Complete D-PST-MN-A-24 EMC Materials

The protocol used for the storage network in Dell PowerStore systems is Fibre Channel (FC). FC is a high-speed network technology primarily used for storage networking.Dell PowerStore utilizes FC as part of its all-NVMe design, which also includes NVMe-over-fabric networking to deliver low latency performance for storage workloads1.

Fibre Channel provides several benefits for storage networks, including:

High throughput and low latency for storage operations.

Support for long-distance networking, which is beneficial for disaster recovery and remote backups.

A mature and widely supported ecosystem with a variety of hardware and software options.

For detailed information on configuring and using FC with Dell PowerStore, administrators should refer to the Dell PowerStore Networking Guide for Storage Services and the Dell PowerStore Best Practices Guide.These documents provide comprehensive instructions on network configurations, including best practices for setting up and managing FC networks within Dell PowerStore environments23. Following these guidelines ensures optimal performance and reliability of the storage network.

The type of device supported in expansion enclosures for Dell PowerStore systems isNVMe SSD.

Starting with PowerStoreOS 3.0, the PowerStore models 500, 1200, 3200, 5200, and 9200 support 24-drive 2U NVMe expansion enclosures using 2.5-inch NVMe SSD drives for additional capacity1.

The NVMe expansion enclosures do not support NVMe SCM drives1.

The base enclosure can support all NVMe SSDs or a mix of NVMe SSDs and NVMe SCM drives (for the metadata tier) with an NVMe expansion enclosure attached1.

Before attaching an NVMe expansion enclosure, all drive slots 0 to 21 in the base enclosure must be populated1.

Each appliance in a PowerStore cluster supports up to three NVMe expansion enclosures1.

For more detailed information on the supported devices in expansion enclosures for Dell PowerStore systems, you can refer to the Dell PowerStore: Technical Primer1.

When two fans in a Dell EMC PowerStore system are faulted, the system’s behavior is to send an increased fan speed signal to the surviving fans to compensate for the loss and continue normal operations.This is a part of the system’s design to ensure redundancy and maintain cooling within operational parameters even when one or more fans are not functioning1.

The system monitors the health of all fans continuously. If a fan fault is detected, the system will:

Generate an alert to notify the administrator of the fault.

Increase the speed of the remaining fans to prevent overheating.

Continue to operate normally unless the temperature exceeds safe operating limits.

The administrator should then take the following steps:

Acknowledge the alert in the PowerStore Manager.

Plan for the replacement of the faulted fans as soon as possible to restore full redundancy.

Follow the replacement procedures as outlined in the Dell PowerStore Installation and Service Guide2.

It is important to address fan faults promptly to ensure the long-term health and performance of the PowerStore system. The increased fan speed is a temporary measure to maintain operations until the faulted fans can be replaced.

To connect a service laptop to the Service LAN port of a Dell EMC PowerStore node, the laptop’s Ethernet interface should be configured with a static IP address and netmask. The correct configuration is:

IP:128.221.1.249

Netmask:255.255.255.0

Gateway: None1

This configuration allows the service laptop to communicate with the PowerStore nodes for SSH and PowerStore Manager (UI) access. It’s important to note that the laptop can be physically connected to one of the PowerStore nodes at a time, or to both nodes’ Service LAN ports using a small switch or hub.However, multiple appliances should never be connected to the same hub or switch as the nodes use the same internal IPs1.

Once the IP is configured as shown above and the physical connection is established, you can ping the relevant IPs:

Node A: 128.221.1.250

Node B: 128.221.1.251

You should only be able to ping the IPs where you are physically connected to. If you can ping, you can proceed to use SSH to connect to the IPs over port 22 using your preferred SSH client.For file transfers, SCP protocol must be used1.

For more detailed instructions on how to connect to the system over the Service LAN Ports for SSH and PowerStore Manager access, refer to the Dell Support Knowledge Base Article1.