Reinitialize and Reset a NetApp to Factory Defaults

Summary: How to wipe a Netapp Filer back to its factory defaults.
Date: Around 2015
Refactor: 7 March 2025: Checked links and formatting.

Note: Following this procedure will leave you with a useless machine. You'll only have a few commands, so no filerview etc to work with. You need to reinstall ONTAP and need to re-apply all licenses. Make a backup of your licenses and make sure your support contract allows you to receive a new ONTAP version, since this is not available for download. See NetApp: A Complete Setup of a Netapp Filer for a manual on how to proceed after you've done the reinitialization.

We had a filer with some very sensitive information on it that had to be destroyed (in front of an auditor) before it was allowed to reuse the filer. This was the procedure we followed:

1. Connect to the filer through a console cable. For this we simply used Putty that also has the option to connect to your serial/COM port.
2. Issued the command “reboot” to reboot the filer.
3. Wait for the autoboot to start and when asked for it pressed <CTRL>+C to enter the special boot menu.
4. Choose option 4a to reinitialize (zero) all the disks and automatically create a flexvol root volume.
5. Confirm this twice
6. Wait for a long time, and at the end of the procedure you get a setup sequence with options for naming your filer etc.

See the screenshots below so you'll know when to press what: Issue the reboot:

And this is what happens:

Afterwards you get messages that your disks are zeroed and that your aggregate has been added to the system:

Then the initialization of the network and storage starts, which ends with the setup sequence which starts with providing the new hostname: