Administrator Guide

Overview of the FS8x00 Hardware
Scale-out NAS consists of one to six FS8x00 appliances congured as a FluidFS cluster. Each NAS appliance is a rack-mounted 2U
chassis that contains two hot-swappable NAS
controllers in an active-active conguration. In a NAS appliance, the second NAS
controller with which one NAS controller is paired is called the peer controller. Scale-out NAS supports expansion, that is, you can
start with one NAS appliance and add NAS appliances to the
FluidFS cluster as needed to increase performance.
NAS appliance numbers start at 1 and NAS controller numbers start at 0. Appliance 1 contains Controller 0 and Controller 1, Appliance
2 contains Controller 2 and Controller 3, and so on. To identify the physical hardware displayed in Storage Manager, you must match
the service tag shown in Storage Manager with the service tag printed on a sticker on the front-right side of the NAS appliance.
The following FS8x00 appliance congurations are available. All NAS appliances in a FluidFS cluster must use the same conguration
—mixing 1GbE and 10GbE, or Fibre Channel and iSCSI, is not supported.
• 1Gb Ethernet client connectivity with 8Gb Fibre Channel back‑end connectivity to the Storage Center
• 10Gb Ethernet client connectivity with 8Gb Fibre Channel back‑end connectivity to the Storage Center
• 10Gb Ethernet client connectivity with 10Gb Ethernet iSCSI back‑end connectivity to the Storage Center
NOTE: There are two RAM congurations for the 10GbE models - 24GB and 48GB, which should not be mixed in the
same appliance, but can be mixed in the cluster.
Internal Backup Power Supply
Each NAS controller is equipped with an internal backup power supply (BPS) that protects data during a power failure. The BPS
provides continuous power to the NAS
controllers for a minimum of 5 minutes in case of a power failure and has sucient battery
power to allow the NAS controllers to safely shut down. In addition, the BPS provides enough time for the NAS controllers to write
all data from the cache to nonvolatile internal storage.
The NAS controllers regularly monitor the BPS battery status, which requires the BPS to maintain a minimum level of power for
normal operation. To ensure the BPS battery status is accurate, the NAS controllers routinely undergo battery calibration cycles.
During a battery calibration cycle, the BPS goes through charge and discharge cycles; therefore, battery error events during this
process are expected. A battery calibration cycle takes up to 7 days to complete. If a NAS controller starts a battery calibration cycle,
and the peer NAS controller BPS has failed, the NAS controllers enter journaling mode. Entering this mode might impact
performance, so you should repair a failed BPS as soon as possible.
Internal Storage
Each NAS controller has an internal storage device that is used only for the FluidFS images and for a cache storage ooad location
in the event of a power failure. The internal hard drive does not provide the NAS storage capacity.
Internal Cache
Each NAS controller has an internal cache that provides fast reads and reliable writes.
Overview of the FS8600 Architecture
Scale-out NAS consists of these components:
• Hardware
– FluidFS cluster
– Storage Center
• NAS appliance network interface connections
– SAN network
– Internal network
– LAN/client network
The following gure shows an overview of the scale-out FS8600 architecture.
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How FS8x00 Scale-Out NAS Works