Administrator Guide
Table Of Contents
- Dell EMC PowerVault ME4 Series Storage System Administrator’s Guide
- Contents
- Getting started
- New user setup
- Configure and provision a new storage system
- Using the PowerVault Manager interface
- System concepts
- About virtual and linear storage
- About disk groups
- About RAID levels
- About ADAPT
- About SSDs
- About SSD read cache
- About spares
- About pools
- About volumes and volume groups
- About volume cache options
- About thin provisioning
- About automated tiered storage
- About initiators, hosts, and host groups
- About volume mapping
- About operating with a single controller
- About snapshots
- About copying volumes
- About reconstruction
- About quick rebuild
- About performance statistics
- About firmware updates
- About managed logs
- About SupportAssist
- About CloudIQ
- About configuring DNS settings
- About replicating virtual volumes
- About the Full Disk Encryption feature
- About data protection with a single controller
- Working in the Home topic
- Guided setup
- Provisioning disk groups and pools
- Attaching hosts and volumes in the Host Setup wizard
- Overall system status
- Configuring system settings
- Managing scheduled tasks
- Working in the System topic
- Viewing system components
- Systems Settings panel
- Resetting host ports
- Rescanning disk channels
- Clearing disk metadata
- Updating firmware
- Changing FDE settings
- Configuring advanced settings
- Changing disk settings
- Changing system cache settings
- Configuring partner firmware update
- Configuring system utilities
- Using maintenance mode
- Restarting or shutting down controllers
- Working in the Hosts topic
- Working in the Pools topic
- Working in the Volumes topic
- Viewing volumes
- Creating a virtual volume
- Creating a linear volume
- Modifying a volume
- Copying a volume or snapshot
- Abort a volume copy
- Adding volumes to a volume group
- Removing volumes from a volume group
- Renaming a volume group
- Remove volume groups
- Rolling back a virtual volume
- Deleting volumes and snapshots
- Creating snapshots
- Resetting a snapshot
- Creating a replication set from the Volumes topic
- Initiating or scheduling a replication from the Volumes topic
- Manage replication schedules from the Volumes topic
- Working in the Mappings topic
- Working in the Replications topic
- About replicating virtual volumes in the Replications topic
- Replication prerequisites
- Replication process
- Creating a virtual pool for replication
- Setting up snapshot space management in the context of replication
- Replication and empty allocated pages
- Disaster recovery
- Accessing the data while keeping the replication set intact
- Accessing the data from the backup system as if it were the primary system
- Disaster recovery procedures
- Viewing replications
- Querying a peer connection
- Creating a peer connection
- Modifying a peer connection
- Deleting a peer connection
- Creating a replication set from the Replications topic
- Modifying a replication set
- Deleting a replication set
- Initiating or scheduling a replication from the Replications topic
- Stopping a replication
- Suspending a replication
- Resuming a replication
- Manage replication schedules from the Replications topic
- About replicating virtual volumes in the Replications topic
- Working in the Performance topic
- Working in the banner and footer
- Banner and footer overview
- Viewing system information
- Viewing certificate information
- Viewing connection information
- Viewing system date and time information
- Viewing user information
- Viewing health information
- Viewing event information
- Viewing capacity information
- Viewing host information
- Viewing tier information
- Viewing recent system activity
- Other management interfaces
- SNMP reference
- Using FTP and SFTP
- Using SMI-S
- Using SLP
- Administering a log-collection system
- Best practices
- System configuration limits
- Glossary of terms
Table 1. Example applications and RAID levels (continued)
Application RAID level
Fast temporary storage or scratch disks for graphics, page
layout, and image rendering
0
Workgroup servers 1 or 10
Video editing and production 3
Network operating system, databases, high availability
applications, workgroup servers
5
Very large databases, web server, video on demand 50
Mission-critical environments that demand high availability and
use large sequential workloads
6
Environments that need flexible storage and fast rebuilds ADAPT
Table 2. RAID level comparison
RAID level Min. disks Description Strengths Weaknesses
NRAID 1 Non-RAID, nonstriped
mapping to a single disk
Ability to use a single
disk to store additional
data
Not protected, lower
performance (not
striped)
0 2 Data striping without
redundancy
Highest performance No data protection: if
one disk fails all data is
lost
1 2 Disk mirroring Very high performance
and data protection;
minimal penalty on
write performance;
protects against single
disk failure
High redundancy cost
overhead: because all
data is duplicated,
twice the storage
capacity is required
3 3 Block-level data striping
with dedicated parity
disk
Excellent performance
for large, sequential
data requests (fast
read); protects against
single disk failure
Not well-suited for
transaction-oriented
network applications;
write performance is
lower on short writes
(less than 1 stripe)
5 3 Block-level data striping
with distributed parity
Best cost/performance
for transaction-oriented
networks; very high
performance and data
protection; supports
multiple simultaneous
reads and writes; can
also be optimized
for large, sequential
requests; protects
against single disk
failure
Write performance is
slower than RAID 0 or
RAID 1
6 4 Block-level data striping
with double distributed
parity
Best suited for large
sequential workloads;
non-sequential read
and sequential read/
write performance is
comparable to RAID 5;
protects against dual
disk failure
Higher redundancy cost
than RAID 5 because
the parity overhead is
twice that of RAID
5; not well-suited
for transaction-oriented
network applications;
non-sequential write
Getting started 17