Dynamic Nodes with PowerStore

I recently taught a class for a customer that had an unusual configuration. Their many worldwide sites required a small amount of virtualization resources, so they deployed 2-node VxRail Dynamic Node clusters with attached PowerStore storage. The design has a number of advantages for them:

• A vSAN 2-node cluster can only use mirroring protection. A PowerStore array protects data using Dynamic Resiliency Engine, a software solution that uses parity to protect data; similar to RAID-5 or RAID-6. The PowerStore solution offers lower protection overhead than vSAN in this 2-node configuration.

• vSAN licenses are not needed.

• By adding additional Expansion Enclosures to the PowerStore, capacity can be increased independently of the compute resources.

• The IT team is already familiar with SAN storage systems, making management and troubleshooting of the SAN network and storage familiar.

Of course, there are some disadvantages too. They now need an additional user interface for storage management, and the unified VxRail lifecycle management will not upgrade their storage system.

Here is a white paper promoting the advantages of PowerStore storage with VxRail (with and without vSAN).

We have an active PowerStore Education community if you want to chat.

#IWork4Dell