5,000 Devices - Ssd Drives; Choosing Your Hard Drives; Ssds Vs 15K Sas - Dell PowerConnect W-Airwave Manual

5,000 Devices - SSD Drives

AWMS 2,500 - 5,000 device installations with SSDs require Single Level Cell (SLC) Enterprise class SSD
drives.
NOTE: Do not use Multi Level Cell (MLC) Consumer class drives. Use of MLC drives can result in drastically reduced SSD drive
lifespan and data loss/volume failure due to write exhaustion.
A minimum of six (6) Enterprise SSDs in a RAID 1+0 configuration are required (Please see
Storage Matrix" on page 3
RAID 1+0 configuration are recommended.
The target random write 4KB IOP Performance is at minimum 3,000 sustained IOPS for 5,000 device monitoring.
The actual disk IOP requirement can vary depending on the configuration of the AirWave server.
NOTE: If you have any questions regarding hardware compatibility or selection, contact Dell support at support.dell.com.
NOTE: AirWave servers servicing more than 2,500 devices require 64-bit OS and AirWave 7.1 or higher. Do not use software RAID
systems or SATA disk drives.

Choosing Your Hard Drives

15K SAS drives are the highest performance spinning platter drives available today. Serial ATA and 10K SAS are
vastly outperformed by 15K SAS and should not be used in an AirWave server.
You will need to select the appropriately sized hard drive to meet your desired storage volume after taking into
account RAID 1+0 reduction on overall storage capacity.
RAID 1+0 reduces your single volume available drive space by ½ because of the redundancy introduced. An
example would be 16x 146GB 15K SAS hard drives in a RAID 1+0 volume will result in approximately 1.1 TB of
storage space [(16*146GB)/ 2].

SSDs vs 15K SAS

Solid State Drives are becoming more affordable and are being offered as a high performance drive option by
many vendors. SSDs offer performance that far outstrips 15K SAS, but at a significant cost premium.
AirWave supports deployment on SSD based storage arrays and can take advantage of the high speed disk access
and stellar random write performance.
To select an appropriate SSD you'll want to ensure that the SSD is classified as "Enterprise" class. This generally
indicates a drive that uses Single Level Cell (SLC) technology versus Multi Level Cell (MLC) technology. SLC
technology is required for an AirWave server to avoid unexpected write exhaustion and/or poor performance due
to write amplification.
Confirm with your vendor prior to purchasing SSDs that their offerings are appropriate for a 24/7 sustained high
random write database server and are not a consumer-grade SSD.
In general, RAID 1+0 is still recommended for SSD deployments to allow for the best overall redundancy and
performance. Any parity based RAID (5/6/etc) is not recommended.
For additional information, please contact Dell support at support.dell.com.
6 | Selecting Your Hardware Components
for minimum needed storage capacity information). Eight (8) or more SSDs in a
Dell PowerConnect W-AirWave 7.5 | Server Sizing Guide
"CPU, Memory, and