Midrange Storage Performance Planning: Drive Configuration Flashcards
What is the makeup of a Unity XT DPE?
houses 25 drive slots
populated in system from left to right
How does the Unity recognize the DPE?
Bus 99 Enclosure 0
internal drives are recognized as Bus 99 Enclosure 0 Drive - Bus 0 Enclosure 0 Drive 24
LEDs on front of DPE for enclosure and drives to indicate status and faults
What is the DPE for Unity XT 380?
houses 25 drive slots supporting 2.5in SAS and SAS Flash drives
first 4 slots reserved for system drives
What are the role of the 4 system drives on the Unity XT DPE?
contain data used by operating environment (OE) software - configuration and other critical data
space reserved for system and remaining space available for storage pools
Can you remove the system drives in a Unity XT DPE?
drives should not be moved within the DPE or relocated to another enclosure
What is the capacity difference on system drives for Unity XT DPE?
about 107GB less than the other drives due to system partitions
How would you offset the capacity difference from system drives to non-system drives in Unity XT storage pools?
use smaller RAID width for pools that contain system drives
Can system drives be used in a normal storage pool?
Yes just offer less usable capacity
What are considerations when utilizing system drives in a storage pool in Unity XT?
count towards how many reserved hot spares to use
unbound system drives can’t be used as hot spares
Why can’t unbound system drives be used as hot spares?
due to capacity difference system won’t add them to storage pools if not already bounded
only after all other spares have been used will they be added
What is the recommendation when building smaller configurations in relation to system drives?
using system drives in storage pools are encouraged to maximize capacity/performance
What is the recommendation when building larger configurations in relation to system drives?
do not use system drives in storage pools
heavy client workloads to these drives might interfere with system ability to capture configuration changes and result in slow management operations
What are the rules for system drives and storage pools for Unity XT AFA?
no restrictions on using system drives in AFA systems
What are the available drive types on Unity XT?
SAS 10K
NL-SAS 7.2K
SAS Flash 2
SAS Flash 3
SAS Flash 4
What are the characteristics of the SAS 10K drives in Unity XT?
4K block size (2.5 in)
600GB, 1.2TB, 1.8TB
can be used in 25 drive DAE or 80 drive DAE
What are the characteristics of the NL-SAS 7.2K drives in Unity XT?
4K block size (3.5in)
4TB, 6TB, 12TB
12GB/s backend interface
What are the characteristics of the SAS Flash 2 drives in Unity XT?
only supports 400GB size
520 byte block size
supported in FAST Cache, Mixed, or AF Pools
What are the characteristics of the SAS Flash 3 drives in Unity XT?
800GB, 1.6TB, 3.2TB
520 byte block size
supported in Mixed & AF pools
can’t be used in FAST Cache
What are the characteristics of the SAS Flash 4 drives in Unity XT?
1.92TB, 3.84TB, 7.68TB, 15.36TB
520 byte block size
can be used w/ any other SAS flash drives in a pool
can only be used in AF pools
can be used in system drive slots
What is the limitation on SAS Flash 4 on Unity HFA systems?
can only use 7.68TB size
What is SSD wear leveling?
flash cells wear out as data is written to the drive
SSDs have limits for the amount of program/erase cycles (PE) before devices becomes unreliable
What are the classifications for drives when it comes to wear leveling?
High Endurance (HE)
Medium Endurance (ME)
Low Endurance (LE)
What does Unity XT do to minimize wear leveling?
wear leveling optimization
ensures flash drives don’t prematurely wear out
What does wear level optimization do in Unity XT?
limit the number of writes to the drive
drive given certain quota of writes calculated based on wearing consumption model