Hardware Considerations; Hardware Requirements And Recommendations; Hardware Setup; About Memory Effects On Node Storage - Dell DX6000 Getting Started Manual

Chapter 3. Hardware Considerations
The following sections in this chapter discuss how to configure your network for DX Storage
clusters:
• Section 3.1, "Hardware Requirements and Recommendations"
• Section 3.2, "Hardware Setup"
• Section 3.3, "About Memory Effects on Node Storage"
• Section 3.4, "Stream Size Guidance"
• Section 3.5, "Adaptive Power Conservation"
• Section 3.6, "Proactive Power Conservation"
• Section 3.7, "Local Area Replication Using Subclusters"

3.1. Hardware Requirements and Recommendations

DX Storage installs and runs on enterprise-class x86 commodity hardware. To ensure adequate
coverage in the event of a node failure, the minimum recommended number of nodes in the cluster
is 3. For a complete overview of hardware minimums and recommendations, please reference the
hardware documentation included with your software.

3.2. Hardware Setup

The DX Storage node hardware should be configured to boot either from the USB flash drive or to
PXE network boot (which is the default if using a Cluster Services Node). See
Up PXE Booting"
If your cluster boots from a CSN, you can ignore this section because hardware setup is already
done for you.
When USB booting, the USB device might be identified as a hard drive on some hardware while on
others it is identified as a removable device. It should be moved to the top of the boot priority order
so that the system will boot from the USB flash drive before any other boot devices in the node.
Because all internal disks are typically used for cluster storage, BIOS might prevent you from
booting to a hard drive. You should check to make sure that the boot priority of these is lower than
that of the USB flash drive.
Because it is not necessary to have a keyboard attached during normal operations of DX Storage, it
might be necessary to configure the node's BIOS to ignore keyboard errors during boot.

3.3. About Memory Effects on Node Storage

The DX Storage cluster is capable of holding the sum of the maximum stream counts from all nodes
in the cluster. The number of individual streams that can be stored on a DX Storage node depends
both on its disk capacity and the amount of system RAM. The following table shows an estimate of
the maximum possible number of streams, regardless of size, you can store on a node based on the
amount of RAM in the node.
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for more information about setting up PXE booting.
15
Section 2.4, "Setting
Version 5.0
December 2010