How mirrored aggregates work

Mirrored aggregates have two plexes (copies of their data), which use the SyncMirror functionality to duplicate the data to provide redundancy.

When a mirrored aggregate is created (or when a second plex is added to an existing unmirrored aggregate), ONTAP copies the data in the original plex (plex0) to the new plex (plex1). The plexes are physically separated (each plex has its own RAID groups and its own pool), and the plexes are updated simultaneously. This provides added protection against data loss if more disks fail than the RAID level of the aggregate protects against or there is a loss of connectivity, because the unaffected plex continues to serve data while you fix the cause of the failure. After the plex that had a problem is fixed, the two plexes resynchronize and reestablish the mirror relationship.

The disks and array LUNs on the system are divided into two pools: pool0 and pool1. Plex0 gets its storage from pool0 and plex1 gets its storage from pool1.

The following diagram shows an aggregate composed of disks with the SyncMirror functionality enabled and implemented. A second plex has been created for the aggregate, plex1. The data in plex1 is a copy of the data in plex0, and the RAID groups are also identical. The 32 spare disks are allocated to pool0 or pool1, 16 disks for each pool.

The following diagram shows an aggregate composed of array LUNs with the SyncMirror functionality enabled and implemented. A second plex has been created for the aggregate, plex1. Plex1 is a copy of plex0, and the RAID groups are also identical.