Unlike an ONTAP cluster, storage in an ONTAP Cloud HA pair is not shared between nodes. Instead, data is synchronously mirrored between the nodes so that the data is available in the event of failure.
When you create a new volume and additional disks are required, Cloud Manager allocates the same number of disks to both nodes, creates a mirrored aggregate, and then creates the new volume. For example, if two disks are required for the volume, Cloud Manager allocates two disks per node for a total of four disks.
You can use an ONTAP Cloud HA pair as an active-active configuration, in which both nodes serve data to clients, or as an active-passive configuration, in which the passive node responds to data requests only if it has taken over storage for the active node.
An ONTAP Cloud HA configuration synchronously replicates data between nodes, which consumes network bandwidth. As a result, you can expect the following performance in comparison to a single-node ONTAP Cloud configuration:
NetApp Technical Report 4383: Performance Characterization of ONTAP Cloud with Application Workloads
Clients should access volumes by using the floating IP address of the node on which the volume resides. If clients access a volume using the floating IP address of the partner node, traffic goes between both nodes, which reduces performance.
You can easily identify the correct IP address from Cloud Manager: