- Ensure that the minimum number of nodes for production workload is seven for a PowerFlex two-layer configuration in a VMware environment.
- Homogenous node types are recommended for predictable performance. All the compute nodes and storage nodes need to have the same hardware configuration for predictable performance.
- Change the passwords for all default accounts.
- Ensure that the PowerFlex rack is compliant to an RCM. For more details, see the PowerFlex specification sheet.
- Enable secure network protocol options only (for example, HTTPS and Secure Shell (SSH).
- Ensure that the number of SDS threads is set to 12 for all the SO nodes.
- Separate the management and data traffic from production application traffic. You can provide this separation by using VLANs.
- Separate the VMware vSphere vmotion traffic from the application traffic according to the PowerFlex standards
- Change the following Linux grub settings for the Skylake processor to comply with performance best practices and rebuild the grub boot image:
GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX="crashkernel=auto rd.lvm.lv=rhel/root
rd.lvm.lv=rhel/swap rhgb intel_idle.max_cstate= 1 intel_pstate=disable quiet"
grub2-mkconfig -o /boot/grub2/grub.cfg
grub2-mkconfig -o /boot/efi/EFI/redhat/grub.cfg
- When PowerFlex SSD drives are used, it is recommended to use noop for Linux I/O scheduler on SDC hosts. To make the changes persistent through boot add elevator=noop to GRUB_CMD_LINUX line and rebuild the grub boot image. For example:
GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX="crashkernel=auto rd.lvm.lv=rhel/root
rd.lvm.lv=rhel/swap rhgb quiet elevator=noop"