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The following table provides definitions for some of the terms that are used in this document.
Term | Definition |
Appliance | A solution containing a base enclosure and any attached expansion shelves. The size of an appliance could be the base enclosure only or the base enclosure plus expansion shelves. |
Base enclosure | Refers to the enclosure that contains both nodes (node A and node B) and 25 NVMe drive slots. |
Cluster | One or more appliances in a single grouping and management interface. Clusters are expandable by adding more appliances to the existing cluster, up to the allowed amount for a cluster. |
Embedded module | Connectivity card in the PowerStore node that provides ports for Ethernet connections, and various service and management ports. |
Expansion enclosure | Enclosures that can be attached to a base enclosure to provide additional storage in the form of SAS drives. |
Fibre Channel | A protocol used to perform NVMe or SCSI commands over a Fibre Channel (FC) network. |
File system | A storage resource that can be accessed through file-sharing protocols such as SMB or NFS. |
Internet SCSI (iSCSI) | Provides a mechanism for accessing block-level data storage over network connections. |
I/O module | Optional connectivity cards that provide additional Fibre Channel or Ethernet ports. |
IOPS | I/Os per second, a measure of transactional performance for small-block workloads. |
MBPS | Megabytes per second, a measure of bandwidth performance for large-block workloads. |
Network-attached storage (NAS) server | A virtualized network-attached storage server that uses the SMB, NFS, or FTP/SFTP protocols to catalog, organize, and transfer files within file system shares and exports. A NAS server, the basis for multi-tenancy, must be created before creating file-level storage resources. A NAS server is responsible for the configuration parameters on the set of file systems that it serves. |
Network File System (NFS) | An access protocol that allows data access from Linux/UNIX hosts on a network. |
Node | A storage node that provides the processing resources for performing storage operations and servicing I/O between storage and hosts. |
NVMe over Fibre Channel (NVMe/FC) | Allows hosts to access storage systems across a Fibre Channel network fabric using the NVMe protocol. |
NVMe over TCP (NVMe/TCP) | Allows hosts to access storage systems across a TCP network fabric using the NVMe protocol. |
PowerStore Command Line Interface (PSTCLI) | An interface that allows a user to perform tasks on the storage system by typing commands instead of using the user interface (UI). |
PowerStore Q model | Container-based storage system that is running on purpose-built hardware. This storage system supports unified (block and file) workloads or block-optimized workloads. The PowerStore Q model supports Quad-Level Cell (QLC) NVMe SSDs for data storage. |
PowerStore T model | Container-based storage system that is running on purpose-built hardware. This storage system supports unified (block and file) workloads or block-optimized workloads. The PowerStore T model supports Triple-Level Cell (TLC) NVMe SSDs for data storage. |
Server Message Block (SMB) | An access protocol that allows remote file data access from clients to hosts on a network. This protocol is typically used in Microsoft Windows environments. |
Snapshot | A point-in-time view of data stored on a storage resource. A user can recover files from a snapshot, restore a storage resource from a snapshot, or provide access to a host. |
Thin clone | A read/write copy of a volume, volume group, file system, NAS server, or snapshot that shares blocks with the parent resource. |
Virtual Volumes (vVols) | A VMware storage framework that allows VM data to be stored on individual VMware vSphere Virtual Volumes (vVols). This framework allows for data services to be applied at a VM-granularity level while using Storage Policy Based Management (SPBM). |
Volume | A block-level storage device that can be shared out using a protocol such as iSCSI or Fibre Channel. |