Editing Write Anywhere File Layout (section)

===FlexVol===
[[File:WAFL Data Layout 2.png|thumb|WAFL FlexVol Layout: blocks and inode metadata alongside user data]]
Each Flexible Volume (FlexVol) is a separate WAFL file system, located on an [[ONTAP#Aggregates|aggregate]] and distributed across all disks in the aggregate. Each aggregate can contain and usually has multiple FlexVol volumes. ONTAP during data optimization process including the "Tetris" which finishes with Consistency Points (see [[Write Anywhere File Layout#NVRAM|NVRAM]]) is programmed to evenly distribute data blocks as much as possible in each FlexVol volume across all disks in aggregate so each FlexVol could potentially use all available performance of all the data disks in the aggregate. With the approach of even data block distribution across all the data disks in an aggregate, performance throttling for a FlexVol could be done dynamically with storage QoS and does not require dedicated aggregates or RAID groups for each FlexVol to guarantee performance and provide the unused performance to a FlexVol volume which requires it. Each FlexVol could be configured as thick or [[Thin provisioning|thin provisioned]] space and later could be changed on the fly any time. Block device access with [[storage area network]] (SAN) protocols such as [[iSCSI]], [[Fibre Channel]] (FC), and [[Fibre Channel over Ethernet]] (FCoE) is done with LUN emulation similar to [[Loop device]] technique on top of a FlexVol volume; thus each LUN on WAFL file system appears as a file, yet have additional properties required for block devices. LUNs can also be configured as thick or [[Thin provisioning|thin provisioned]] and can be changed later on the fly. Due to WAFL architecture, FlexVols and LUNs can increase or decrease configured space usage on the fly. If a FlexVol contains data, internal space can be decreased no less than used space. Even though LUN size with data on it could be decreased on WAFL file system, [[ONTAP]] has no knowledge about upper-level block structure due to SAN architecture so it could truncate data and damage the file system on that LUN, so the host needs to migrate the blocks containing the data into a new LUN boundary to prevent data loss. Each FlexVol can have its own [[ONTAP#QoS|QoS]], [[NetApp FAS#Flash Pool|FlashPool]], [[NetApp FAS#PAM / Flash Cache|FlasCache]] or [[NetApp FAS#Flash Pool|FabricPool]] policies.

If two FlexVol volumes are created, each on two aggregates and those aggregates owned by two different controllers, and the system administrator needs to use space from these volumes through a NAS protocol. Then they would create two file shares, one on each volume. In this case, the administrator will most probably even create different IP addresses; each will be used to access a dedicated file share. Each volume will have a single write waffinity, and there will be two buckets of space. Though even if two volumes reside on a single controller, and for example on a single aggregate (thus if the second aggregate exists, it will not be used in this case) and both volumes will be accessed through a single IP address, there will still be two write affinities, one on each volume and there always will be two separate buckets of space. Therefore, the more volumes you have, the more write waffinities you'll have (better parallelization and thus better CPU utilization), but then you'll have multiple volumes (and multiple buckets for space thus multiple file shares).