auto-giveback enabled after re-enabling storage failover setting

[zhuolin-shen]

Page URL

https://docs.netapp.com/us-en/ontap/revert/task_reverting_an_ontap_cluster.html

Page title

Revert an ONTAP cluster

Summary

A customer reported an operational issue encountered during an ONTAP cluster revert procedure documented in the following guide:

Revert an ONTAP cluster
https://docs.netapp.com/us-en/ontap/revert/task_reverting_an_ontap_cluster.html

Current documentation includes the step:

16. After both nodes have been reverted, reenable high availability for the cluster:

cluster ha modify -configured true

Customer Concern

During a recent revert activity, the engineer executed the above command but was unaware that this operation can cause the storage failover auto-giveback setting to be reset from false back to true.

As a result, the site was left with auto-giveback enabled, which was not the intended post-maintenance configuration and led to customer dissatisfaction.

Root Cause of Documentation Gap

While investigating why auto-giveback was re-enabled, the engineer found the following KB:

Why auto-giveback enabled after re-enabling storage failover setting
https://kb.netapp.com/on-prem/ontap/Ontap_OS/OS-KBs/Why_auto-giveback_enabled_after_re-enabling_storage_failover_setting

The KB explains that re-enabling storage failover/cluster HA can automatically restore the auto-giveback setting, but this behavior is currently not called out in the revert documentation.

Requested Documentation Enhancement

Please consider adding a warning, note, or post-step validation to the Revert an ONTAP cluster documentation near the following step:

cluster ha modify -configured true

Suggested content:

• Re-enabling cluster HA may cause the storage failover auto-giveback setting to revert to true.
• Verify the current auto-giveback configuration after running the command.
• If a different setting is required for the customer's environment, manually reconfigure it.
• Alternatively, add a direct reference to the above KB as a post-step caution.

This enhancement would help prevent operators from overlooking the auto-giveback state after a cluster revert and avoid unintended configuration changes in customer environments.

Public issues must not contain sensitive information

• This issue contains no sensitive information.

[netapp-lenida]

@netapp-aherbin, can you look into this? Or reassign to someone else as necessary. Thank you!