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PowerStore presents storage to external hosts through either block or file interfaces. Block storage is the most commonly used datastore path for virtual machines due to the various speeds and protocols that are offered, making it ideal for performance. NFS is also used but is less common. PowerStore supports 25 GbE and 32 Gb FC connections for broad compatibility and performance requirements. Instructions and best practices for configuring hosts are in the Dell EMC PowerStore Host Configuration Guide on the PowerStore Info Hub.
Multipathing is critical to achieving the best performance from VMware hosts and should be configured properly. For configuration guidance, see the document Dell EMC PowerStore: VMware vSphere Best Practices on the PowerStore Info Hub. The large number of small I/Os generated from VDI environments benefit greatly from round robin and rapid path switching. Consider using and perform testing with a low I/O-per-path change, which can help improve VM performance.
PowerStore supports boot from SAN for environments that need to further virtualize storage resources. Besides the storage-virtualization benefits, boot from SAN can also be used to protect the operating-system configuration and allow for quick recovery. It is beneficial in environments where the recovery time objective (RTO) is strict. Boot from SAN can also help deploy a standardized-server configuration quickly or roll back from a failed update.
Boot from SAN can be used with any HBA that has a boot ROM that supports boot from SAN.
Using iSCSI for block storage allows convergence of storage and networking infrastructure though it does require careful planning for bandwidth requirements and fault isolation. Redundant networks are preferred for data availability.
With iSCSI, Jumbo frames are also recommended. They allow greater packet efficiency for higher bandwidth. Using Jumbo frames is not a requirement but should be considered. Combined with the 25 GbE connectivity available in PowerStore, iSCSI can handle demanding workloads and high throughput requirements.
Another benefit of using the Ethernet infrastructure for iSCSI is the ability to share the network with file services. This use requires planning to ensure that there is enough bandwidth for all services, but it also reduces the hardware requirements. The use of different VLANs also allows traffic prioritization to ensure that block traffic has the highest priority.
Using up to 32 Gb FC is also supported. There are many options depending on the throughput requirements, from 4 Gb to 32 Gb. VDI tends to involve a small-packet workload, so the throughput tends to be less of an issue. Dual fabrics are recommended at a minimum for availability reasons.
NVMe/FC is supported with PowerStoreOS 2.0. See the most recent PowerStore documentation to verify supported operating systems and HBAs. Setup of NVMe is similar to FC. NVMe/FC offers better performance and lower latency that FC.