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Configuring and managing external capacity tiers

Storing data in tiers can enhance the efficiency of your storage system. You manage storage tiers by using FabricPool-enabled aggregates. External capacity tiers stores data in a tier based on whether the data is frequently accessed.

Before you begin

  • You must be running ONTAP 9.2 or later.

  • You must have all flash (all SSD) aggregates



  • Adding an external capacity tier
    You can use Storage Manager to add an external capacity tier to an SSD aggregate or a VMDISK aggregate. External capacity tiers provide storage for infrequently used data.
  • Attaching an aggregate to an external capacity tier
    You can use Storage Manager to attach an All Flash aggregate to an external capacity tier. You can store infrequently used data in external capacity tiers.
  • Provisioning storage by creating a FabricPool-enabled aggregate manually
    You can use Storage Manager to create a FabricPool-enabled aggregate to attach an external capacity tier to the SSD aggregate.
  • Changing the tiering policy of a volume
    You can use Storage Manager to change the default tiering policy of a volume to control whether the data of the volume is moved to the capacity tier when the data becomes inactive.
  • Editing an external capacity tier
    You can use Storage Manager to modify the configuration information of an external capacity tier. The configuration details that you can edit include the name, fully qualified domain name (FQDN), port, access key ID, secret key, and object store certificate.
  • Deleting an external capacity tier
    You can use Storage Manager to delete an external capacity tier that you no longer require.
  • What external capacity tiers and tiering policies are
    External capacity tiers provide storage for infrequently accessed data. You can attach an all flash (all SSD) aggregate to an external capacity tier to store infrequently used data. You can use tiering policies to decide whether data should be moved to an external capacity tier.
  • What inactive (cold) data is
    Infrequently accessed data in a performance tier is known as inactive (cold) data. By default, data that is not accessed for a period of 31 days becomes inactive.
  • External Capacity Tier window
    You can use Storage Manager to add, edit, and delete external capacity tiers and to view external capacity tier details.