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Microsoft Azure Arc on Dell EMC PowerFlex
Executive summary Introduction PowerFlex product overview Microsoft Azure Arc Solution architecture
Solution architecture
Logical architecture
Network configuration
Dell EMC PowerFlex CSI Driver
Azure Arc-enabled servers on PowerFlex Azure Arc-enabled Kubernetes on PowerFlex Azure Arc-enabled data services on PowerFlex Microsoft Azure Arc validation program References

Logical architecture

Logical architecture

  • The logical architecture diagram demonstrates the PowerFlex platform with the following Microsoft Azure Arc-enabled services and features implemented:

    • Azure Arc-enabled servers – A VM is built on a PowerFlex platform and Azure Arc connected agent is installed on the VM.
    • Azure Arc-enabled Kubernetes clusters – PowerFlex platform is built with Upstream Kubernetes cluster v1.19.7, and Azure Arc-enabled Kubernetes agent is deployed.
    • Azure Arc-enabled data services – PowerFlex platform is built with Upstream Kubernetes cluster v1.19.7, and Azure Arc data controller is deployed on the connected cluster. The Azure Arc-enabled SQL Managed Instance and PostgreSQL Hyperscale are deployed on the cluster.

    Figure 2.   PowerFlex platform architecture with Microsoft Azure Arc-enabled services

    In the PowerFlex system, the SDS, MDM, and SDC components are installed on each of the PowerFlex nodes. The SDS aggregates and serves as a raw local storage in each node and shares that storage as a part of the PowerFlex cluster. A single protection domain is carved out of the drives on these SDS systems. A storage pool is configured, and multiple volumes are carved out to meet the Microsoft Azure Arc-enabled services storage requirements. The volumes are mapped to compute nodes and later mapped to the virtual machines. PowerFlex CSI driver plug-in is deployed to present these storage volumes to Kubernetes storage classes.

    Note: The solution is validated in an engineering lab using PowerFlex HCI platform with VMware vSphere environment, but the implementation and validation that is demonstrated in this paper are applicable for PowerFlex HCI and two-layer platform with virtualized and bare metal configurations. The protection domain, storage pool, and volumes for PowerFlex platform can be configured as per the requirement. For more information, see PowerFlex Storage definitions.