Release Notes

Application considerations
17 Dell EMC SC Series: Performance and Availability | 4024-BP-SC
4 Application considerations
This section presents best practices for optimizing SC Series storage with certain applications.
4.1 VMware
Dell EMC has a robust set of best practices for SC Series systems when implementing VMware
®
applications.
Find the latest resources at SC Series technical documents and videos.
4.1.1 Virtual Volumes
SC Series storage supports VMware
®
vSphere
®
Virtual Volumes™ (vVols) through Dell Storage Manager. For
vVol best practices, refer to the document Dell EMC SC Series and VMware vSphere Virtual Volumes Best
Practices on SC Series technical documents and videos
4.2 Transactional applications
SC Series systems require high concurrency to deliver the maximum performance (IOPS). Therefore, it is a
best practice to set HBAs to a large queue depth initially. For systems that are configured with many hosts or
volumes, host HBA settings may need to be adjusted to throttle a server that is generating a significant
amount of I/O that affects the performance of other servers. Consult the documentation for your OS or HBA to
adjust queue depth settings.
4.3 Sequential applications
For workloads which require high bandwidth for sequential streaming data, use all front-end ports available.
A system fully populated with front-end and back-end ports allows for maximum bandwidth to be achieved. It
may also be beneficial to fully provision the volumes before using them. This fully allocates the capacity
before application use, in a consistent manner, which can improve subsequent sequential access.
It is not recommended to fully allocate volumes that will be used with snapshots or replication, which can lead
to inefficient use of capacity within the system.
Thick provisioning can be achieved by preallocating the volume in Dell Storage Manager.