In any Isilon cluster there is a requirement to have a minimum of 3 nodes for each type of node that is within the cluster. This rule begs the question of how to remove the last 3 nodes of a node type from a cluster.
What are my options for evacuating the data on the 3 nodes that will be removed from the cluster?
- SmartPools – A file pool policy can be created to move all data to the other nodes in the cluster. Simply create a new file pool policy that moves everything under /ifs to the tier/pool that will remain in the cluster.
Note: If all of your pools are in a single tier you will need to remove one of the pools from the tier before you can create the SmartPool file policy. Pools can safely be removed from a tier at any time.
- SmartFail – This method will not work. The first node you SmartFail will start to evacuate it’s data to the other 2 nodes remaining in the cluster that are the same type. Eventually those 2 nodes will fill up and the SmartFail job will hang.