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9 BP1038| Best Practices and Guidelines for Integrating the Dell EqualLogic FS7600 and FS7610 into an Existing SAN
4 Lab test objectives
There are a few considerations that need to be made to ensure that the FS7600 and FS7610 can be
properly integrated into an existing SAN. While the physical connections are very similar to any other host
attached to the EqualLogic SAN, the SAN administrator also needs to consider the requirements of the FS
Series appliance such as capacity and pool configuration as well as performance before and after
integrating into an existing SAN.
This study investigated the following points:
• The performance impact of adding file I/O to an existing block-based SAN with additional hosts
attached
• The performance impact of mixing block and file I/O in the same pool versus separate pools
• The effect of the I/O request size and the MTU size used on the client-side network.
The results presented in this paper can be used as a guideline to help you determine the right answers for
your own environment.