Midrange Storage Performance Planning: Drive Configuration Flashcards

1
Q

What is the makeup of a Unity XT DPE?

A

houses 25 drive slots

populated in system from left to right

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2
Q

How does the Unity recognize the DPE?

A

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

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3
Q

What is the DPE for Unity XT 380?

A

houses 25 drive slots supporting 2.5in SAS and SAS Flash drives

first 4 slots reserved for system drives

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4
Q

What are the role of the 4 system drives on the Unity XT DPE?

A

contain data used by operating environment (OE) software - configuration and other critical data

space reserved for system and remaining space available for storage pools

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5
Q

Can you remove the system drives in a Unity XT DPE?

A

drives should not be moved within the DPE or relocated to another enclosure

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6
Q

What is the capacity difference on system drives for Unity XT DPE?

A

about 107GB less than the other drives due to system partitions

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7
Q

How would you offset the capacity difference from system drives to non-system drives in Unity XT storage pools?

A

use smaller RAID width for pools that contain system drives

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8
Q

Can system drives be used in a normal storage pool?

A

Yes just offer less usable capacity

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9
Q

What are considerations when utilizing system drives in a storage pool in Unity XT?

A

count towards how many reserved hot spares to use

unbound system drives can’t be used as hot spares

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10
Q

Why can’t unbound system drives be used as hot spares?

A

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

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11
Q

What is the recommendation when building smaller configurations in relation to system drives?

A

using system drives in storage pools are encouraged to maximize capacity/performance

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12
Q

What is the recommendation when building larger configurations in relation to system drives?

A

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

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13
Q

What are the rules for system drives and storage pools for Unity XT AFA?

A

no restrictions on using system drives in AFA systems

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14
Q

What are the available drive types on Unity XT?

A

SAS 10K
NL-SAS 7.2K
SAS Flash 2
SAS Flash 3
SAS Flash 4

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15
Q

What are the characteristics of the SAS 10K drives in Unity XT?

A

4K block size (2.5 in)
600GB, 1.2TB, 1.8TB
can be used in 25 drive DAE or 80 drive DAE

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16
Q

What are the characteristics of the NL-SAS 7.2K drives in Unity XT?

A

4K block size (3.5in)
4TB, 6TB, 12TB
12GB/s backend interface

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17
Q

What are the characteristics of the SAS Flash 2 drives in Unity XT?

A

only supports 400GB size
520 byte block size
supported in FAST Cache, Mixed, or AF Pools

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18
Q

What are the characteristics of the SAS Flash 3 drives in Unity XT?

A

800GB, 1.6TB, 3.2TB
520 byte block size
supported in Mixed & AF pools
can’t be used in FAST Cache

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19
Q

What are the characteristics of the SAS Flash 4 drives in Unity XT?

A

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

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20
Q

What is the limitation on SAS Flash 4 on Unity HFA systems?

A

can only use 7.68TB size

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21
Q

What is SSD wear leveling?

A

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

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22
Q

What are the classifications for drives when it comes to wear leveling?

A

High Endurance (HE)
Medium Endurance (ME)
Low Endurance (LE)

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23
Q

What does Unity XT do to minimize wear leveling?

A

wear leveling optimization

ensures flash drives don’t prematurely wear out

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24
Q

What does wear level optimization do in Unity XT?

A

limit the number of writes to the drive

drive given certain quota of writes calculated based on wearing consumption model

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25
Q

What takes into account wear level?

A

slice allocation requests

system determines which RAID group that the slice is allocated in an attempt to balance wear across RAID groups

26
Q

What can a customer view in Unisphere for wear leveling on flash drives in Unity XT?

A

can view wear alerts

Proactive copy operations (PACO)

drive health status updates

27
Q

What drives can be used in mixed pools in Unity XT?

A

NL-SAS
SAS
SAS Flash 2
SAS Flash 3

28
Q

What drives can be used in AF pools in Unity XT?

A

SAS Flash 3
SAS Flash 4

29
Q

What is the drive sparing rule in Unity XT?

A

same drive type must be used for spares

EX: SAS Flash 4 requires SAS Flash 4 for sparing

30
Q

What are the two types of DAEs?

A

2U 25 drive 2.5 inch drives
3U 15 drive 3.5 inch drives

each model supports different number of drive slots

31
Q

What are the maximum drive slots for each model?

A

380 - 500
480 - 750
680 - 1000
880 - 1500

32
Q

What if the drives in the storage pool are near maximum IOPS in a Unity XT?

A

if near maximum IOPS for extended period add more drives to pool

spreads load across more resources

33
Q

What are the maximum IOPS per drive type for Unity XT?

A

SAS Flash - 20000
SAS 15K - 350
SAS 10K - 250
NL-SAS - 150

34
Q

What setup doesn’t require hot spares in Unity XT?

A

dynamic pools

35
Q

How are traditional storage pools setup with hot spares in Unity XT?

A

automatically reserve one unbound drive out of every 31 drives of a given type as a hot spare

hot spares have no special configuration

36
Q

Can traditional pools be expanded or created in Unity XT?

A

only if available number of unbound drives is sufficient to create the requested pool and continue to satisfy the hot spare policy

37
Q

How would you change the number of hot spares in a Unity XT?

A

decreasing number of individual drive types in system

38
Q

Why do Unity XT systems throttle hot spare rebuild operations?

A

to reduce the impact to host IO

rebuilds occur more quickly during periods of low utilization

39
Q

What is included in the base chassis of Powerstore?

A

two nodes

midplane

NVMe devices

40
Q

What is included in the nodes of Powerstore?

A

CPU
DRAM
IO Modules w/ ports
power supply
fans

41
Q

What is the role of nodes in Powerstore?

A

perform tasks of saving and retrieving block, file and VM data

42
Q

How many drives slots are in the Powerstore base enclosure?

A

25 NVMe - 2.5in

43
Q

What are the first 20 drives in a Powerstore base enclosure?

A

NVMe SSD or SCM

44
Q

What are drives 21-24 in a Powerstore base enclosure?

A

NVMe NVRAM SSDs (except Powerstore 500T)

45
Q

What are the LEDs on Powerstore drives?

A

Ready/Activity = Blue
Fault = Red

46
Q

What is the WWN Seed tag on Powerstore?

A

blue pull out tag located between slots 7 and 8

47
Q

What is the Dell Serial Number Tag on Powerstore?

A

black pull out tag between slots 16 and 17

48
Q

What is the base enclosure makeup of Powerstore 500T?

A

slots 0-24 are used for data storage - no NVRAM drives

write caching and vaulting performed by internal M.2 module

49
Q

What is the base enclosure makeup of Powerstore 1000T-3200T?

A

last two slots (23/24) populated with NVMe NVRAM drives (write caching and vaulting)

slots 21 and 22 must remain unpopulated

50
Q

What is the base enclosure makeup of Powerstore 5000T-9200T?

A

populated w/ 4 NVMe NVRAM drives (21-24) (write caching and vaulting)

51
Q

What are the drive rules for Powerstore?

A

4 capacities of NVMe Flash in base and expansion enclosure

1 capacity of NVRAM drives in base enclosure

systems with only NVMe SCM do not support expansion enclosures

all drives 100% FIPS certified

52
Q

What are the caviats for Powerstore using SCM drives?

A

systems with only NVMe SCM do not support expansion enclosures

mixed SSD/SCM enclosures - SCM drives used for metadata tiering (done automatically by the system)

SCM drives do not add to capacity for user data

53
Q

What are the expansion enclosure options for Powerstore?

A

ENS24 - NVMe

ESS25 - SAS

54
Q

What are the characteristics of the ENS24 expansion enclosure?

A

uses NVMe-oF standards - delivers end to end NVMe solutions

slots for 24 drives

performance equal to local PCIe NVMe drives - 10 microsecond delay

don’t work with systems already using SAS expansion enclosures

does not support NVMe SCM

55
Q

What are the characteristics of the ESS25 expansion enclosure?

A

slots for 25 drives

12 Gb/s SAS interface using two LCCs - A and B for communication between nodes and expansion enclosures

not supported on systems that are using NVMe expansion enclosures

56
Q

What are the processor configurations for Powerstore models?

A

500 - 2 Intel Xeon 24 cores 2.2GHz
1200 - 4 Intel Xeon 40 cores 2.4 GHz
3200 -4 Intel Xeon 64 cores 2.1 GHz
5200 - 4 Intel Xeon 96 cores 2.2GHz
9200 - 4 Intel Xeon 112 cores 2.2 GHz

57
Q

What are the memory configurations for Powerstore models?

A

500 - 192GB
1200 - 384GB
3200 - 768GB
5200 - 1152GB
9200 - 2560GB

58
Q

What are the max drive configurations for Powerstore models?

A

500 - 97
1200 + - 93

59
Q

What are the NVRAM drive configurations for Powerstore models?

A

500 - N/A
1200 - 2
3200 - 2
5200 - 4
9200 - 4

60
Q

What is the minimum drive count for a Powerstore configuration?

A

6 drives