How traditional volumes work

A traditional volume is a volume that is contained by a single, dedicated, aggregate. It is tightly coupled with its containing aggregate. No other volumes can get their storage from this containing aggregate.

The only way to increase the size of a traditional volume is to add entire disks to its containing aggregate. You cannot decrease the size of a traditional volume. The smallest possible traditional volume uses all the space on two disks (for RAID4) or three disks (for RAID-DP).

Note: All volumes created with a version of Data ONTAP earlier than 7.0 are traditional volumes. If you upgrade to Data ONTAP 7.0 or later, your volumes and data remain unchanged, and the commands you used to manage your volumes and data are still supported.

Parent topic: A comparison of FlexVol volumes and traditional volumes