Powerflex Specification Sheet
Powerflex Specification Sheet
Dell PowerFlex
The ultimate software-defined infrastructure
PowerFlex Family
PowerFlex software-defined infrastructure enables broad consolidation across the data center, encompassing almost any
type of workload and deployment topology. Its software-first architecture enables automation and programmability of the
complete infrastructure stack. It provides scalability, performance, and resiliency, enabling effortless adherence to
stringent workload SLAs. As a universal infrastructure platform, PowerFlex combines compute and high-performance
software-defined storage resources in a managed, unified fabric for both block and file. Available in flexible consumption
options (rack, appliance, custom nodes, or in the public cloud), it enables various deployment architectures: independent
compute and storage (two-layer), HCI (single-layer), or a mixture of the two. PowerFlex is ideal for high performance
applications and databases, building an agile private/hybrid cloud, or consolidating resources in heterogeneous
environments. To learn about the business value and benefits organizations have achieved by using PowerFlex to run
and manage their important business workloads, please read this white paper.
SPECIFICATION SHEET 1
Selected Definitions
System – A PowerFlex system is the collection of entities managed by the Metadata Management (MDM) cluster.
MDM – Metadata Manager. A highly-available storage management cluster that resides alongside other software
components within the system but sits outside the data path and supervises storage cluster health and
configuration. It coordinates rebalancing and rebuilding/reprotecting data as changes occur in the system.
Protection Domain – A protection domain is a logical entity that consists of a group of SDSs that provide data protection
for each other. Each SDS belongs to one (and only one) protection domain. By definition, each protection domain
is a unique set of SDSs. Protection domains can be added during installation and modified post-installation.
Storage Pool - A storage pool is a set of physical storage devices within a protection domain. Each storage device
belongs to one (and only one) storage pool. A volume is distributed over all devices residing in the same storage
pool.
SDS – Storage Data Server. A software service, running on a node that contributes disks to the storage cluster. Working
together, several SDSs abstract local storage, maintain storage pools, and present volumes to the SDCs. Each
SDS node is a fault unit, and the distributed mesh-mirror copies of data are never placed on the same fault unit.
SDC – Storage Data Client. A client kernel driver that provides front-end volume access to operating systems,
applications, or hypervisors. It presents PowerFlex volumes as local block devices. The SDC maintains peer-to-
peer connections to every SDS managing a storage pool. It translates between the proprietary PowerFlex data
transport protocol and block SCSI commands.
Device – Local, direct attached block storage (DAS) in a node that is managed by an SDS and is contributed to a storage
pool.
Volume – Analogous to a LUN, a volume is a subset of a storage pool’s capacity presented by an SDC as a local block
device. A volume’s data is evenly distributed across all disks comprising a storage pool, according to the data
layout selected for that storage pool.
MG – A “medium granularity” data layout on the storage disks comprising a storage pool. This is the original storage pool
option and provides very high performance.
FG - A “fine granularity” data layout on the storage disks comprising a storage pool. This storage pool option is designed
for space efficiency, especially with heavy snapshot use. It requires the use of NVDIMMs and enables
PowerFlex’s inline compression features.
Fault Set – A collection of SDSs that are managed together as a single fault unit. When employed, the distributed mesh-
mirror copies of data are never placed within the same fault set.
SDR – Storage Data Replicator. A software service that lives alongside the SDS and other services and facilitates
asynchronous replication activities between remote PowerFlex systems. The SDR implements journal shipping,
coordinating both the collection of writes into source-side journals and the application of received writes to
volumes on the target side.
SDT – Storage Data Target. Enables NVMe initiator clients to map and use PowerFlex volumes using the NVMe/TCP
protocol. The SDT software service translates between the NVMe and proprietary PowerFlex protocols, supports
discovery services, and manages client host connections.
Specification Sheet 2
System Limits
PowerFlex supports the following system limits in virtue of the software capabilities. Note that reaching some limits will
preclude reaching others. (For example, although the max volume size is 1PB, creating very large volumes will preclude
creating the max number of volumes in a Protection Domain – 32,768 – because the total size of all volumes in a storage
pool is 4PB.) Under some configurations and consumption choices, these limits may differ due to the node, networking
hardware, or management tools being employed.
For complete listing of product limits, look for the Dell PowerFlex 4.5.x Technical Overview at the link provided.
Maximum devices (drives) per SDS server 64 (includes any NVDIMM devices)
Specification Sheet 3
PowerFlex Item Product Limit
The functional character of a node is determined primarily by the installation/presence of software services running on a
node. However, PowerFlex nodes are configured and purchased as “storage,” “compute,” or “HCI/hyperconverged”
nodes. This reflects the type and quantity of resources in the node, ensuring that resources are suited to the expected
usage. For example, storage nodes have less RAM and compute nodes usually have no capacity disks in them.
Specification Sheet 4
PowerFlex Consumption Options
With PowerFlex, you have choice and flexibility in how you choose to consume the PowerFlex architecture:
• PowerFlex rack is a fully engineered system with integrated networking. It is designed to simplify deployment
and accelerate time to value.
• PowerFlex appliance is a flexible solution with a small starting point and massive scale potential. PowerFlex
appliance provides a broad choice of supported networking with either full or partial network automation.
• PowerFlex custom nodes have the same performance and scale potential but leave the network management
and hardware life-cycling up to the user.
• Public cloud – powering APEX Block Storage. This is a supported software-only deployment of the software-
defined storage layer on recommended compute instances (with attached storage) in Amazon Web Services or
Microsoft Azure. Only the MG data layout and “independent (2-layer)” block architectures are supported. Fault
Sets may be used to distribute the cluster across multiple Availability Zones, thereby improving resiliency even to
disruptions with an AZ. Native asynchronous replication may be used to migrate data between cloud and on-
premises PowerFlex systems, or to establish cloud-based BC/DR data protection schemes.
PowerFlex is also available with OpEx-based consumption options with APEX Custom Solutions. Customers can choose
between APEX Flex on Demand and APEX Datacenter Utility based on their unique requirements.
Nvidia GPU options A2, L4 H100, A100, A40, A30, A16, A2, L40, L4 A2, L4
Specification Sheet 5
PowerFlex R650 PowerFlex R750 PowerFlex R7525 PowerFlex R6525
Chassis 1 RU 2 RU 1 RU
CPU technology 3rd Gen Intel Xeon 3rd Gen AMD EPYC
CPU sockets Two
CPU cores (total) 16 - 80 16 - 128
CPU frequency 2.00 GHz - 3.60 GHz 2.00 GHz - 3.70 GHz
RAM 256 GB - 8 TB 256 GB - 4 TB
76TB SAS 154TB* SAS
Maximum storage
38TB SATA 92TB SATA diskless
capacity (raw TB)
154TB* NVMe 154TB* NVMe
Drive bays 10 x 2.5” 24 x 2.5” diskless
Nvidia GPU options A2, T4 A100, A40, A30, A16, A10, A2, T4, L40 A2, T4
Specification Sheet 6
Consolidation: OS, Hypervisor, Platform Support
The platform supports a broad range of operating environments – bare metal operating systems, hypervisors, and
container platforms – simultaneously with a unified infrastructure platform and management. By allowing users to flexibly
mix these architectures in a single deployment, PowerFlex enables you to deploy, scale, and evolve all your applications
to meet your business objectives.
Specification Sheet 7
PowerFlex Software Features and Functions
PowerFlex offers many enterprise data services. For example:
• Compression – inline compression is enabled when using the fine-granularity data layout for storage pools.
• Native Asynchronous Replication – PowerFlex includes native async replication capabilities between
PowerFlex clusters – up to 5 in any arbitrary topology. Note: individual volumes are replicated to only 1 target.
New in 4.5, multiple NAS servers can be brought together under a Global Namespace, allowing for over 8PB of filesystem
space to be shared via SMB (with DFS), NFS v4, or both, though a single IP address and namespace.
Specification Sheet 8
Maximum number of file systems plus mounted snaps per
1,500
NAS server
Maximum NFS servers per system 512
Maximum SMB servers per system 512
Maximum SMB shares per node 10,000
Maximum SMB shares per system 160,000
Maximum NFS exports per node 5,000
Maximum NFS exports per system 80,000
Maximum tree quotas per file system 8,191
Maximum file names per directory 10 million
Maximum sub-directories/files per directory 10 million
Maximum number of home directories 40,000
Maximum SMB TCP connections 128,000
Maximum NFS TCP connections 128,000
Maximum TCP connections per system 153,600
Maximum unique ACLs per file system 4 million
Maximum directories per file system > 10 billion
Maximum open files/directories 512,000
Maximum files per file system 32 billion
Feature Description
Supported Protocols NFS v3/v4, SMB (CIFS) v2/v3, FTP, SFTP, and NDMP
User quotas and Tree quotas
Extend/shrink file system (space reclaim)
File System Operations
File system read/write snapshots
Single / Global Namespace option
Data Reduction Inline compression when used with FG storage pools
Data Protection 3-way NMDP support for backup
CAVA - Common Antivirus Agent for SMB Clients
Security CEPA - Common Event Publishing Agent (version 4.5+)
D@RE with PowerFlex Enterprise Encryption and KeyStore
SRS/ESE (Call Home)
Serviceability Alerts
Data collection aka “native audit log”
UI and REST API
Management and Monitoring CloudIQ Integration
SNMP v2 and v3 support
Specification Sheet 9
Example of data path communication between clients, NAS servers, and block storage backend.
Component Model CPU Cores RAM(GB) NIC (GbE) Local Storage (GB)
Small Node PowerFlex R650S Intel Xeon 2x5317 2x12 (24) 128 4 x 25 480GB BOSS M.2
Medium Node PowerFlex R650M Intel Xeon 2x6346 2x16 (32) 256 4 x 25 480GB BOSS M.2
4 x 25
Large Node PowerFlex R650L Intel Xeon 2x6348 2x28 (56) 256 or 480GB BOSS M.2
4 x 100
Specification Sheet 10
Example of SDC – SDS communication with SDC installed in ESXi.
PowerFlex 4.0 also introduced support for NVMe/TCP, allowing for the consumption of PowerFlex volumes without
installing the proprietary kernel driver. Support for NVMe/TCP is facilitated by the Storage Data Target (SDT) service,
which runs on nodes also running the SDS service. The SDT translates between the system’s native PowerFlex protocol
and NVMe commands. It also functions as a discovery service for client initiators.
NVMe/TCP requires kernels that contain native support for the protocol. In VMware, this is ESXi 7.0 Update 3f or later. It
is also available as a Tech Preview in supported Linux Distributions: RHEL 8.6 and later, SLES 15 SP3 and later, Ubuntu
22.04.
Specification Sheet 11
NVMe/TCP Limits
PowerFlex Manager offers standards-based open APIs and custom Ansible modules, making it simple to integrate with
third party tools and custom workflows. Further, when paired with Dell CloudIQ, PowerFlex leverages an AI/ML-based
approach to infrastructure monitoring and management, ensuring simplicity and consistency at scale.
Specification Sheet 12
PowerFlex Clustering, Scaling and Management
Min Nodes Per Cluster 4 Storage Only nodes minimum (6 or more recommended)
(Two-layer Configuration) 1 to 3 Compute Only nodes (depending on host OS)
* In 2-layer environments where existing compute nodes are to be utilized or compute nodes are running an operating system not
supported by PowerFlex Manager, the minimum requirement is for four storage nodes only.
†
A single node is the minimum scaling required to expand an existing Storage Pool. Creation of a net new Storage Pool requires the
additionof a minimum of 3 Storage or HCI Nodes.
‡
New PowerFlex appliance deployments include a single-node management controller (with an option for three-node for larger
systems). New PowerFlex integrated rack deployments include a three-node or four-node management controller cluster. These
PowerFlex Management Controller options are ESXi based.
Cisco Nexus 9236C, Cisco Nexus 9336C-FX2, Cisco Nexus 9364C-GX, Cisco Nexus 9364C-GX,
Aggregation or Spine Switches
Dell S5232F-ON
* For PowerFlex appliance, the management switch can be “bring your own”.
‡
Appliance only
Specification Sheet 13
Power and Dimensions
Redundant
8 6 8 6
cooling fans
H 42.8 mm 86.8 mm 42.8 mm 86.8 mm
Physical W 434 mm 434 mm 434 mm 434 mm
dimensions D 751 mm 700 mm 751 mm 700 mm
Wgt 21.2 kg 35.3 kg 21.2 kg 24.6 kg
Redundant
8 6 6
cooling fans
H 42.8 mm 86.8 mm 86.8 mm
Physical W 434 mm 434 mm 434 mm
dimensions D 734 mm 679 mm 679 mm
Wgt 21.9 kg 28.1 kg 28.1 kg
Specification Sheet 14
Environmental and Certificates
Specification Sheet 15
Statement of Compliance
Dell Information Technology Equipment is compliant with all currently applicable regulatory requirements for
Electromagnetic Compatibility, Product Safety, and Environmental Regulations where placed on market.
Detailed regulatory information and verification of compliance is available at the Dell Regulatory Compliance website.
https://www.dell.com/REGULATORY_COMPLIANCE
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Specification Sheet
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