Administrator Guide

Enable Server Load Equalizing for Storage Center Volumes

Server load equalizing dynamically adjusts queue depth for volumes experiencing high IOPS to minimize

the performance impact on other volumes. Enable load equalizing on a Storage Center that hosts Fluid

Cache volumes to prevent cache flushing operations from adversely affecting performance for other

volumes.

NOTE: Enable load equalizing only for environments using Fluid Cache clusters, or if directed by

Dell Technical Support Services.

1. Click the Storage view.

2. In the Storage pane, select the Storage Center.

3. In the Summary tab, click Edit Settings. The Edit Settings dialog box appears.

4. Click the Storage tab.

5. Select the Server Load Equalizer Enabled check box.

6. Click OK.

Maintaining Fluid Cache Environments

This chapter describes tasks that must occasionally be performed after initial Fluid Cache deployment.

WARNING: When performing any operation to a server platform that hosts Fluid Cache software,

you must perform either one of the following methods:

• Shut down a single Fluid Cache Cluster node (VSA) at a time and perform the host-based server

updates.

After the updates to host server are complete, reboot the host and bring the Fluid Cache Cluster

node (VSA) online. Before shutting down and updating the next Fluid Cache cluster node, verify

that the Fluid Cache Cluster node is added to Fluid Cache Cluster appropriately.

• Place the entire Fluid Cache Cluster into maintenance mode, and then shut down the entire

Fluid Cache Cluster by shutting down the Fluid Cache Cluster nodes (VSAs) one after the other.

After the updates to the host servers are complete, reboot the server and bring the Fluid Cache

Cluster nodes (VSAs) online.

WARNING: To avoid potential performance issues and data loss, you must NOT shutdown

multiple Fluid Cache Cluster (VSA) nodes at the same time to perform Fluid Cache host server

based updates.

Rolling Upgrade of Fluid Cache

Fluid Cache Cluster rolling upgrade enables you to upgrade the Fluid Cache VSA version 2.0.10 to 2.1.0,

without taking the entire cluster down.

Dell provides a standalone Windows utility to easily perform an online rolling upgrade of the Fluid Cache

cluster. This utility enables you to export a particular VSA configuration from a running v2.0.10 VSA, and

then import that configuration to a newly deployed v2.1 VSA.

If you do not want to perform a rolling upgrade, then you need delete the v2.0.10 cluster and then deploy

a new v2.1 cluster.