Halting the storage system

The halt command performs an orderly shutdown that flushes file system updates to disk and clears the NVRAM

Considerations

The storage system stores requests it receives in nonvolatile random-access memory (NVRAM). For the following reasons, you should always execute the halt command before turning the storage system off:

The halt command flushes all data from memory to disk, eliminating a potential point of failure.
The halt command avoids potential data loss on CIFS clients.
If a CIFS client is disconnected from the storage system, the users’ applications are terminated and changes made to open files since the last save are lost.

Attention: Never interrupt CIFS service by halting the storage system without giving advance warning to CIFS users. Halting the CIFS service without giving CIFS users enough time to save their changes can cause data loss.

Note: Clients using Windows 95 or Windows for Workgroups can display the CIFS shutdown messages only when the clients’ WinPopup program is configured to receive messages. The ability to display messages from the storage system is built into Windows NT and Windows XP.

Step

Enter the following command: halt [-d dump_string] [-t interval] [-f]
-d dump_string causes the storage system to perform a core dump before halting. You use dump_string to describe the reason for the core dump. The message for the core dump will include the reason specified by dump_string.

Attention: Using halt -d causes an improper shutdown of the storage system (also called a dirty shutdown). Avoid using halt -d for normal maintenance shutdowns. For more details, see the na_halt(1) man page.

-t interval causes the storage system to halt after the number of minutes specified by interval.
-f prevents one partner in an active/active pair from taking over the other after the storage system halts.

The storage system displays the boot prompt. When you see the boot prompt, you can turn the power off.

Parent topic: How to start and stop the storage system