PowerFlex custom node

Dell has a Customer Replaceable Unit (CRU) program for many of our hardware systems. The CRU program allows customers to replace designated hardware components. For a list of the hardware components that are designated as CRU for a specific hardware system, go to the Dell Warranty and Maintenance Page.

This article provides links to documentation for PowerFlex Rack, PowerFlex Appliance, PowerFlex Custom Node, VxFlex Ready Node, PowerFlex Software, PowerFlex for AWS, PowerFlex for Azure and CloudLink.

PowerFlex Manager generates a 2-year default self-signed SSL certificate when it is deployed. You can replace this default SSL certificate by generating a CSR, having it signed by a trusted certificate authority and uploading the signed certificate to PowerFlex Manager. If you are not using a trusted certificate authority and must renew the default self-signed SSL certificate, then you can use the following instructions.

Changing the OS Admin credential in PowerFlex Manager does not update the node’s root password, preventing connection and leading to invalid‑credential, unchanged‑password, SSH and discovery errors.

Disk devices attached or configured to SVM or SDS nodes are missing Serial Number information and are not listed in the /dev/disk/by-id directory.

Unable to upgrade the Switch OS using PFxM.

Unable to complete the add existing resource group wizard for a PowerFlex MDS system.

The 4.x PFxM UI is not loading because the PowerFlex Management Platform "PFMP" pod SDNAS gateway is not in a healthy state.

The UI shows a UNABLE_TO_RECEIVE_MDM_EVENTS alert because the manager cannot reach the ActiveMQ broker on port 61714; the broker is blocked or the service is down, so MDM events are not displayed.

This article provides links to PowerFlex custom node technical documentation.

Using PowerFlex Management Portal (PFMP), capture a group’s network mappings, service details, credentials and node IPs, remove the group (non‑delete), then re‑add it with the recorded information.

14‑gen Ready Nodes with ≥12 DIMMs can reboot, recorded in iDRAC as a BP1 power‑good voltage out‑of‑range error; signal noise on the backplane power cable creates loss alerts, risking data loss.

Article outlines symptoms where PowerFlex nodes report “Non‑Volatile Dual Inline memory module (NVDIMM) battery not ready” during boot, after outage, or on install, caused by batteries left uncharged.

The "Software Serial ID" or "SWID" (usually starts wit ELMSIO....) is used to open Service Request for PowerFlex, and to start software renewal process. If the Software Serial ID is not available, you can also create cases using the "System Serial number" (usually starts with "ELMVX....)

The following procedure explains how to manually install an external SDC on a Debian-based server. The steps in the procedure below are relevant for Debian/Ubuntu operating systems, including Proxmox Virtual Environment.

PowerFlex Manager 4.x may show false alerts—CONFIGURED_SPARE_CAPACITY_SMALLER_THAN_LARGEST_FAULT_UNIT, STORAGE_POOL_UNBALANCED, NOT_ENOUGH_FAULT_UNITS_IN_SP due to a known software issue pending fix.

Explore the Dell End of Service Life (EOSL) and End of Life (EOL) list for converged infrastructure, storage, and storage networking products. Access End-of-Life documents for hardware, software, and firmware release and service dates

PowerFlex Manager Platform 4.x shows MVM nodes NotReady, pods restarting and UI hanging; a defect in versions 4.5‑4.6 under‑allocates CPU and memory, requiring 28 vCPUs and 64 GB RAM.

This article explains how to use the internal HTTP share for 4.x PowerFlex Manager Release Certification Matrix (RCM), Intelligent Catalog (IC), ISO uploads.

This Article explains the details of an MDM cluster in a PowerFlex solution.

Slow, non‑SSD storage on the cluster VMs leads to etcd latency over one second, triggering repeated pod restarts, node NotReady states and loss of PowerFlex Management Platform (PFMP) UI access.

Offline upgrade of PowerFlex Manager How to manually upgrade PowerFlex Manager without Secure Remote Services.

Alerts remain stuck in the PowerFlex Manager UI when the service or MDM that generated them is no longer active. This results in the UI being unable to clear them.

Details the graceful reboot of PowerFlex Management Platform (PFMP) VMs for version 4.X, including labeling, draining, and rebooting MVMs while keeping two nodes active and checking PostgreSQL health. In the scope of this procedure, MVM1 is the postgres Leader. It is drained and rebooted last.

Connectivity issues may be seen with either the Gateway or the Presentation server with "port out of range" or "Trying to reconnect."

This article is about an error that a user may see when adding a "DAX" device into the acceleration Pool.

This article explains the steps to reset the PowerFlex Manager Platform (PFMP) admin password, or any account in the PFMP.

This article explains the different reasons hard drives can fail in detail.

Post successful PFMP upgrade, the CloudLink (CL) Agents have duplicate entries in a connected and disconnected state.

This KB explains how to perform the WSFC conversion at a high-level. It also covers converting an Oracle RAC environment from RDMs to shared VMDKs on NVMe/TCP, even though Oracle RAC does not require SCSI3‑PR. Oracle RAC can run on an SDC‑based VMFS datastore, but because PowerFlex does not support Clustered VMDK on SDC‑based VMFS, SCSI3‑PR‑dependent applications cannot use that configuration. Oracle RAC explanations are also high-level.