Dell EqualLogic FS7500 Technical Manual

Also see for FS7500: Overview Manual Installation and setup Hardware setup

Contents

Dell EqualLogic FS7500 Technical Manual Manual pdf 5 page image

BP1016 Integrating the Dell EqualLogic FS7500 into an Existing SAN 11 IntroductionThe Dell™ EqualLogic™ FS7500 adds scale-out unified Network Attached Storage (NAS) capabilities toEqualLogic PS Series iSCSI SANs so you can easily enable and manage iSCSI, CIFS, and NFS accessfrom a single management console. The EqualLogic FS7500 incorporates the Dell Fluid File System(FluidFS), which is designed to optimize file access performance and hardware utilization whileeliminating capacity constraints. FluidFS is a high-performance scale-out file system capable ofpresenting a single file-system namespace through a virtual IP address, regardless of the number ofNAS controller nodes in the cluster.The FS7500 attaches to an EqualLogic PS Series iSCSI SAN and can be deployed with new arrays, or itcan leverage an existing EqualLogic PS Series iSCSI SAN deployment. Unlike many unified storagesolutions that only scale in capacity, the EqualLogic FS7500 can scale capacity and performance.When more storage capacity or I/O performance is required, adding more EqualLogic arrays oranother FS7500 controller pair enables the system to scale out to meet those needs.While many NAS solutions have strict limits on file share size, FluidFS has no such limitations and theFS7500 allows a single file system to use the entire capacity1 of an EqualLogic pool. As with all DellEqualLogic products, the entire feature set of the FS7500, software licensing, and future firmwareenhancements are all included in the base price.When integrating the FS7500 into an existing SAN, you need to understand the potential impacts tothe existing SAN.The goal of this paper is to understand:• What is the performance impact of adding file I/O to an existing block-based SAN withadditional hosts attached?• Is it OK to mix block and file I/O in the same pool, or is it better to keep them separated?• How much does adding additional arrays to an existing shared pool benefit the overall SANperformance?• How much free space is required for the FS7500?• How many additional network ports are required when integrating the FS7500 into an existingSAN?The results presented in this paper can be used as a guideline to help you determine the right answersfor your own environment.1.1 AudienceThis white paper is intended for storage administrators who are involved in the planning andimplementation of integrating a Dell EqualLogic FS7500 into an existing EqualLogic PS Series iSCSISAN. Readers should be familiar with general concepts of the Dell EqualLogic PS Series iSCSI storageas well as Ethernet Local Area Network (LAN) and basic NAS concepts.1 Maximum of 509TB usable today