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9 Dell EMC PowerVault ME4 Series and Microsoft Hyper-V | 3921-BP-WS
From the perspective of Hyper-V, any of the available configurations is supported. Choosing the best type of
disk group and RAID option is a function of the workload running on Hyper-V, and the ME4 Series
Administrator’s Guide provides basic guidance.
2.3 Determine optimal transport and front-end configuration
The ME4 Series is configurable as direct-attached storage (DAS) or as part of a storage area network (SAN).
Supported transports for DAS include SAS, FC, and iSCSI. Supported transports for SAN include FC and
iSCSI, but not SAS. These configuration options offer customers great flexibility when designing their
environment.
Before reading further, refer to the ME4 Series Deployment Guide to gain a thorough understanding of the
different DAS, SAN, host, and replication cabling options available with the ME4 Series.
ME4 Series array with four SAS FE ports per controller
ME4 Series array with four CNC FE ports per controller
The ME4 Series is available with two types of physical FE ports:
• Four SAS ports per controller head (eight ports total)
• Four converged network controller (CNC) ports per controller head (eight CNC ports total)
- CNC ports are logically configured as FC or iSCSI, or a combination of both, depending on
customer preference (the type of SFP transceiver used determines the transport and speed of
each CNC port)
- Changing CNC ports from all FC or iSCSI to a mix of FC and iSCSI can be done using the CLI
but requires rebooting the controller heads
- In a mixed-transport configuration, the first two CNC ports on each controller (0 and 1) must be
configured as FC ports, as shown in Figure 3