Clustered ONTAP Explained Through Brains

Hi All,

A loyal follower of mine asked if I would put more pictures into my blogs, so here goes.  I have this thing for brains, so I figured I would explain Clustered ONTAP through the use of brains.

Warning - Do NOT Try This At Home

Say you were a mad scientist and you began splicing brains together.  In my example you only have two brains so far.  Even though each brain came from a single person, each half has different functions and thoughts that are linked together through the corpus callosum, which allows both halves to communicate.  In your crazed genius you were able to bridge two brains together with another special corpus callosum, so now all four halves can communicate to one another.  Now we have two separate brains hooked up together in a cluster.  Each half has it's own functions, but those functions can pass to different halves, or to a different brain all together!

There, you have Clustered ONTAP!  Can't see it yet?  Each half of brain is a node in the cluster which is designed to perform functions or volumes in the case of Clustered ONTAP.  Each half or node can communicate and take over functions of the other half or it's partner, hooked together through an HA interconnect.  The two brains are hooked together through a clustered network running 10 gigabit.  In my example both brains are in a single Vserver, so they can share each others functions, but they could be set to not pass workloads to each other if  put you them in separate Vservers or jars.

Take a look at my picture.  The brain on the left represents me, and you can see I have two functions in mind.  In Clustered ONTAP these would be volumes where data is being stored.  So when my better half kicks me in the butt in the morning and tells me it's time to go to work, that function or volume passes from her brain to mine.  So now I'm processing that volume too.  When I tell her it's time to have fun and pass over the play video games volume and she'll start to play video games.

I hope you enjoyed my explanation of Clustered ONTAP through the use of brains.

Until Next Time!