Midrange Storage Performance Planning: Performance Essential Guidelines

Question 1

What type of processors do Unity XT use?

Answer 1

Intel

Question 1

What are the rules for storage performance?

Answer 1

Maximize flash drive capacity (Unity XT)
Distribute workloads
Simplify configuration
Design for resilience
Maintain the System OE updated to latest release

Question 2

What is the maximum core count on Unity XT procs?

Answer 2

16

Question 3

What type of flash is supported on Unity XT?

Answer 3

TLC

Question 4

Why should you maximize flash capacity in hybrid Unitys?

Answer 4

the best way to harness flash is to ensure as much dataset as possible resides on the SSDs

Question 5

What is the recommended flash drive capacity on Unity HFA?

Answer 5

minimum of 10% of pool capacity

Question 6

What is necessary to achieve data reduction on a Unity HFA?

Answer 6

flash capacity must be equal to or exceed 10% of total

Question 7

What size drives should you use for the flash pool in a Unity HFA?

Answer 7

always use the largest flash drives possible

Question 8

What is the maximum flash drive capacity?

Answer 8

15.36TBs

Question 9

Why should you use the largest flash drives possible when building a storage solution?

Answer 9

decreases total number of drives - cost

less drives typically means less performance

Question 10

What is a drawback of higher flash capacity drives in a Unity HFA?

Answer 10

drive endurance is lower in terms of “writes per day” (WPD)

(use the drive size that balances capacity and IOPS)

Question 11

What are the two shelves that come with Dell storage solutions?

Answer 11

DPE (Disk Processor Enclosure)
DAE (Disk Array Enclosure)

Question 12

What are the restrictions on SAS-Flash 2 Drives?

Answer 12

supported for FAST Cache, multi-tiered or All-Flash pools

Question 13

What are the restrictions on SAS-Flash 3 Drives?

Answer 13

supported for multi-tiered or All-Flash pools - can’t be used in FAST Cache implementations

Question 14

What are the restrictions on SAS-Flash 4 Drives?

Answer 14

can only be used in All-Flash pools - cannot best used in FAST Cache implementations

in hybrid models only 7.68TB SAS-Flash 4 is supported

can be mixed w/ other SAS Flash drive types in a pool

can be used in the system drive slots

Question 15

What isn’t supported by the AFA Unity?

Answer 15

FAST Cache

FAST VP

Question 16

What is the rule for front end connectivity in configuring storage?

Answer 16

use all available front end ports symmetrically across storage processors

optimizes host-storage access

Question 17

What is included on the Unity XT 380F DPE?

Answer 17

2 onboard Ethernet ports

2 CNA ports for FC/iSCSI on each SP

Question 18

What is included on the Unity XT 480F and higher DPE?

Answer 18

4 port mezz-card on each SP

Question 19

What do all Unity models have for front end connectivity?

Answer 19

2 slots per SP for option IO Modules

Question 20

What is included on the Powerstore 500T DPE?

Answer 20

4 port Mezz-Card (Mezz 0) and 2 port-card (Mezz 1) per node

Question 21

What is included on the Powerstore 1200T and higher DPE?

Answer 21

4 Port mezz card on each node

Question 22

What doe all Powerstore models have for front end connectivity?

Answer 22

2 slots per node for option IO Modules

Question 23

What is the rule when configuring back-end connectivity?

Answer 23

spread all the flash drives across the available back-end buses and DAES

Question 24

What do all Unity models have for back end connectivity?

Answer 24

2 integrated -back end bus connections

Question 25

What is included on the Unity XT 480F and higher back-end connectivity?

Answer 25

additional 4 port SAS expansion IO module

Question 26

How do you expand a Powerstore system?

Answer 26

NVMe SSD expansion shelves

Question 27

What is included on the Powerstore 500T back-end connectivity?

Answer 27

4 port 25GbE mezz card w/ support for NVMe connectivity

Question 28

What is included on the Powerstore 1200T and higher back-end connectivity?

Answer 28

embedded module v2 and 100GbE 2 port card on Mezz 1 both cards connect to the ENS24 expansion enclosure that supports NVMe SSDs

Question 29

What are the rules for Unity XT workload building?

Answer 29

build storage pools with many drives to service the IO workload distribute LUNs and NAS servers symmetrically across storage processors

Question 30

Why do you want to build storage pools with many drives to service the IO workload in Unity XT systems?

Answer 30

results in more spindles working concurrently to boost HFA performance

Question 31

What does Powerstore use to manage the drives?

Answer 31

Dynamic Resiliency Engine

Question 32

What is the benefit of Dynamic Resiliency Engine?

Answer 32

storage admin does not need to perform any manual drive configuration all drives automatically used to provide capacity w/ improved resource utilization

Question 33

What does the dynamic node affinity do on Powerstore?

Answer 33

automatically rebalance block storage resources between nodes defines appliance node to be used as active/optimized path for host IO

Question 34

How does the NAS server consume resources on Powerstore?

Answer 34

uses compute resources from one node on the Powerstore

Question 35

What happens if one node is busier than the other in Powerstore when NAS server is implemented?

Answer 35

must manually move NAS servers to the peer node to balance the workloads

Question 36

What are the recommendations to simplify Unity configurations?

Answer 36

fewer storage pools standardize on single capacity drive

Question 37

Why are fewer storage pools recommended to simplify Unity configurations?

Answer 37

more drives can be devoted to any single workload to improve performance

Question 38

Why should you standardize on a single drive for Unity configurations?

Answer 38

reduce spare space reservation to build larger pools greater flexibility for future reconfiguration

Question 39

What are the recommendations to simplify Powerstore configurations?

Answer 39

all drives be the same size to maximize usable capacity

Question 40

What are the minimum drive counts for Powerstore systems?

Answer 40

10 drives for single drive-failure 19 drives for double-drive failure

Question 41

What do both Unity and Powerstore come with to ensure resiliency?

Answer 41

redundant power supplies redundant front/back end ports redundant SPs

Question 42

How are storage pools configured in Unity?

Answer 42

RAID

Question 43

What does the RAID level determine in Unity XT?

Answer 43

performance characteristics and protection

Question 44

What does the strip width determine in Unity XT?

Answer 44

pool fault characteristics

Question 45

How do you replace a faulted drive in Unity XT?

Answer 45

dynamic pools (spare space reservation) traditional pools (hot spares)

Question 46

How does DRE ensure resiliency on Powerstore?

Answer 46

groups the drives into resiliency sets to protect against drive failure

Question 47

How does DRE work?

Answer 47

spare space for rebuilds automatically distributed across all drives within each resiliency set

Question 48

What is the benefit of DRE?

Answer 48

enables faster rebuilds after drive failure

Question 49

What should you do before upgrading a Unity XT OS?

Answer 49

verify that the software update file is valid and not corrupt using SHA256 checksum upgrade to latest drive firmware available

Question 50

How are Powerstore OS upgrades performed?

Answer 50

nondisruptive process during parts of the upgrade process half of system hardware resources are unavailable

Question 51

What are the recommendations for Powerstore OS upgrades?

Answer 51

do it during planned maintenance windows perform when its less busy to minimize the impact to clients preupgrade health check should be run