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Dell Unity includes support for multiple products in the Dell ecosystem. The following sections highlight a few of those products.
CloudIQ is a cloud-based SaaS (Software as a Service) storage system monitoring solution provided by Dell. This free service requires the configuration of Secure Remote Services or SupportAssist, depending on the Dell Unity OE version and system type. The user must also allow the storage system to send data to CloudIQ in system settings. CloudIQ (Figure 13) provides a holistic view of multiple systems regardless of whether they are on the same network, allowing for a potential global view of data center environments as it relates to storage. CloudIQ monitors the health of systems and storage resources configured as well as performance metric data in near real-time. CloudIQ supports both All-Flash and Hybrid Dell Unity systems as well as Dell UnityVSA Professional Editions.
In addition to an aggregated dashboard view across Dell Unity systems in a customer’s environment, CloudIQ provides the benefit of displaying a proactive health score for each system. This feature automatically identifies potential issues along with recommended remedies to help identify needed administrative tasks. Other benefits of using CloudIQ include reducing total cost of ownership (TCO) by faster remediation of issues, minimizing risk by identifying potential vulnerabilities, and higher uptime by optimizing performance and capacity usage of monitored systems.
For more information about CloudIQ, see the CloudIQ: A Detailed Review white paper.
Unisphere Central allows users to organize and monitor up to 1000 VNX, VNX2, VNXe, and Dell Unity systems from a centralized interface (Figure 14). Unisphere Central allows users to enjoy a single location for retrieving health and alert status for all the storage systems in your data center and be able to archive performance data for your systems. Additionally, Single Sign-On may be enabled for VNXe systems running OE version 3.1 or later, as well as purpose-built Dell Unity systems and Dell UnityVSA systems. This allows Unisphere sessions to individual systems to be launched directly from Unisphere Central. Unisphere Central is deployed as a VM on ESXi hosts and does not require an external network connection to be used.
For more information about Unisphere Central, see the latest Unisphere Central information on Dell Support.
Dell RecoverPoint is an appliance-based solution for achieving local and remote protection of data. RecoverPoint may be used to perform asynchronous and/or synchronous block replication to any Dell Unity system supported by RecoverPoint. Purpose-built Dell Unity systems and Dell UnityVSA systems are compatible with RecoverPoint. When RecoverPoint replication is configured on a Dell Unity system, writes to the system are split. Writes are sent through the Dell Unity system to be processed, and also sent to the RecoverPoint Appliance (RPA). The RPA facilitates the data transfer to the destination resource. RecoverPoint replication can leverage additional storage efficiencies, such as compression and deduplication.
Metro node is an external hardware/software add-on feature for Unity XT for which it provides active/active synchronous replication as well as standard local use cases. Additionally, it also provides a solution locally with the Local mirror feature to protect data from a potential array failure. Both use cases provide solutions for true continuous availability with zero downtime.
Unity XT is viewed by metro node as ALUA array based on SCSI response data and therefore is required to follow the four active, four passive path connectivity rules. This rule states that both nodes of the metro node must each have four active and four passive paths to all volumes provisioned from the array.