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PowerStore supports multiple drive types and capacity points. The base enclosure is an all-NVMe platform, capable of supporting NVMe SSD, NVMe SCM, and NVMe NVRAM drives. NVMe is a protocol that allows access directly with the PCIe bus. NVMe is designed to capitalize on the low latency of high-performance media.
SAS SSD, NVMe SSD, and NVMe SCM are storage drives in PowerStore and are formatted with a 512-byte block size. You can populate slots 0 through 20 on PowerStore 1000 to 9200 models and slots 0 through 24 on the PowerStore 500 model with only NVMe SSD or NVMe SCM drives. Starting in PowerStoreOS 2.0, you can mix NVMe SSD and NVMe SCM drives in the same enclosure. Earlier releases of PowerStoreOS do not support mixing these drives. PowerStore T systems require a minimum of six NVMe SSD or six NVMe SCM drives, which can be scaled up in single-drive increments. PowerStore Q model systems require a minimum of 11 drives, which can also be scaled up in single drive increments. Slots 21 through 24 in PowerStore 1000 to 9200 models are reserved for NVMe NVRAM drives that are used in write caching. Based on the PowerStore model, there are either two NVMe NVRAM drives in slots 23 and 24, or four NVMe NVRAM drives in slots 21 through 24. In models that only use two NVMe NVRAM drives, slots 21 and 22 are not available for storage drives.
A list of all supported drives is available on Dell Support.
NVMe solid state drives (SSDs) are dual-ported, high-performance, nonvolatile flash drives that the PowerStore operating system accesses with NVMe.
NVMe SSDs serve as the storage tier for PowerStore, are used for user data or metadata, and come in multiple capacity points. See the Dell PowerStore Gen 1 appliances Spec Sheet or the Dell PowerStore Gen 2 appliances Spec Sheet depending on the model for a complete list of capacity points and supported platforms.
NVMe SSDs are supported in base enclosure slots 0 through 20 on PowerStore 1000 to PowerStore 9200 models and in base enclosure slots 0 through 24 on PowerStore 500 models. Starting with PowerStoreOS 2.0, you can mix NVMe SSDs with NVMe SCM drives. PowerStoreOS 1.0 and associated service packs do not support mixing NVMe SSD and NVMe SCM drives. In PowerStoreOS 3.0, NVMe SSDs are supported in slots 0 to 23 of NVMe expansion enclosures.
NVMe storage class media (SCM) drives are dual-ported, extreme-high-performance, nonvolatile drives that are designed with Intel Optane technology. NVMe SCM drives have lower latency and improved performance compared to other SSD drives, and the PowerStore operating system accesses them with NVMe.
NVMe SCM drives serve as a storage tier for PowerStore, are used for user data or metadata, and come at a capacity point of 750 GB. See the Dell PowerStore Gen 1 appliances Spec Sheet or the Dell PowerStore Gen 2 appliances Spec Sheet depending on the model for a complete list of capacity points and supported platforms.
NVMe SCM drives are supported in base enclosure slots 0 through 20 on PowerStore 1000 to PowerStore 9200 models and in base enclosure slots 0 through 24 on PowerStore 500 models. NVMe SCM drives are not supported on PowerStore 500 models with DC power supplies. Starting with PowerStoreOS 2.0, you can mix NVMe SCMs with NVMe SSD drives. NVMe SCM drives serve as a dedicated metadata tier when mixed with NVMe SSD drives. PowerStoreOS 1.0 and associated service packs do not support mixing NVMe SCM and NVMe SSD drives. A PowerStore system with only NVMe SCM storage drives does not support adding SAS or NVMe expansion enclosures.
NVMe NVRAM drives are dual-ported, extreme-high-performance drives used to enhance the PowerStore caching system. The dual-ported drives are accessible from both nodes and allow the system to easily cache incoming writes. The drives contain dynamic media that can operate at DRAM speeds over PCIe, delivering exceptional performance. Their design allows them to function as nonvolatile media, and PowerStore can quickly store incoming writes and acknowledge the host without mirroring data to the peer node. The drives contain a combination of persistent flash storage within the 2.5-inch NVMe NVRAM paddle card and access to a battery. During a power failure, these features allow the drive to vault the data from the high-performance dynamic media to the persistent flash storage. The NVMe NVRAM drives are 8 GB and are configured in mirrored sets. These drives are supported on PowerStore 1000 to PowerStore 9200 models, and there are two or four drives per appliance, depending on the model, as shown in the following table.
NVMe NVRAM count | |
PowerStore 500 | 0 |
PowerStore 1000, 1200 | 2 |
PowerStore 3000, 3200 | |
PowerStore 5000, 5200 | 4 |
PowerStore 7000 | |
PowerStore 9000, 9200 |
The battery backups are wired so that each mirrored set of drives has access to two separate battery backups. This configuration ensures that a faulty battery backup could not result in a failed data vault for an entire mirrored pair. The number of NVMe NVRAM drives are fixed per model, and you cannot modify them. You may not add extra NVMe NVRAM drives later.
For more information about the role of NVMe NVRAM drives in the PowerStore write path, see the document PowerStore: Data Efficiencies on the Dell Technologies PowerStore Info Hub.
SAS SSDs are dual-ported, high-performance, nonvolatile flash drives that the PowerStore operating system accesses through the SAS protocol. SAS SSDs are only supported in expansion enclosures and are not supported with PowerStore 500 models.
SAS SSDs supplement the storage tier for PowerStore, are used for user data or metadata, and are available in multiple capacity points. See the Dell PowerStore Gen 1 appliances Spec Sheet or the Dell PowerStore Gen 2 appliances Spec Sheet depending on the model for a complete list of capacity points and supported platforms.