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BP1024 Scaling and Best Practices for Virtual Workload Environments with the FS7500 4
2 Overview of Dell EqualLogic FS7500 Unified Storage
solution
The FS7500 is a high performance unified storage solution that integrates with new and existing
EqualLogic PS Series storage arrays and enables customers to easily configure and manage iSCSI, CIFS,
and NFS access in a single flexible storage pool using the EqualLogic Group Manager. The unique
scale-out architecture of the solution lets customers expand storage capacity and/or system
performance as needs change over time.
For more information about the FS7500, see the Dell publication, Scalability & Deployment Best
Practices for the Dell EqualLogic FS7500 NAS System as a File Share Solution at
http://en.community.dell.com/techcenter/storage/w/wiki/equallogic-fs7500-nas-scalability-and-
deployment.aspx.
2.1 EqualLogic FS7500 in virtualized environment
Using a NAS based NFS datastore for a VMware virtual environment provides ease of implementation
and management benefits. The VMware hypervisor handles datastore provisioning and mapping in
much the same way that users connect to folders on a shared NAS file server. No specialized training
is required for this option, and it reduces administrative overhead. NAS-based datastores in a VMware
environment provide most of the basic functionality of block-based storage volumes.
The highly-scalable FS7500 can easily handle a growing virtualized environment without costly fork-
lift upgrades or unnecessary downtime. The FS7500 ensures that whichever storage protocol you
choose, CIFS or NFS, your performance will scale linearly as you add additional capacity.
Advantages such as ease of use of NAS, lower cost per port, increased scalability of NAS storage
devices, have resulted in wider adoption of NAS storage in the virtualized data center.
2.2 Architecture and Setup
The EqualLogic FS7500 is a unified storage solution that supports both block based iSCSI SAN and file
based NAS. The VMware environment can choose to deploy file or block or a combination of both for
storage access. Figure 1 shows a high-level architecture of a VMware virtualized environment with
unified storage. Storage connectivity details are abstracted in the figure.