PowerFlex deployment

The PowerFlex cluster setup is built from bare-metal servers that are configured as a two-layer deployment model. The Dell lab environment for this reference architecture consists of PowerFlex R650 servers that are configured with three compute-only servers and four storage-only servers.

We created one PowerFlex PD is created that consisting of four SDSs, and then created one Storage Pool from the SSDs consisting of 40 physical storage devices within a PD. PowerFlex volumes are carved out from the storage pool as required by the application. PowerFlex maintains the user data in a mesh mirrored layout. 

Each piece of data has two copies (primary and secondary) which are stored on two different servers (SDSs). The copies are evenly distributed across the storage devices and enable the system to maintain data availability in case of any failure of the storage media or servers.

The following figures show the PowerFlex cluster and storage configuration:

Figure 3.   PowerFlex 4.0 dashboard 

Figure 4.   PowerFlex 4.0 Resources/Inventory information