PowerFlex Software

PowerFlex’s Fine Granularity Storage Pools use Persistent Memory (PMEM) also known as Non-Volatile DIMM (NVDIMM) to accelerate and compress data. These DIMMs may have bad blocks just like regular RDIMMs and must be monitored periodically for faults like any other type of disk. In an earlier release, the SDS device will only detect the bad block upon accessing the relevant section and failing the read by failing the SDS. For the earlier release, the following steps can be followed proactively to detect NVDIMMs with bad blocks and replace them. Note: since we have inherent redundancy in the product the data of these blocks are backed up on another node and in case of failure the SDS will fail and the other SDSs will service the IO.

Software Defined Storage (SDS) process panic while Clear Device Error attempt runs under certain underlying disk conditions.

Use this procedure to verify and upgrade the CPLD firmware version on PowerFlex nodes. PowerFlex Manager does not verify or upgrade CPLD.

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.

OS conversion for a Resource Group (RG) completes and causes DU when the system has SDS IP roles that are not configured as expected.

This article explains how to understand the purple screen (PS) root cause.

The PowerFlex Management Platform (PFMP) runs an SVM OS conversion (CentOS to SLES) and fails to complete.

This article explains step by step how To Convert Untagged DATA Networks On Access Mode To VLAN tagged Interfaces After Upgrade And OS Conversion.

In PFMP 4.8, when using the UI to perform a "Replace Node OS" operation, it fails due to missing MDM packages.

OS conversion for a Resource Group (RG) completes and causes DU when the system has fewer Standby Managers or Tie-Breaker MDMs than expected.

OS conversion for a Resource Group (RG) completes and causes DU when an MDM cluster has fewer virtual IPs than MDM DATA IPs.

Dial home alert is logged when there is a disconnection between SDC multiple SDS.

SDS process might crash during regular I/O operations, and process panic is reported in the SDS traces.

Top PowerFlex Software and Hardware Dial Home Alerts; PowerFlex

When changing an existing password or creating a new password in PowerFlex Manager from the resource pane, the password may not get updated on all hosts.

Credentials are not updated when "Update Service Details" is run.

Scanners report an OpenSSH version on iDRAC, its banner shows 9.6p1, leading to false positives. The root cause is a race‑condition flaw (Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures (CVE)‑2024‑6387) in OpenSSH.

The gateway pod disconnects from the Metadata Manager (MDM), causing actions like volume creation to fail; the issue is an expired gateway TLS certificate that was not refreshed after renewal.

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.

This article explains step by step the procedure to power off a PowerFlex appliance

ASR0000 appears when the hardware watchdog timer expires after iDRAC Service Module communication ends, caused by loss of iDRAC‑host OS connectivity, such as a powered‑off host or a degraded module.

Lists supported Linux and Windows OS releases—Ubuntu LTS, Red Hat Enterprise Linux, Oracle Linux, SUSE SLES—and maps them to PowerFlex versions, showing supported components (MDM, SDC, SDS, SDR, SDT).

SDS devices stay in "Remove-pending" state for a long time after issuing a device removal command. This problem can manifest after removing one or more SDS devices.

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

This Article is to raise customer awareness that PowerFlex 3.6 and its subcomponents, like PFxM 3.8, is going End of Standard Support (EoSS) on June 30, 2025.