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PowerFlex software-defined infrastructure enables broad consolidation across the data center, encompassing almost any type of workload and architecture. The software-defined architecture offers automation and programmability of the compete infrastructure and provides scalability, performance, and resiliency to enable effortless adherence to stringent workload SLAs.
The PowerFlex family provides a foundation that combines compute and high-performance storage resources in a managed unified fabric. PowerFlex comes in flexible deployment options (rack, appliance, or custom nodes and in the public cloud) that enable independent (two-layer), HCI (single-layer), or mixed architectures. PowerFlex is ideal for high-performance applications and databases, building an agile private/hybrid cloud, or consolidating resources in heterogeneous environments.
Figure 1. PowerFlex family
Software is the key differentiation and the secret sauce in the PowerFlex offering. PowerFlex software components not only provide software-defined storage services, but also help simplify infrastructure management and orchestration. This enables comprehensive IT Operational Management (ITOM) and Life Cycle Management (LCM) capabilities that span compute as well as storage infrastructure, from BIOS and Firmware to nodes, software, and networking.
PowerFlex is the software foundation of PowerFlex software-defined infrastructure. It is a scale-out block and file storage service designed to deliver flexibility, elasticity, and simplicity with predictable high performance and resiliency at scale.
PowerFlex Manager is the software component in PowerFlex family that enables ITOM automation and life cycle management capabilities for PowerFlex systems.
The PowerFlex platform is available in multiple consumption options to help customers meet their project and data center requirements. PowerFlex appliance and PowerFlex rack provide customers comprehensive IT Operations Management (ITOM) and life cycle management (LCM) of the entire infrastructure stack in addition to sophisticated high-performance, scalable, resilient storage services. PowerFlex appliance and PowerFlex rack are the two most common consumption options. PowerFlex is also available on PowerFlex custom nodes without the ITOM and LCM capabilities. While the full PowerFlex Manager functions are not available for PowerFlex on AWS, the PowerFlex element manager can be leveraged with for this deployment option.
In PowerFlex 4.0, the unified PowerFlex Manager does the job of three separate tools used in previous releases – PowerFlex Manager, the core PowerFlex UI, and the PowerFlex gateway / IM. By building a next-generation UI on top of Kubernetes and embracing a modern development framework, the latest release of PowerFlex Manager continues to improve the ease of management.
PowerFlex File Controllers (sometimes casually referred to as File Nodes) are the physical nodes that enable the presentation of PowerFlex software-defined File Services. They host the NAS Servers, which in turn host the tenant namespaces and file systems, mapping PowerFlex volumes to the file systems presented by the NAS Servers. All major protocols are supported: NFS, SMB/CIFS, FTP, NDMP, and so on. Moreover, the NAS Servers support multiprotocol access to the shared file systems.
The most important component outside of PowerFlex that enables a flexible consumption model for Kubernetes is the PowerFlex CSI plug-in; developed as part of the Dell Technologies Kubernetes strategy. After loading the CSI for PowerFlex into a single distribution, (or multiple Kubernetes distributions) one can simply consume from that one single underlying PowerFlex storage resource. When the Kubernetes deployments start to run low on PowerFlex storage resources, one can add a PowerFlex storage node, bolstering the pool capacity, or adding to the performance of the system, as each PowerFlex storage node acts as a storage controller in Kubernetes.
Customers running Kubernetes clusters on PowerFlex benefit by using Dell Technologies Container Storage Modules (CSM). These modules provide enterprise storage capabilities to Kubernetes for cloud-native stateful applications. These modules reduce management complexity, so that developers can independently consume enterprise storage with ease and automate daily operations. The CSM extends storage functionality and capabilities beyond what can be done using the CSI driver alone, and now there are modules that assist developers with replication, observability, authorization, application mobility and resiliency.
Figure 2. PowerFlex common multi-cloud
The CSI is a bridge between the PowerFlex System and single or multiple Kubernetes distributions. It is a storage broker which dynamically provisions volumes from PowerFlex by way of the PowerFlex API gateway. Once the volume is available on PowerFlex, it is immediately mapped to one or more of the requesting pods. Should a pod be destroyed or re-scheduled, the CSI plug-in ensures that the volumes are remapped upon rescheduling of that pod.