Integrating the Dell EqualLogic FS7500 into an existing SAN Owner's Manual
Summary
Optimize your enterprise storage infrastructure with this comprehensive technical guide. Designed for Storage Solutions Engineers and system administrators, this manual provides detailed best practices for seamlessly integrating the Dell EqualLogic FS7500 into an existing SAN environment. The whitepaper covers end-to-end planning considerations, including network topology setup, proper IP addressing, optimized pool and volume configuration, and essential methods for monitoring the storage unit to ensure peak performance and maximum reliability across your data center.
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Dell Equal Logic Best Practices Series
Integrating the Dell Equal Logic FS7500 into an Existing SAN A Dell Technical Whitepaper
Storage Infrastructure and Solutions Engineering Dell Product Group February 2012
Page Summary Contents For Integrating the Dell EqualLogic FS7500 into an existing SAN Owner's Manual
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Dell Equal Logic Best Practices Series Integrating the Dell Equal Logic FS7500 into an Existing SAN A Dell Technical Whitepaper Storage Infrastructure and Solutions Engineering Dell Product Group Febr...
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THIS WHITE PAPER IS FOR INFORMATIONAL PURPOSES ONLY, AND MAY CONTAIN TYPOGRAPHICAL ERRORS AND TECHNICAL INACCURACIES. THE CONTENT IS PROVIDED AS IS, WITHOUT EXPRESS OR IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND. ...
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Table of Contents 1 Introduction ........................................................................................................................................................ 1 1.1 Audience...
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Acknowledgements This whitepaper was produced by the PG Storage Infrastructure and Solutions team between January 2011 and August 2011 at the Dell Labs facility in Round Rock, Texas. The team that cre...
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1 Introduction The Dell™ Equal Logic™ FS7500 adds scale-out unified Network Attached Storage (NAS) capabilities to Equal Logic PS Series i SCSI SANs so you can easily enable and manage i SCSI, CIFS, a...
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1.2 Terminology The following terms are used throughout this document. Block I/O Commonly used to describe how an application on a host server accesses data on a local or SAN connected storage system....
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2 Dell Equal Logic FS7500 The FS7500 is a dual active/active architecture that consists of a redundant pair of appliance-like controller nodes with a backup power supply. The large onboard cache gives...
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By adding more arrays to the storage pool, the Equal Logic SAN can be scaled out for capacity and performance. NAS volumes and file systems can also be expanded without interruption or downtime. With ...
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3 Test topology and architecture To study the performance impact of integrating a FS7500 into an existing Equal Logic SAN environment, we needed to generate a workload of both block and file I/O. We c...
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ports. While this is usually not a recommended best practice for production networks (due to scalability limits), it provided the connectivity we needed for this test environment. On our SAN network, ...
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4 Test methodology We selected Vdbench for its ability to be controlled by a script and parameter file. For the block I/O testing, we configured Vdbench to read and write from RAW disks without a file...
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5 Test results and analysis For the combined block and file tests, we observed (see Figure 2) that IOPS increased as additional clients were added. In the three and four array configurations, performa...
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The caching effect of the FS7500 is also evident when looking at Figure 4, where we see that file I/O clients have a slight performance advantage over the block clients. Furthermore, when we examined ...
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Figure 4: 6-Array Separated Pool, Block and File I/O Comparison Since additional IOPS capacity was made available to the NAS volumes (doubling the number of physical disk spindles from three to six ar...
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6 Planning and design considerations 6.1 Network ports Each FS7500 controller contains a total of thirteen 1 Gigabit Ethernet ports that need to be connected for optimal performance. A total of 26 net...
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• For Adaptive Load Balancing (ALB), four IP addresses are required for each NAS node. For example, in a two-node NAS service, eight NAS service IP addresses are required. • For LACP, one IP address i...
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workload, then the performance of existing block workloads may be affected as the storage system is forced to share resources between them. 6.4 Volume configuration The FS7500 is able to use the entir...
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workloads from attached hosts and in some cases may indicate the need for additional disk I/O capacity (i.e., the more physical disk spindles) to satisfy performance needs. Latency is also an importan...
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7 Summary The Dell Equal Logic FS7500 can be deployed as part of a new installation or into an existing Equal Logic PS Series i SCSI SAN. When deploying into an existing SAN, administrators should mon...
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Appendix A Vdbench scripts Vdbench script used for block client: Example 1 – Vdbench script used for block client * 100% random 8K, 70% read block I/O test. hd=default sd=default,size=8g,threads=8 sd=...
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Related publications The following Dell publications are referenced in this document or are recommended sources for additional information. Dell Equal Logic PS Series i SCSI SAN http://www.dell.com/...
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THIS WHITE PAPER IS FOR INFORMATIONAL PURPOSES ONLY, AND MAY CONTAIN TYPOGRAPHICAL ERRORS AND TECHNICAL INACCURACIES. THE CONTENT IS PROVIDED AS IS, WITHOUT EXPRESS OR IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND. ...
Manual Details
| Brand | Dell |
|---|---|
| Pages | 22 |
| File Size | 493.90 KB |
| Published | June 23, 2026 |
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Frequently Asked Questions
What critical components must be considered during FS7500 design planning?
Planning requires consideration of network ports, IP addresses, pool configuration, and volume configuration for proper integration.
How can I perform a block client performance test using vdbench?
Use a script featuring 100% random 8K combined with 70% read block I/O testing.
Does this whitepaper guarantee the technical accuracy of the information provided?
No, the content is for informational purposes only and may contain typographical errors or technical inaccuracies.