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
Best practices
This appendix describes best practices for configuring and provisioning a storage system.
Topics:
• Pool setup
• RAID selection
• Disk count per RAID level
• Disk groups in a pool
• Tier setup
• Multipath configuration
• Physical port selection
Pool setup
In a storage system with two controller modules, try to balance the workload of the controllers. Each controller can own
one virtual pool. Having the same number of disk groups and volumes in each pool will help balance the workload, increasing
performance.
RAID selection
A pool is created by adding disk groups to it. Disk groups are based on RAID technology.
The following table describes the characteristics and use cases of each RAID level:
RAID level
Protection Performance Capacity Application use
cases
Suggested disk
speed
RAID 1/RAID 10
Protects against up
to one disk failure
per mirror set
Great random I/O
performance
Poor: 50% fault
tolerance capacity
loss
Databases, OLTP,
Exchange Server
10K, 15K, 7K
RAID 5 Protects against up
to one disk failure
per RAID set
Good sequential
I/O performance,
moderate random
I/O performance
Great: One-disk
fault tolerance
capacity loss
Big data, media
and entertainment
(ingest, broadcast,
and past
production)
10K, 15K, lower
capacity 7K
RAID 6 Protects against up
to two disk failures
per RAID set
Moderate
sequential I/O
performance, poor
random I/O
performance
Moderate: Twodisk
fault tolerance
capacity loss
Archive, parallel
distributed file
system
High capacity 7K
Disk count per RAID level
The controller breaks virtual volumes into 4-MB pages, which are referenced paged tables in memory. The 4-MB page is a fixed
unit of allocation. Therefore, 4-MB units of data are pushed to a disk group. A write performance penalty is introduced in RAID-5
or RAID-6 disk groups when the stripe size of the disk group isn't a multiple of the 4-MB page.
● Example 1: Consider a RAID-5 disk group with five disks. The equivalent of four disks provide usable capacity, and the
equivalent of one disk is used for parity. Parity is distributed among disks. The four disks providing usable capacity are the
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Best practices 175