PowerScale OneFS 9.8.0.0 Web Administration Guide

Node components

As a rack mountable appliance, a PowerScale storage node includes the following components in a 1U, 2U, or 4U rack-mountable chassis with an LCD front panel: CPUs, RAM, NVRAM or M.2 for journal, network adapters and interfaces, disk controllers, and storage media. PowerScale cluster is made up of three or more nodes, up to 252. The 4U chassis, and 4 nodes per 4U chassis, applies to Generation 6 and PowerScale Archive and Hybrid node types.. There are four nodes in one 4U chassis in Generation 6; therefore, a quarter chassis makes up one node.

When you add a node to a supported PowerScale cluster, you increase the aggregate disk, cache, CPU, RAM, and network capacity. OneFS groups RAM into a single coherent cache so that a data request on a node benefits from data that is cached anywhere. NVRAM is grouped to write data with high throughput and to protect write operations from power failures. As the cluster expands, spindles and CPU combine to increase throughput, capacity, and input-output operations per second (IOPS). The minimum cluster for Generation 6 and PowerScale Archive and Hybrid are four nodes. Generation 6, PowerScale Archive and Hybrid, and PowerScale F210 and F710 (with the introduction of the SDPM and the use of VOSS), do not use NVRAM. Instead, journals are stored in RAM and M.2 flash is used for a backup if there is a node failure.

The PowerScale F200, F210, F600, and F710 nodes are 1U models that require a minimum cluster size of three nodes. PowerScale F900 nodes are 2U models that require a minimum cluster size of three nodes. Clusters can be expanded to a maximum of 252 nodes in single node increments.

There are several types of nodes, all of which can be added to a cluster to balance capacity and performance with throughput or IOPS:

The following Dell Technologies PowerScale nodes improve performance: