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Administration best practices
17 Dell EMC SC Series: Microsoft Windows Server Best Practices | 680-042-007
For most Windows Server environments, when creating a new volume, the default storage profile
Recommended (All Tiers) is the best choice to provide good I/O performance and protection for the volume.
It is recommended to use this storage profile first and evaluate its suitability before attempting to change the
storage profile.
Using a different storage profile can be very beneficial in some cases. For example, if a data volume on a
Windows host contains archival data that will rarely be accessed, a lower priority storage profile may be the
best choice, so the data is placed in a more cost-effective tier and RAID level by default without needing to be
moved there over time by Data Progression.
3.3 Data Progression
Data Progression is a core SC Series feature with tiered storage. With Data Progression, data is automatically
and intelligently placed in the optimal storage tier and RAID level based upon usage and performance
metrics. Data Progression runs daily at 7:00 p.m. by default. The start time can be changed if desired.
Data Progression runs seamlessly in the background and there are no special considerations for Windows
Server hosts, other than leveraging SC Series storage profiles for initial data placement.
Note: As a Data Progression best practice, apply at least one snapshot profile to each volume with a
snapshot expiration of at least 25 hours. The Data Progression process will not work optimally for a volume
unless the volume has at least one unexpired snapshot available at the time Data Progression runs.
3.4 Data reduction (compression and deduplication)
Released with SCOS 7.0, data reduction features take advantage of both compression and deduplication for
reducing the data footprint of a volume, which can be very beneficial to Microsoft Windows environments.
With SC Series, data reduction typically occurs post-process during the daily Data Progression cycle.
Depending on the data reduction policy set on a volume, data is compressed and/or deduplicated to achieve
maximum storage space efficiency.
Data reduction options
Like Data Progression, data reduction runs seamlessly in the background. When to enable host-based
compression and/or deduplication in addition to SC Series data reduction is a common question, and this is
addressed in the Dell Storage Center OS 7.0 Data Reduction with Deduplication and Compression guide.
3.5 Overprovisioning
Because storage is virtualized and thinly-provisioned with SC Series, it is possible to create one or more host
volumes with a max size (individually or cumulatively) that exceed the amount of physical storage space