As an NFS or SMB-based file-services storage provider, Dell Technologies specializes in the type of workloads that a home-directory-services solution requires. In addition to delivering a storage platform that is cost-effective in terms of both capacity and performance, a PowerScale storage cluster includes features that simplify both the deployment and ongoing support of an enterprise home-directory infrastructure.
- PowerScale offers native integration with a number of centralized end-user directory authentication and security management platforms: Active Directory, Lightweight Directory Access Protocol, and Network Information Service are all supported platforms for centralizing and standardizing on end-user accounts and authentication management.
- Home directories can be created and mapped or mounted automatically for end users, eliminating the difficulty of creating and managing the directories themselves and the unique permissions sets associated with each individual directory.
- Network bandwidth scales as more capacity is added, unlike traditional storage architectures whose network connections typically hit a fixed limit. The flexibility of SmartConnect enables administrators to partition dedicated network connections for specific workloads and to balance those connections across a pool of available interfaces on the PowerScale storage cluster.
- PowerScale simplifies the management of the underlying storage that hosts end-user home directories. OneFS eliminates the need to create and manage any underlying storage volumes or RAID groups prior to provisioning end-user directory capacity. With PowerScale, all capacity is immediately and automatically added to a single file-system hierarchy. Capacity expansion is simply the process of joining additional storage nodes to the cluster and allowing OneFS to expand the file-system space automatically.
- In addition to eliminating the overhead of RAID-group, volume, or individual LUN management, SmartPools from PowerScale enable administrators to manage protection and I/O optimization levels at the individual file or directory level, without migrating data, taking data offline, or reconfiguring client computers to remap the data.
- In addition to the customizable and dynamic protections against component failures offered by SmartPools’ file-pool policies, a home-directory solution based on PowerScale storage can leverage the multiple layers of data protection that PowerScale offers. The ability to create regular snapshots of file-system data offered by SnapshotIQ integrates with the Windows Previous Versions feature to let users manage their own file-recovery efforts. SyncIQ enables the large-scale recovery of an entire PowerScale storage cluster’s data set to an offsite cluster. Native support for NDMP-based backups and ICAP-enabled antivirus scanning provides additional layers of protection against data loss or corruption.
Finally, a PowerScale storage cluster offers simplicity of management, even at large scales, to reduce the amount of overhead necessary to provide administrative support. By eliminating the need for RAID, volume, or file-system management, PowerScale reduces the total cost of ownership associated with provisioning and managing end user home directories. At the same time, PowerScale improves performance levels, simplifies the protection and recovery of end-user data, and reduces downtime.