Deployment Guide
Steps
1. In the NAS Pool Size eld, type the amount of block storage to provide for NAS volumes in gigabytes (GB) or terabytes (TB).
The minimum NAS pool size is 1 TB. For information about maximum NAS pool sizes, see the Dell Fluid File System Version 6.0
Support Matrix.
NOTE:
• The usable FluidFS NAS pool is smaller due to FluidFS overhead. For example, if a single appliance cluster with a 2-TB
pool is created, the actual NAS pool size is about 1.6 TB (roughly 400-GB overhead).
• While the Storage Center supports thin provisioning, Dell strongly recommends avoiding over-provisioning of the NAS
pool. Size the NAS pool to be smaller than the available physical capacity of the Storage Center while keeping in mind
the RAID overhead. This way, if the NAS pool becomes full, the Storage Center will not run into emergency mode and
impact service availability. The NAS pool can be expanded later when more physical capacity is added to the Storage
Center.
Also, given that FluidFS itself supports thin-provisioning with the NAS cluster, you can size the NAS volumes so that
the total allocated NAS volume capacity is larger than the size of the NAS pool. This method of over-provisioning is
much safer than over-provisioning the NAS Pool itself.
• The Compellent volumes behind the FluidFS NAS Pool use the same page size as the selected page pool. Dell strongly
recommends using the 2MB page size for the NAS pool. If a page pool with 512KB page size is selected, you will not
be able to change it to 2MB after the NAS pool is created.
2. Select a storage type from the drop-down menu.
3. Enable or disable metadata tiering.
Metadata tiering provides the ability to store data and metadata in dierent storage tiers. Enable the radio button to optimize
the setting for metadata-intensive I/O patterns, which allocates a larger portion of the NAS pool for metadata than the non-
optimized setting.
NOTE:
• To use Metadata tiering, you must have an even number of Storage Centers.
• The default number of le system domains is suitable for the vast majority of situations, and cannot be reverted if it is
changed. Do not change the Number of System Instances Per Appliance eld without consulting Dell-EMC support.
4. Click Next to provision and format the cluster.
• If multiple storage types are congured on a Storage Center, the Select storage type dialog box opens. Select a storage
type to provide storage for the NAS pool from the Storage Type drop-down menu, then click OK.
Figure 30. Select Storage Type Dialog Box
• Dell Storage Manager starts provisioning storage. Pages open to indicate the provisioning and formatting process. When the
process is complete, the NAS Pool dialog box opens.
Figure 31. NAS Pool Dialog Box
5. Click OK.
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Congure the FluidFS Cluster