Selecting your update method for MetroCluster configurations

Nondisruptive and disruptive updates​

Nondisruptive upgrade and downgrade procedures perform the operation while maintaining service to clients.

In a disruptive upgrade or downgrade, storage failover is disabled for each HA pair, and then each node is rebooted one at a time. Disruptive upgrades can be performed more quickly than nondisruptive upgrades, and require fewer steps to complete. However, you should not perform a disruptive upgrade unless you can take the cluster offline for the duration of the upgrade. If you are operating in a SAN environment, you should be prepared to shut down or suspend all SAN clients before performing a disruptive upgrade.

Automated and manual updates​

Automated nondisruptive upgrades (NDU) are the preferred method of upgrading a cluster. With NDU, ONTAP automatically installs the target ONTAP image on each node, validates the cluster components to ensure that the cluster can be upgraded nondisruptively, and then executes the upgrade in the background.

Choosing the right procedure​

You can use the following table to determine which procedure you should use and whether that procedure is manual or automated, based on the following criteria:

• The number of nodes in the MetroCluster configuration

• The ONTAP version you are using

• Whether you choose nondisruptive or disruptive procedures