benefit is the
dedicated parity disk allows the parity drive to fail and operation will
continue without parity or performance penalty.
R4 Block level parity.
Identical to RAID 3, but does block-level striping instead of byte-level
striping. In this setup, files can be distributed between multiple disks.
Each disk operates independently which allows I/O requests to be
performed in parallel, though data transfer speeds can suffer due to the
type of parity. The error detection is achieved through dedicated parity
and is stored in a separate, single disk unit.
R5 Striped set with distributed parity.
Distributed parity requires all drives but one to be present to operate;
drive failure requires replacement, but the array is not destroyed by a
single drive failure. Upon drive failure, any subsequent reads can be
calculated from the distributed parity such that the drive failure is
masked from the end user. The array will have data loss in the event of a
second drive failure and is vulnerable until the data that was on the failed
drive is rebuilt onto a replacement drive.
R6 Striped set with dual distributed Parity.
Provides fault tolerance from two drive failures; array continues to
operate with up to two failed drives. This makes larger RAID groups more
practical, especially for high availability systems. This becomes
increasingly important because large-capacity drives lengthen the time
needed to recover from the failure of a single drive. Single parity RAID

levels are vulnerable to data loss until the failed drive is rebuilt: the
larger the drive, the longer the rebuild will take. Dual parity gives time to
rebuild the array without the data being at risk if one drive, but no more,
fails before the rebuild is complete.
25. What is the difference between RAID 0+1 and RAID 1+0?
Ans:- RAID 0+1 (Mirrored Stripped)
In this RAID level all the data is saved on stripped volumes which are in
turn mirrored, so any disk failure saves the data loss but it makes whole
stripe unavailable. The key difference from RAID 1+0 is that RAID 0+1
creates a second striped set to mirror a primary striped set. The array
continues to operate with one or more drives failed in the same mirror
set, but if drives fail on both sides of the mirror the data on the RAID
system is lost. In this RAID level if one disk is failed full mirror is marked
as inactive and data is saved only one stripped volume.
RAID 1+0 (Stripped Mirrored)
In this RAID level all the data is saved on mirrored volumes which are in
turn stripped, so any disk failure saves data loss. The key difference from
RAID 0+1 is that RAID 1+0 creates a striped set from a series of
mirrored drives. In a failed disk situation RAID 1+0 performs better
because all the remaining disks continue to be used. The array can
sustain multiple drive losses so long as no mirror loses both its drives.
This RAID level is most preferred for high performance and high data
protection because rebuilding of RAID 1+0 is less time consuming in
comparison to RAID 0+1.
26. When JBODs are used?
Ans:- Just a Bunch of Disks
It is a collection of disks that share a common connection to the server,
but dont include the mirroring,
striping, or parity facilities that RAID systems do, but these capabilities
are available with host-based software.
27. Differentiate RAID & JBOD?
Ans:- RAID: Redundant Array of Inexpensive Disks
Fault-tolerant grouping of disks that server sees as a single disk volume

Combination of parity-checking, mirroring, striping

Self-contained, manageable unit of storage
JBOD: Just a Bunch of Disks
Drives independently attached to the I/O channel
Scalable, but requires server to manage multiple volumes
Do not provide protection in case of drive failure
28. What is a HBA?
Ans:- Host bus adapters (HBAs) are needed to connect the server (host)
to the storage.
29. What are the advantages of SAN?
Ans:- Massively extended scalability.
Greatly enhanced device connectivity.
Storage consolidation.
LAN-free backup.
Server-less (active-fabric) backup.
Server clustering.
Heterogeneous data sharing.
Disaster recovery Remote mirroring.
While answering people do NOT portray clearly what they mean & what
advantages each of them have, which are cost effective & which are to be
used for the clients requirements.
30. What is the difference b/w SAN and NAS?
Ans: - he basic difference between SAN and NAS, SAN is Fabric based and
NAS is Ethernet based.
SAN Storage Area Network
It accesses data on block level and produces space to host in form of
disk.
NAS Network attached Storage

It accesses data on file level and produces space to host in form of

shared network folder.
What is a typical storage area network consists of if we consider it for
implementation in a small business setup?
If we consider any small business following are essentials components of
SAN:
Fabric Switch.
FC Controllers.
JBODs.
31. Can you briefly explain each of these Storage area
components?
Ans:- Fabric Switch: Its a device which interconnects multiple network
devices .There are switches starting from 16 port to 32 ports which
connect 16 or 32 machine nodes etc. vendors who manufacture these
kind of switches are Brocade, McData.
32. What is the most critical component in SAN?
Ans:- Each component has its own criticality with respect to business
needs of a company.
33. How is a SAN managed?
Ans:- There are many management softwares used for managing SANs
to name a few:
Santricity.
IBM Tivoli Storage Manager.
CA Unicenter.
Veritas Volumemanger.
Which one is the Default ID for SCSI HBA?
Generally the default ID for SCSI HBA is 7.
SCSI- Small Computer System Interface.

HBA Host Bus Adaptor.

34. What is the highest and lowest priority of SCSI?
Ans:- There are 16 different IDs which can be assigned to SCSI device 7,
6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, 0, 15, 14, 13, 12, 11, 10, 9, 8.
Highest priority of SCSI is ID 7 and lowest ID is 8.
How do you install device drivers for the HBA first time during OS
installation?
In some scenarios you are supposed to install Operating System on the
drives connected thru SCSI HBA or SCSI RAID Controllers, but most of
the OS will not be updated with drivers for those controllers, that time
you need to supply drivers externally, if you are installing windows, you
need to press F6 during the installation of OS and provide the driver disk
or CD which came along with HBA.
If you are installing Linux you need to type linux dd for installing any
driver.
35. What is Array?
Ans:- Array is a group of Independent physical disks to configure any
Volumes or RAID volumes.
36. Can you describe at-least 3 troubleshooting scenarios which
you have come across in detail?
36A. SCENARIO 1: How do you find/debug when there is error while
working SCSI devices?
In our daily SAN troubleshooting there are many management and
configuration tools we use them to see when there is a failure with target
device or initiator device.
Some time it is even hard to troubleshoot some of the things such as
media errors in the drives, or some of the drives taking long time to spinup. In such cases these utilities will not come to help. To debug this kind
of information most of the controller will be implemented with 3-pin serial

debug port. With serial port debug connector cable you can collect the
debug information with hyper terminal software.
36B. SCENARIO 2: I am having an issue with a controller its
taking lot of time to boot and detect all the drives connected how
can I solve this.?
There are many possibilities that might cause this problem. One of the
reason might be you are using bad drives that cannot be repaired. In
those cases you replace the disks with working ones.
Another reason might be slots you connected your controller to a slot
which might not be supported.
Try to connect with other types of slots.
One more probable reason is if you have flashed the firmware for
different OEMs on the same hardware.
To get rid of this the flash utilities will be having option to erase all the
previous and EEPROM and boot block entry option. Use that option to
rectify the problem.
36C. SCENARIO 3: I am using tape drive series 700X, even the
vendor information on the Tape drive says 700X, but the POST
information while booting the server is showing as 500X what
could be the problem?
First you should make sure your hardware is of which series, you can find
out this in the product website.
Generally you can see this because in most of the testing companies they
use same hardware to test different series of same hardware type. What
they do is they flash the different series firmware. You can always flash
back to exact hardware type.
37. Which are the 4 types of SAN architecture types ?
Ans:- Core-edge.
Full-Mesh.
Partial-Mesh.
Cascade.

38. Which command is used in linux to know the driver version of

any hardware device?
Ans:- dmesg
39. How many minimum drives are required to create R5 (RAID
5)?
Ans:- You need to have at least 3 disk drives to create R5.
40. Can you name some of the states of RAID array?
Ans:- There are states of RAID arrays that represent the status of the
RAID arrays which are given below:
Online.
Degraded.
Rebuilding.
Failed.
41. What are the protocols used in physical/datalink and network
layer of SAN?
Ans:- Ethernet.
SCSI.
Fibre Channel.
42. What is storage virtualization?
Ans:- Storage virtualization is amalgamation of multiple n/w storage
devices into single storage unit.
43. Describe in brief the composition of FC Frame?
Ans:- Start of the Frame locator
Frame header (includes destination id and source id, 24 bytes/6 words).
Data Payload (encapsulate SCSI instruction can be 0-2112 bytes in
length).
CRC (error checking, 4 bytes).

End of Frame (1 byte).

44. What is virtualization?
Ans:- Virtualization is logical representation of physical devices. It is the
technique of managing and presenting storage devices and resources
functionally, regardless of their physical layout or location. Virtualization
is the pooling of physical storage from multiple network storage devices
into what appears to be a single storage device that is managed from a
central console. Storage virtualization is commonly used in a storage area
network (SAN). The management of storage devices can be tedious and
time-consuming. Storage virtualization helps the storage administrator
perform the tasks of backup, archiving, and recovery more easily, and in
less time, by disguising the actual complexity of the SAN.
45. What is HA?
Ans:- HA High Availability is a technology to achieve failover with very
less latency. Its a practical requirement of data centers these days when
customers expect the servers to be running 24 hours on all 7 days around
the whole 365 days a year usually referred as 24x7x365. So to achieve
this, a redundant infrastructure is created to make sure if one database
server or if one app server fails there is a replica Database or Appserver
ready to take-over the operations. End customer never experiences any
outage when there is a HA network infrastructure.
46. Can you name some of the available tape media types?
Ans:- There are many types of tape media available to back up the data,
some of them are:
DLT: Digital Linear Tape technology for tape backup/archive of networks
and servers; DLT technology addresses midrange to high-end tape
backup requirements.
LTO: Linear Tape Open; a new standard tape format developed by HP,
IBM, and Seagate.
AIT: Advanced Intelligent Tape; a helical scan technology developed by
Sony for tape backup/archive of networks and servers, specifically
addressing midrange to high-end backup requirements.

47. Can we assign a hot spare to R0 (RAID 0) array?

Ans:- No, since R0 is not redundant array, failure of any disks results in
failure of the entire array so we cannot rebuild the hot spare for the R0
array.
48. Name the features of SCSI-3 standard?
Ans:- QAS: Quick arbitration and selection.
Domain Validation.
CRC: Cyclic redundancy check.
49. What is Multipath I/O?
Ans:- Fault tolerant technique where, there is more than one physical
path between the CPU in the computer systems and its main storage
devices through the buses, controllers, switches and other bridge devices
connecting them.
50. What is disk array?
Ans:- Set of high performance storage disks that can store several
terabytes of data. Single disk array can support multiple points of
connection to the network.
51. What are different types of protocols used in transportation
and session layers of SAN?
Ans:- Fibre Channel Protocol (FCP).
Internet SCSI (iSCSI).
Fibre Channel IP (FCIP).
52. What is the type of Encoding used in Fibre Channel?
Ans:- 8b/10b, as the encoding technique is able to detect all most all the
bit errors
53. What are the main constrains of SCSI in storage networking?
Ans:- Deployment distance (max. of 25 mts).

Number of devices that can be interconnected (16).

54. What is a Fabric?
Ans:- Interconnection of Fibre Channel Switches.
55. What are the services provided by Fabric to all the nodes?
Ans:- Fabric Login.
SNS
Fabric Address Notification.
Registered state change notification.
Broadcast Servers.
56. What is the difference between LUN and WWN?
Ans:- LUN: Unique number that is assigned to each storage device or
partition of the storage that the storage can support.
WWN: 64bit address that is hard coded into a fibre channel HBA and this
is used to identify individual port (N_Port or F_Port) in the fabric.
57. What are the different topologies in Fibre Channel?
Ans:- Point-to-Point.
Arbitrary Loop.
Switched Fabric Loop.
58. What are the layers of Fibre Channel Protocol?
Ans:- FC Physical Media.
FC Encoder and Decoder.
FC Framing and Flow control.
FC Common Services.
FC Upper Level Protocol Mapping.
59. What is zoning?
Ans:- Fabric management service that can be used to create logical
subsets of devices within a SAN. This enables portioning of resources for
management and access control purpose.

60. What is the purpose of disk array?

Ans:- Probability of unavailability of data stored on the disk array due to
single point failure is totally eliminated.
61. How does FC Switch maintain the addresses?
Ans:- FC Switch uses simple name server (SNS) to maintain the mapping
table.
62. What are the two major classification of zoning?
Ans:- Two types of zoning are:
Software Zoning.
Hardware Zoning.
63. What are different levels of zoning?
Ans:- Port Level zoning.
WWN Level zoning.
Device Level zoning.
Protocol Level zoning.
LUN Level zoning.
64. What are the 3 prominent characteristics of SAS Protocol?
Ans:- Native Command Queuing (NCQ.)
Port Multiplier.
Port Selector.
65. What are the 5 states of Arbitrary Loop in FC?
Ans:- Loop Initialization.
Loop Monitoring.
Loop arbitration.
Open Loop.
Close Loop.
66. What is LUN Masking?
Ans:- A method used to create an exclusive storage area and access
control. And this can be achieved by storage device control program.
67. What is snapshot?

Ans:- A snapshot of data object contains an image of data at a particular

point of time.
68. What is hot-swapping?
Ans:- Devices are allowed to be removed and inserted into a system
without turning off the system.

Netapp Hardware Interview Questions and Answers - Netapp

Notes by ARK

* Netapp Hardware Interview questions and answers *

1. What is NVRAM..?
Ans:- Non-volatile battery-backed memory (NVRAM) is used for write caching.

2. Do you know how data is written to the disk in Netapp.? Please explain..?
Ans:- As soon as the write to NVRAM is confirmed, the storage appliance
acknowledges the write as completed to the client machine. At pre-determined
triggers, this buffered write data is processed from storage device memory
through the Write Anywhere File Layout (WAFL) and RAID layers and written to
disk.
3. What is SP/RLM/BMC..?
Ans:SP - Service processor
SP monitors the system temperatures, voltages, currents, and fan speeds. When
an environmental sensor has reached an abnormal condition, the SP logs the
abnormal readings, notifies Data ONTAP of the issue, and sends alerts and 'down
system' notifications as necessary through an AutoSupport message, regardless of
whether the storage system can send AutoSupport messages
RLM - Remote LAN Module
The RLM provides remote node management capabilities, including remote access,
monitoring, troubleshooting, logging, and alerting features

BMC - Baseboard management console

The AutoSupport settings are used for sending the alerts through e-mail over the
BMC LAN interface.
4. What is difference between FAS and V-Series..?
Ans:FAS - Fibre attached Storage
V-Series - Virtualized Series
FAS is used in Single node and HA pair configuration
V-Series is used when want to virtualize with third party Storage system
5. What is difference between 7-mode and C-mode..?
Ans:7-mode either single node Or two controllers clustered for HA. Single node will
support for single namespace. One controller will work as a single node.
C-mode either single controller "pair" Or multi controller "pairs" connected as a
clustered. Each VServer will work as a single entity. It will support for multi
namespaces
6. What is the maximum capacity of volume in 7-mode 32bit..?
Ans:- 16TB
7. How many disk types can Netapp support..?
Ans:- FC, SAS, SSD, Near Line SAS and SATA
8. How to check your Netapp serial number..?
Ans:- sysconfig -a
9. how to determine that FC port is working an which mode..?
Ans:- using fcadmin command we can verify
10. How to verify whether all the disk shelfs for connected in redundant..?
Ans:- sysconfig -d and storage show disk

NTERVIEW Questions and Answers - Netapp Notes NCDA

Related Links: Interview Q&A-1
Netapp Hardware Interview Questions and Answers
1. How to improve the Netapp storage performance?
Ans:- There is no direct answer for this question but we shall do it in several way.

If volume/lun present in ATA/SATA harddisk aggregate, then the volume

can be migrated to FC/SAS disk aggregate. Either you can use flash cache to
improve performance.

For NFS/CIFS instead of accessing from single interface, multi mode vif
can be configured to get better bandwidth and fault tolerance.

Always advised to keep aggr/vol utilization below 90%.

Avoid doing multiple volume backup in single point of time.

Aggr/volume/lun reallocation can be done to redistribute the data to

multiple disk for better striping performance.

Schedule scrubbing and De-duplication scanning after business hours.

Create multiple loops and connect different types of shelf's to each loop

Avoid mixing up different speeds of disk and different types of disk in a

same aggregate.

Always keep sufficient spare disk to replace in case of disk failure.

Because reconstruction time will take more time and cause negative performance.

Keep the advised version of firmware/software which is recommended by

Netapp.
2. Unable to map lun to solaris server, but solaris server side no issue. How to
resolve the issue?
Ans:- FROM STORAGE SIDE:
Verify iscsi/fcp license is added in storage
Verify iscsi/fcp session is logged in from server side use below command
Netapp> igroup show -v
Verify luns are mapped to the corresponding igroup
Verify whether correct host type is mentioned while creating igroup and lun
Verify whether correct iqn/wwpn number is added to igroup
Verify zoning is properly configured from switch side, if it is FCP protocol
3. How to create the LUN for linux server?
Ans:-

lun create s size t linux /vol/vol1/lunname

4. How to create qtree and provide the security?

Ans:Netapp>qtree create /vol/vol1/qtreename
Netapp>qtree security /vol/vol1/qtree unix|ntfs|mixed
5. How to copy volume filer to filer?

Ans:- ndmpcopy or snapmirror

6. How to resize the aggregate?
Ans:Netapp> aggr add AggName no.of.disk
7. How to increase the volume?
Ans:- Traditional Volume
vol add VolName no.of.disk
Flexible Volume
vol size VolName +60g
8. What is qtree?
Ans:- qtree is Logical partition of the volume.
9. What is the default snap reserve in aggregate?
Ans:- 5%
10. What is snapshot?
Ans:A Snapshot copy is a read-only image of a traditional or FlexVol volume, or an
aggregate, that captures the state of the file system at a point in time.
11. What are the raid groups Netapp supporting?, what is the difference
between them?
Ans:Supported RAID types:
Raid-4
Raid-6
Raid-Dp

12. What are the protocols you are using?

Ans:Say some protocols like NFS, CIFS, ISCSI and FCP
13. What is the difference between iscsi and fcp?
Ans:Iscsi-sending block through. iSCSI does not required dedicated network, it will
work on existing network also. it work's an TCP/IP.
Fcp-send through fibre medium. Required an dedicated FC network. Performance
is so high compare to the iSCSI
14. What is the iscsi port number?
Ans:- 3260
15. What is the difference between ndmp copy and vol copy?
Ndmp copy network data management protocol(used for tape backup)
Vol copy is used to transfer volume to same or another aggregate
16. What is the difference between ONTAP 7 & 8?
In ONTAP 7 the individual aggregate is limited to maximum of 16 TB. Where ONTAP
8 supports the new 64 bit aggregate and hence the size of the individual aggregate
extends to 100 TB.
17. What are the steps need to perform to configure SnapMirror?
The SnapMirror configuration process consists of the following four steps:
Refer Topic
Install the SnapMirror license on the source and destination systems:
license add <code>
On the source, specify the host name or IP address of the SnapMirror destination
systems you wish to authorize to replicate this source system.
options snapmirror.access host=dst_hostname1,dst_hostname2
For each source volume or qtree to replicate, perform an initial baseline transfer.
For volume SnapMirror

restrict the destination volume first: vol restrict dst_vol

Then initialize the volume SnapMirror baseline, using the following syntax on the
destination:
snapmirror initialize -S src_hostname:src_v
oldst_hostname:dst_vol
For a qtree SnapMirror baseline transfer, use the following syntax on the
destination:
snapmirror initialize S src_hostname:/vol/src_vol/src_qtree
dst_hostname:/vol/dst_vol/dst_qtree
18. While doing baseline transfer youre getting error message. What are the
troubleshooting steps youll do?
Ans:Check both the hosts are reachable by running ping command
Check whether the TCP port 10566 & 10565 are open from firewall
Check whether the snapmirror license are installed in both filers
19. Explain the different types of replication modes..?
The SnapMirror Async mode replicates Snapshot copies from a source volume or
qtree to a destination. It will support to replicate more than 800Kms Long. volume
or qtree. Incremental updates are based on a schedule or are performed manually
using the snapmirror update command. Async mode works with both volume
SnapMirror and qtree SnapMirror.
SnapMirror Sync mode replicates writes from a source volume to a destination
volume at the same time it is written to the source volume. SnapMirror Sync is
used in environments that have zero tolerance for data loss. it will note support
more then 300Kms long.
SnapMirror Semi-Sync provides a middle-ground solution that keeps the source
and destination systems more closely synchronized than Async mode, but with less
impact on performance.
20. How do you configure multiple path in Snapmirror?

Add a connection name line in the snapmirror.conf file

/etc/snapmirror.conf
FAS1_conf = multi (FAS1-e0a,FAS2-e0a) (FAS1-e0b,FAS2-e0b)
21. Explain how De-Duplication works?
In the context of disk storage, De-duplication refers to any algorithm that searches
for duplicate data objects (for example, blocks, chunks, files) and discards those
duplicates. When duplicate data is detected, it is not retained, but instead a
data pointer is modified so that the storage system references an exact copy of
the data object already stored on disk. This De-duplication feature works well
with datasets that have lots of duplicated date (for example, full backups).
22. What is the command used to see amount of space saved using Deduplication?
df s <volume name>
23. Command used to check progress and status of De-duplication?
sis status
24. How do you setup Snapvault Snapshot schedule?
pri> snapvault snap sched vol1 sv_hourly 22@0-22
This schedule is for the home directories volume vol1
Creates hourly Snapshot copies, except 11:00 p.m.
Keeps nearly a full day of hourly copies
25. What is metadata?
Metadata is defined as data providing information about one or more aspects of
the data,
1. Inode file
2. Used block bitmap file
3. Free block bitmap file
26. How do you shutdown filer through RLM?
ssh rlm ip address
RLM_Netapp> system power on

27. After creating LUN (iSCSI) & mapped the LUN to particular igroup, the
client not able to access the LUN. What are the trouble shooting steps you
take?
Check whether IQN number specified is correct
Check whether the created LUN is in restrict mode
Check the iscsi status
Un-map and map the LUN once again
Check Network connectivity communication
28. In CIFS how do you check who is using most?
cifs top
29. How to check cifs performance statistics.?
cifs stat
30. What do you do if a customer reports a particular CIFS share is responding
slow?
Check the r/w using "cifs stat" & "sysstat -x 1".
If disk & cpu utilization is more then problem is with filer side only.
CPU utilization will be high if more disk r/w time, i.e.,during tape backup & also
during scrub activities.
31. what is degraded mode? If you don't have parity for failed disks then?
If the spare disk is not added within 24hours,then filer will be shutdown
automatically to avoid further disk failures and data loss.
32. Did you ever do ontap upgrade? From which version to which version and
for what reason?
Yes i have done ontap upgrade from version 7.2.6.1 to 7.3.3 due to lot of bugs in
old version.
33. How do you create a lun ?
lun create -s <lunsize> -t <host type> <lunpath>
34. How do you monitor the filers?

Using DFM(Data Fabric Manager) or also using SNMP you can monitor the filer.
Using any monitoring systems like .i.e.Nagios
35. What are the prerequisites for a cluster?
cluster interconnect cable should be connected.
shelf connect should be properly done for both the controllers with Path1 and
Path2
cluster license should be enabled on both the nodes
Interfaces should be properly configured for fail over
cluster should be enabled
36. What is the diff bet cf takeover and cf force takeover?
If partner shelf power is off, if you try to takeover it will not take. if you do as
force using (-f) it will work
37. What is LIF.?
LIF ( Logical interface) :
As the name suggest its a logical interface which is created from physical interface
of NetApp controllers.
38. What is VServer..?
A Vserver is defined as logical container which holds the volumes. A 7 mode vfiler
is called as a vserver in Clustered mode .
39. What is junction path..?
This is a new term in cluster mode and this is used for mounting.Volume junctions
are a way to join individual volumes together into a single, logical namespace to
enable data access to NAS clients.
40. What is infinite volumes..?
NetApp Infinite Volume is a software abstraction hosted over clustered Data ONTAP