Administrator Guide

Figure 39. FS8600 Architecture
Storage Center
The Storage Center provides the FS8600 scale-out NAS storage capacity; the FS8600 cannot be used as a standalone NAS appliance.
Storage Centers eliminate the need to have separate storage capacity for block and file storage. In addition, Storage Center features, such
as Dynamic Capacity and Data Progression, are automatically applied to NAS volumes.
SAN Network
The FS8600 shares a back-end infrastructure with the Storage Center. The SAN network connects the FS8600 to the Storage Center
and carries the block-level traffic. The FS8600 communicates with the Storage Center using either the iSCSI or Fibre Channel protocol,
depending on which NAS appliance configuration you purchased.
Internal Network
The internal network is used for communication between NAS controllers. Each of the NAS controllers in the FluidFS cluster must have
access to all other NAS controllers in the FluidFS cluster to achieve the following goals:
Provide connectivity for FluidFS cluster creation
Act as a heartbeat mechanism to maintain high availability
Enable internal data transfer between NAS controllers
Enable cache mirroring between NAS controllers
Enable balanced client distribution between NAS controllers
LAN/Client Network
The LAN/client network is used for client access to the SMB shares, NFS exports, and the FTP landing directory. It is also used by the
storage administrator to manage the FluidFS cluster. The FluidFS cluster is assigned one or more virtual IP addresses (client VIPs) on the
client network that allow clients to access the FluidFS cluster as a single entity. The client VIP also enables load balancing between NAS
controllers, and ensures failover in the event of a NAS controller failure.
If client access to the FluidFS cluster is not through a router (in other words, a flat network), define one client VIP per NAS controller. If
clients access the FluidFS cluster through a router, define a client VIP for each client interface port per NAS controller.
FluidFS Administration
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