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PowerFlex software-defined infrastructure enables broad consolidation across the data center, encompassing almost any type of workload and architecture. The software-defined architecture offers automation and programmability of the compete infrastructure and provides scalability, performance, and resiliency to enable effortless adherence to stringent workload SLAs. The PowerFlex family provides a foundation that combines compute and high-performance storage resources in a managed unified fabric. PowerFlex comes in flexible deployment options such as rack, appliance, or custom nodes and in the public cloud, that enable independent (two-layer), HCI (single-layer), or mixed architectures. PowerFlex is ideal for high-performance applications and databases, building an agile private/hybrid cloud, or consolidating resources in heterogeneous environments.
Figure 1. PowerFlex Family
PowerFlex software components
Software is the key differentiation and the “secret sauce” in the PowerFlex offering. PowerFlex software components not only provide software-defined storage services, but also help simplify infrastructure management and orchestration. This enables comprehensive IT Operational Management (ITOM) and Life Cycle Management (LCM) capabilities that span compute as well as storage infrastructure, from BIOS and Firmware to nodes, software, and networking.
PowerFlex is the software foundation of PowerFlex software-defined infrastructure. It is a scale-out block and file storage service that is designed to deliver flexibility, elasticity, and simplicity with predictable high performance and resiliency at scale.
PowerFlex Manager is the software component in PowerFlex family that enables ITOM automation and LCM capabilities for PowerFlex systems. In PowerFlex 4.0, the unified PowerFlex Manager does the job of three separate tools that are used in previous releases PowerFlex Manager, the core PowerFlex UI, and the PowerFlex gateway. By building a next-generation UI on top of Kubernetes and embracing a modern development framework, the latest release of PowerFlex Manager continues to improve the ease of management. For Dell APEX Block Storage for AWS, the PowerFlex element manager can be leveraged for some of the management capabilities.
PowerFlex File Controllers also referred as File Nodes are the physical nodes that enable the presentation of PowerFlex software defined File Services. They host the NAS Servers, which in turn host the tenant namespaces and file systems, mapping PowerFlex volumes to the file systems presented by the NAS Servers. All major protocols are supported: NFS, SMB/CIFS, FTP, NDMP, and so on.