NetApp® ONTAP® FlexGroup volumes were introduced in ONTAP 9.1 to provide a scale-out NAS solution that could extend beyond the limitations of the NetApp FlexVol® volume. This is done by combining multiple FlexVol volumes into a single namespace and having ONTAP balance incoming data automatically, with real-time updates of capacity and file counts to maintain a capacity balance across all constituent volumes. FlexGroup volumes offer the following benefits over FlexVol volumes:
Justin Parisi is an ONTAP veteran, with over 10 years of experience at NetApp. He is co-host of the NetApp Tech ONTAP Podcast, Technical Advisor with the NetApp A-Team and works as a Technical Marketing Engineer at NetApp, focusing on FlexGroup volumes and all things NAS-related.