Networking
True/False: iSCSI and FC (Fibre Channel) can connect to network-attached storage (NAS).
False
What's the purpose of RAID?
Redundant Array of Independent Disks/Drives – provides redundancy (therefore protection) for data, and performance improvement.
Does PowerVault support traditional RAID?
Yes
Does PowerStore support traditional RAID?
No
Does Unity XT support traditional RAID?
Yes
A customer said they have 16GB speeds running in their datacenter. What protocol do they have?
Fibre Channel
Can customers add drives individually in a traditional storage array? If No, what increments can they add in?
No, they have to add in RAID width increments
2-part question:
1. What RAID configuration is PowerVault's ADAPT in?
2. What's the approx. minimum drive count for an ADAPT pool?
1. RAID 6 (FT = 2 drives)
2. 12 drives per pool
2-part question:
1. Is the PowerStore 500T eligible for the Lifecycle Extension program or data-in-place upgrade?
2. Is the Unity XT 480 eligible for a data-in-place upgrade?
1. No
2. Yes
What is the smallest SED drive available on the Unity XT? (either Flash or HDD)
None! The Unity uses specialized encryption hardware and does not use SED drives at all
What is an SFP and what does it do?
An SFP is a transceiver. It translates electrical signals into light and determines the speed of a signal
Give 3 differences between hard disk drives (HDDs) and solid state drives (SSDs)
HDD: spinning drive that physically writes data to a magnetic plate
SSD: writes data via electromagnetic signals
SSDs have no moving parts
SSDs produce faster reads and writes, and furthermore, faster performance
SSDs are more reliable and has a longer life span than HDDs
SSDs are more expensive than HDDs
List the general connection types PowerVault supports in a DAS configuration
Optical (fiber and fibre), Copper (BaseT or Twinax), and SAS
Explain the different protocols PowerStore Supports
iSCSI, FC, NFS, SMB, vVols
No! They're not needed for all-flash models since there aren't storage tiers to manage
If SFP+ is 10GbE fiber optic, what is the designation for 25GbE?
SFP28
Which storage appliances have single drive add-on capabilities?
PowerVault, Unity XT, PowerStore, and VxRail
Can you run the read cache and auto-tiering software at the same time?
No, you have to choose one or the other at the time of deployment
2-part question:
1. What is storage tiering?
2. What is it like in PowerStore?
1. Tiering is a system/method of assigning data to various types of storage media (e.g. SSD, SAS, NL-SAS) based on a range of requirements for cost, availability, performance, and recovery.
2. PowerStore has no tiering because there is only one type of storage media supported (NVMe SSDs)!
What is the distributed sparing method called in Unity?
Dynamic Pools
[In-person] Name each of the following cables:
BaseT/cat6, OM4/patch, twinax/DAC
Describe the differences between the three main storage architectures (DAS, NAS, SAN)
DAS (direct attached storage): storage unit is physically connected to hosts
NAS (network attached storage): single storage device that serves files over internet
SAN (storage area network): dedicated network for multiple devices in the DC
How can PowerVault service file data?
The file protocol must be serviced at the host level, while the backend block data is stored on the PowerVault.
List off what is NOT an applicable workload for the DRR guarantee (3 general types of data)
Rich media (image, video, audio, PDF, PPT, Word, Excel, TIFF, etc.), host/application-level compressed data (databases tend to do this), and host/application-level encrypted data
How does does Unity from a logical perspective handle file workloads? Its unified, but what happens internally?
Unity creates an E-Server inside itself with its resources to act as a "Virtual" server which does the file workload. PowerStore uses this same method to be "Unified"