Deployment Guide

8 ScaleIO/VxFlex OS IP Fabric Best Practice and Deployment Guide with OS10EE | version 1.0
operations in the background so that, when necessary, optimization has minimal or no impact to applications
and users.
Compelling Economics
VxFlex OS can reduce the cost and complexity of a typical SAN by allowing users to exploit unused local
storage capacity on the servers. This eliminates the need for an FC fabric between servers and storage, as
well as additional hardware like Host Bus Adapters.
Unparalleled Flexibility
The hyper-converged deployment includes the application and storage installed on the same server in the
VxFlex OS cluster. This creates a single-tier architecture with the lowest footprint and cost profile. VxFlex OS
provides additional flexibility by supporting mixed server brands, operating systems and storage media.
Hyper-converged topology design
Supreme Elasticity
VxFlex OS enables you to add or remove storage or compute resources dynamically at any time with no
downtime. The system automatically rebalances the data "on the fly.”
1.1.2 Components
VxFlex OS is comprised of three main components.
VxFlex OS Data Client (SDC)
The SDC is a lightweight, block device-driver that presents VxFlex OS shared block volumes to applications.
The SDC runs on the same server as the application. This enables the SDC to fulfill IO requests issued by the
application regardless of where the particular blocks physically reside.
VxFlex OS Data Server (SDS)
The SDS manages the local storage that contributes to the VxFlex OS storage pools. The SDS runs on each
of the servers that contribute storage to the VxFlex OS system. The SDS performs the back-end operations
that SDCs request.