Owner's Manual

28 iSCSI Cluster Setup for Dell EqualLogic PS Series Storage Systems
As illustrated in Figure 5-2, the group named oracle-group includes three
PS5000XV members:
• oracle-member01
• oracle-member02
• oraclemember03
When a member is initialized, it can be configured with RAID 10, RAID 5,
or RAID 50. For more information on how to initialize an EqualLogic array,
see the Dell EqualLogic User's Guide.
A PS Series storage group can be segregated into multiple tiers or pools.
Tiered storage provides administrators with greater control over how disk
resources are allocated. At any one time, a member can be assigned to only
one pool. It is easy to assign a member to a pool and also to move a member
between pools with no impact to data availability. Pools can be organized
according to different criteria, such as disk types or speeds, RAID levels,
application types.
In Figure 2-2 pools are organized by member RAID levels:
• One pool with the name RAID-10 consists of RAID 10 members.
• One pool with the name RAID-5 consists of RAID 5 members.
Creating Volumes
Before data can be stored, the PS5000XV physical disks must be configured
into usable components, known as volumes. A volume represents a portion of
the storage pool, with a specific size, access controls, and other attributes.
A volume can be spread across multiple disks and group members and is seen
on the network as an iSCSI target. Volumes are assigned to a pool and can be
easily moved between pools, with no impact on data availability. In addition,
automatic data placement and automatic load balancing occurs within a pool,
based on the overall workload of the storage hardware resources within
the pool.