Dell PowerStore Best Practices: Performance and Availability

Dell PowerStore is a container-based, performance-centric storage platform, but getting the promised performance and availability out of it depends heavily on how you deploy and connect it. The official Dell PowerStore Best Practices Guide (H18241) distills the key decisions: which deployment mode (T Unified, T Block-optimized, or X with AppsON), how to size the cluster and drives, how to cable Fibre Channel fabrics and Ethernet networks, and what host-side settings matter. This article summarizes the highest-impact recommendations for architects and storage admins.

Choose the Right Deployment Mode

• PowerStore T Unified (default): block + file access on the same system.
• PowerStore T Block-optimized: disables file capabilities, freeing CPU/memory for more block IOPS — pick this if you never use file.
• PowerStore X: runs PowerStoreOS as a VM on ESXi and supports AppsON (running VMs on the array); some resources are reserved for VMs, so external block performance is lower than the same T model.

Cluster and Drive Design

Cluster appliances should be the same model with similar capacity, located in the same data center and LAN; a cluster cannot mix T and X models, and file resources cannot migrate between appliances. For drives, use uniform sizes to maximize usable capacity. PowerStore's Dynamic Resiliency Engine (DRE) distributes spare space automatically — no dedicated hot spares. Install with a minimum of 10 drives for single-drive failure tolerance or 19 drives for double-drive tolerance. With mixed SCM + SSD, make at least 5% of physical capacity SCM for metadata acceleration.

Network Design for Performance

• FC fabrics: dual redundant fabrics; each host should have at least two paths per node (four ports per appliance), and no more than eight paths per volume.
• Ethernet: redundant switches with VLTi + LACP; on T models the first two ports of the embedded 4-port card are bonded in PowerStoreOS — aggregate the corresponding switch ports too.
• Speeds: use the highest supported speeds (32 Gb FC, 25 GbE optical); the 100 GbE I/O module must go in slot 0 (16-lane PCIe) on PowerStore 1000–9200.
• Jumbo frames: MTU 9000 end to end, including for iSCSI (set Cluster MTU and storage network MTU to 9000).

Replication, Snapshots, and Hosts

Use different physical ports for replication vs front-end storage traffic, and consider a dedicated replication network. Snapshots and thin clones are space-efficient — creation is just pointer duplication. On hosts, follow the Host Configuration Guide for MPIO, iSCSI queue depths, and FC settings; disable SCSI unmap when creating local file systems (PowerStore space is already unmapped), use 4 KB allocation units, and run migrations and PowerStoreOS upgrades in maintenance windows with a Pre-Upgrade Health Check. For more storage platform guidance, see our NetApp ONTAP networking best practices, the HPE 3PAR error code troubleshooting guide, and HPE 3PAR 8400 configuration principles.

原文链接：https://www.delltechnologies.com/assetlink/doc/en-us/h18241-dell-powerstore-best-practices-guide-en-dl1hjpb-original.pdf