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11 BP1038| Best Practices and Guidelines for Integrating the Dell EqualLogic FS7600 and FS7610 into an Existing SAN
was used for the client network. Some initial tests were run with both standard and jumbo frames but for
the test cases, no significant difference was found so the standard MTU was used for all subsequent test
scenarios. The standard MTU size of 1500 is also the most commonly used for typical client networks.
The EqualLogic iSCSI SAN consisted of eight PS Series arrays configured for RAID 10. Initially a single pool
with all eight array members was created. Both block hosts and the FS Series controllers accessed
volumes in this pool. Later two separate pools were created, each with four array members. The FS Series
controllers then accessed volumes in the first pool, and the block hosts accessed volumes in the second
pool.
For SAN (block I/O) testing, 16 100GB volumes were created on the SAN and one volume was presented
to each of the 16 Linux VMs as iSCSI volumes. Each Linux VM had two virtual NICs for iSCSI SAN access,
had the Linux Host Integration Toolkit installed to enable multi-path I/O (MPIO). For file I/O (CIFS and
NFS), two file system mount points were created (one each for CIFS and NFS access) on the FS7600 or
FS7610 which was then mounted from each of the VM clients.
A Vdbench script was created that generated I/O at the desired block size (or I/O request size) and was run
for a specific amount of time. The results were then collected and analyzed.