Home > Workload Solutions > Oracle > White Papers > Solution Insight: Oracle Analytics Server with Dell PowerFlex Infrastructure > PowerFlex storage layer
This layer serves all the shared storage needs for all three tiers in the OAS architecture.
PowerFlex storage is a software-defined storage that combines all the storage resources across multiple servers and creates a high-performance, sharable pool of block storage (Block Cluster Pool). In the PowerFlex architecture, storage nodes are called Storage Data Server (SDS). The PowerFlex Block Cluster Pool can serve as the high performance, highly available, block-based shared storage needs for the Oracle Database tier.
Starting with PowerFlex 4.x, PowerFlex file nodes provide high performance, low-latency file services to applications. They provide all the features and protocols support that is expected in a modern enterprise NAS storage. File nodes are deployed as separate, dedicated nodes on top of the SDS. They provide the compute capabilities (CPU and memory) and consume storage from the PowerFlex block (SDS) storage nodes (File Cluster Pool). File nodes can scale independently of the PowerFlex storage nodes. Thus, providing OAS customers the flexibility to independently scale their file-based shared storage needs for their application and web tiers. Both the Block Cluster Pool and the File Cluster Pool on the SDS can use the same pool of hard drives underneath, thus providing great resource usage efficiency.
Note: For smaller deployments or for PowerFlex 3.6+ deployments, users can deploy separate PowerFlex SDC nodes instead of PowerFlex File Nodes. The local storage on these separate SDC nodes can serve as NFS share for storing the OHS/OAS server’s product binaries, domain configuration files, SDD, and others. However, NFS would have to be manually installed on these SDC nodes. In addition to NFS environment being pre-integrated, it is recommended to use PowerFlex File Nodes because they provide higher level of fault tolerance of NFS storage, with the ability to withstand entire storage node failures.