What is the recommended method for performing a rolling upgrade of ONTAP clusters to minimize downtime?

What is the recommended method for performing a rolling upgrade of ONTAP clusters to minimize downtime?

• A. Upgrade all nodes at once.
• B. Take the cluster offline during upgrade.
• C. Use a rolling upgrade strategy across nodes, upgrading one node at a time while maintaining service, and verify cluster health before bringing remaining nodes up.
• D. Only upgrade the management plane.

Answer: (D)

Rolling upgrades minimize downtime by updating the cluster one node at a time while the rest continues to serve I/O. In an ONTAP cluster, you upgrade each node in sequence, keep the other nodes online to handle traffic, and after upgrading a node you verify that the cluster is healthy before moving to the next. This approach preserves availability because data paths remain active through the non-upgraded nodes, and any issues can be caught and addressed before all nodes are updated. Upgrading all nodes at once would require taking the whole cluster offline or would risk影响 during simultaneous updates. Taking the cluster offline defeats high availability, and upgrading only the management plane does not impact the data plane on the storage nodes, so it wouldn’t minimize downtime for data services.

Rolling upgrades minimize downtime by updating the cluster one node at a time while the rest continues to serve I/O. In an ONTAP cluster, you upgrade each node in sequence, keep the other nodes online to handle traffic, and after upgrading a node you verify that the cluster is healthy before moving to the next. This approach preserves availability because data paths remain active through the non-upgraded nodes, and any issues can be caught and addressed before all nodes are updated.

Upgrading all nodes at once would require taking the whole cluster offline or would risk影响 during simultaneous updates. Taking the cluster offline defeats high availability, and upgrading only the management plane does not impact the data plane on the storage nodes, so it wouldn’t minimize downtime for data services.