Gen9 SimpliVity hardware refresh

[jlangmead]

Hi

Is there a preferred approach when needing to replace older gen9 SimpliVity nodes with Gen10's?

I understand that both Gen9 and Gen10's can co-exist within the same cluster and therefore would it be a case of just adding a couple of Gen10 nodes to the same cluster and setting up zones to make sure the Gen9 secondary copies are created on the Gen10 nodes and once all in sync, to remove the Gen9's from the Federation? Or is that not even necessary as the secondary replica's will automatically move when each Gen9 is removed from the federation?

Also - *is it necessary for the Gen10's be deployed with the same SimpliVity version as the Gen9's for the initial deployment and then updated to the latest versions once the Gen9's have been removed from the Fedeeration?

many thanks

[gustenar]

Hello @jlangmead, 

Creating zones is a valid strategy, and I'd say a safer one. 

When you remove a node from federation SimpliVity will indeed rebuild it in another node, in this case most likely the Gen10s since they are empty. I think I prefer a more controlled approach when doing this. 

We don't support different software versions within the same cluster, so yes you need to install the same version. 

Another option I'm thinking is to deploy the Gen10s in their cluster with the newest software version and then perform a Simplivity VM move operation from one cluster to the other, or a Storage VMotion.