Home > Storage > PowerScale (Isilon) > Product Documentation > Management and Migration > Storage Tiering with Dell PowerScale SmartPools > Node compatibility and equivalence
SmartPools allows nodes of any type supported by the particular OneFS version to be combined within the same cluster. The like nodes are provisioned into different node pools according to their physical attributes. The node equivalence classes are stringent to avoid disproportionate amounts of work being directed toward a subset of cluster resources. This issue is often referred to as “node bullying” and can manifest as severe overutilization of resources such as CPU, network, or disks.
However, administrators can safely target specific data to broader classes of storage by creating tiers. For example, if a cluster includes two different varieties of X nodes, the nodes are automatically provisioned into two different node pools. These two node pools can be logically combined into a tier, and file placement targeted to it, resulting in automatic balancing across the node pools.
Criteria governing the creation of a node pool include:
SmartPools separates hardware by node type and creates a separate node pool for each distinct hardware variant. To reside in the same node pool, nodes must have a set of core attributes in common:
Node compatibilities can be defined to allow nodes with the same drive types, quantities and capacities, and compatible RAM configurations to be provisioned into the same pools.
Note: Due to significant architectural differences, there are no node compatibilities between the four-node modular chassis such as the PowerScale F810 platform and self-contained nodes such as the PowerScale F910.