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Reverting clusters to an earlier ONTAP release

In some cases, to transition a cluster to an earlier ONTAP release, you must perform a reversion. Reverting is always disruptive, and it requires planning, preparation, the reversion itself, and several post-reversion procedures.

Attention
Do not attempt to revert ONTAP by simply downloading and booting (or netbooting) in an earlier release. If you do, you cannot boot the earlier target release. You must use the clustershell system node revert-to and nodeshell revert_to commands for the reversion process.
  • When to revert and when to call technical support
    You can downgrade or revert without assistance when downgrading or reverting new or test clusters, but you should call technical support if you encounter problems during or after upgrade, or if you want to downgrade or revert a production cluster.
  • Cluster revert workflow
    You can use the cluster revert workflow to plan the reversion, prepare for the reversion, perform the reversion, and complete post-reversion tasks.
  • Planning your reversion
    Because new features are introduced in each release of ONTAP, you must understand reversion requirements and evaluate how they might impact your current configuration.
  • Preparing to revert ONTAP clusters
    Before reverting to an earlier version of ONTAP, you must verify that the cluster is ready to be reverted and make any required configuration changes.
  • Reverting an ONTAP cluster
    To take the cluster offline to revert to an earlier ONTAP release, you must disable storage failover and the data LIFs, address reversion preconditions, revert the cluster and file system configurations on a node, and then repeat the process for each additional node in the cluster.
  • Completing post-reversion tasks
    After reverting to an earlier version of ONTAP, you might need to perform additional tasks to provide cluster health and storage availability.
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