This section explains how to replace the nodes that have reached their retirement or end of life in your Qumulo cluster and how to migrate your cluster to a different license class by performing a transparent platform refresh.

In Qumulo Core 6.0.0.2 (and higher), you can replace old nodes in your cluster with new nodes to remove nodes that have reached their retirement or end of life or to take advantage of newer hardware.

The node replacement process has two stages:

  1. The Qumulo Care team specifies the overall node replacement plan, in scenarios such as the following.

    • We want to replace nodes 2 and 3 in the cluster.

    • We want to replace all nodes in the cluster and move the nodes to a higher-performance license class.

  2. The Qumulo Care team executes the node replacement steps.

    • Multi-Step Plan: This plan type is appropriate when rack space or switch port capacity is limited. Each step adds some of the new nodes to the cluster and removes some of the nodes marked for replacement.

    • Single-Step Plan: This plan type is appropriate when the speed of node replacement is a priority. A single step adds new nodes to the cluster and removes nodes marked for replacement.

For information about expanding your cluster, see Adding Nodes to a Qumulo Cluster with Data Protection Configuration Changes.

Migrating a Cluster to a Different License Class

In Qumulo Core 6.0.0.2 (and higher), you can migrate your entire cluster to a different license class to accommodate your performance needs. For example, you can migrate your Qumulo cluster from hybrid to all-NVMe nodes.

As with other node replacements, you can break the migration down into multiple smaller steps.