We acquired a 5-node cluster of Dell PowerFlex custom nodes based on our need for flexibility of use for multiple projects. Customers are strongly encouraged to prefer the PowerFlex appliance or PowerFlex rack options for the reasons shown in the diagram below:
Before you purchase hardware for deployment of PowerFlex in either HCI or two-layer configurations:
- Plan your physical network requirements and host network requirements.
- Choose drive type and capacity.
- Plan volumes to meet your storage performance and capacity requirements.
Our PowerFlex architecture is based on Dell PowerEdge servers, Dell PowerSwitch switches and PowerFlex software defined storage. PowerFlex Manager provides the management and orchestration functionality for PowerFlex storage management for HCI. Our PowerFlex HCI cluster with ESXi compute provides a highly scalable and high-performance hyperconverged infrastructure building block for modern and cloud-native data center workloads.
Our PowerFlex hyperconverged nodes are Dell PowerFlex custom node R750 servers. PowerFlex is deployed on these nodes in a true hyperconverged form where PowerFlex SDC and SDS software components are installed on the same PowerFlex node. PowerFlex hyperconverged nodes provide and consume storage. Detailed specification for each of the five nodes used in our validation
| Component | Description |
| CPU | 2 - Intel Xeon Gold 6354 3G, 18C/36T, 11.2GT/s, 39M Cache, Turbo, HT (205W) DDR4-3200 |
| Memory | 16 - 32GB RDIMM, 3200MT/s, Dual Rank 16Gb BASE x8 |
| Storage | 24 - 1.92TB SSD SAS 12Gbps MU FIPS-140 PM6 512e 2.5in Hot-Plug 3 DWPD |
| GPU | 2 - NVIDIA L40, PCIe, 300W, 48GB Passive, Double Wide, Full Height GPU |
| Network Interfaces | 2 - Mellanox ConnectX-5 Dual Port 10/25GbE SFP28, OCP NIC 3.0 |