Technical information

June 2012 Dell EqualLogic Configuration Guide v13.2 78
6 FS Series File Level Operations
In this section we provide an overview of key FS Series Appliance features along with some operational
limits. Please refer to the
NAS Service Management Tasks
section of the EqualLogic PS Series Group
Administration Manual (version 5.1 or later) for detailed descriptions and all administrative task
procedures.
6.1 NAS Service
The NAS service is the logical run-time container in which one or more NAS file systems are created.
From the point of view of NAS clients, the NAS Service is a virtual file server that hosts multiple CIFS
shares or NFS exports. A single instance of the NAS service runs in an FS7500 cluster. You can only
have one NAS Service per EqualLogic group. NAS clients connect to file systems through a single NAS
service IP address. Client connections are load balanced across the available NAS nodes in the cluster.
When you configure a NAS service, you specify the network configuration for the service and the
amount of storage pool space consumed by the NAS Reserve.
6.2 NAS Reserve
The NAS reserve is the storage space allocated to the NAS Service from an EqualLogic PS Series
storage pool. The NAS reserve has the following properties:
• It resides within a single EqualLogic storage pool. Only one storage pool in the EqualLogic
storage group can be used for allocating the NAS reserve.
• It is formatted with the Dell FluidFS.
• A fixed amount of storage space in the pool (250GB per controller node pair) is consumed by
NAS service metadata. You should add 250GB per controller node pair to the calculated size of
the NAS Reserve to compensate for this.
• The NAS reserve can be expanded later when more storage pool space is available.
• At the array level, the NAS reserve is comprised of a variable number of automatically created
volumes (from a minimum of two volumes up to a maximum of 34). The actual number of
storage volumes created within the pool depends on the reserve size setting.
Note: You cannot decrease the size of a NAS Reserve once it has been created.
6.2.1 Relationship between PS Series Groups, Pools and NAS Reserve
The relationships are illustrated in Figure 29. As shown in the figure, the NAS Reserve pool can exist in
a group hosting a single pool, or in a group hosting up to three other pools simultaneously.