Technical information

June 2012 Dell EqualLogic Configuration Guide v13.2 4
Replication partners per group 16 16
Replication partners per volume 1 1
Members per group
2
16
a
Members per pool
2
8
Pools per group 2 4
Volumes per collection
8
8
Collections per group (snapshot and
replication)
100 100
Volume connections (each time an
iSCSI initiator connects to a volume
counts as a connection)
e,f
512 per pool
g
1024 per group with 2 pools
1024 per pool
h
4096 per group with 4 pools
Access control records per volume
and its snapshots
16 16
Simultaneous management sessions
(any combination of GUI, telnet, or
scripting sessions)
7 7
Thin provisioning
i
limits
(minimum allocation)
10% of volume size 10% of volume size
Administrator accounts per group
100
100
(a) A group can contain a maximum of two (2) PS4000 and/or PS4100 arrays.
(b) Includes groups of mixed array types and all other group types except groups containing only PS4000 arrays.
When a group contains a mix of PS4000 arrays and other array models, the higher limits prevail.
(c) Practical maximum volume size is operating system-specific. A PS Series group can create and present volumes
up to 15 TB.
(d) Up to 16 simultaneous replication operations can take place.
(e) To avoid service outages or possible loss of connectivity during failovers, Dell recommends increasing initiator
timeouts for groups with more than 512 connections. See the iSCSI Initiator and Operating Systems
Considerations document for more information.
(f) Inbound replication connections count towards the total number of connections.
(g) With firmware version 5.1, maximum number of volumes per group and maximum number of connections per
pool increased from 256 to 512
(h) Up to 1024 connections per pool are supported for all groups except groups containing only PS4000 arrays.
This provides increased scalability in virtualized environments. These connections may be distributed across a
maximum of 512 volumes.
(i) Volumes automatically created and managed by the NAS Service inside the NAS Reserve pool used by an FS
Series appliance are fully allocated at creation and cannot be thin provisioned. Once those volumes are created
(when the NAS Reserve is created they cannot be shrunk.
2.3 PS Series Storage Array Controllers
Since the EqualLogic PS Series was introduced, there have been several different array models
released with new features, better performance and greater storage capacity. The storage array
controllers were also improved to take advantage of advances in the underlying networking and
storage technologies.
2.3.1 Controller Types in all models prior to PS4100/PS6100
Array controllers can be identified and differentiated by the controller "type" designation. Each
controller type will have a different colored label to help quickly identify the controller type. Table 4
lists each Dell EqualLogic controller along with some characteristics about each.