Dell Storage Manager 2020 R1 Administrator's Guide

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About Groups

A PS Series group is a fully functional iSCSI storage area network (SAN).

You create a group when you configure one or more PS Series arrays and connect them to an IP network. In this virtualized storage system, the arrays become group members and share configuration data. A member belongs to a storage pool, and is configured with a specific RAID policy. Each member cooperates with other members to enable the virtualization of disk storage, controllers, caches, and network connections. Because the virtualization technology masks the underlying complexity of the storage configuration, client servers see the group as a single entity, giving you a centralized view of the storage data.

The following figure shows and example of PS Series groups. Table 1 explains the callouts used in the figure.

PS Series group — Figure 1. PS Series Group

Table 1. PS Series Group Description of callouts used in the figure
Callout	Description
1	PS Series group Storage area network (SAN) comprising one or more PS Series arrays connected to an IP network. Arrays are high-performance (physical) block storage devices.
2	PS Series members One or more PS Series arrays represented as individual members within a pool to which it provides storage space to utilize.
3	PS Series storage pools Containers for storage resources (disk space, processing power, and network bandwidth). A pool can have one or more members assigned to it.

A group can provide both block and file access to storage data. Access to block-level storage requires direct iSCSI access to PS Series arrays (iSCSI initiator). Access to file storage requires the FS Series NAS appliance using NFS or SMB protocols and the Dell FluidFS scale-out file system.

With storage data management features, you can:

Manage a group through several built-in mechanisms such as ssh, serial line, telnet, and web-based user interfaces. You do not need an external management station or management software.
Configure the system to alert you to management activity or problems through log files, SNMP traps, and email notification
Add more arrays (up to 16) to a group to increase capacity and performance
Secure data and management access with authorization and authentication mechanisms
Protect storage data with replication and snapshots