Dell PowerFlex Appliance with PowerFlex 3.x Administration Guide

Powering on PowerFlex appliance two-layer cluster

To safely power on the PowerFlex appliance cluster, power on one component at a time in the order specified in this procedure.

1. Power on the network components in the following order:
   NOTE:Network components take about 10 minutes to power on.
   1. Management switch
   2. Access switches
      NOTE:Ping the management IP address of the switches to verify power on is complete.
2. Using the appropriate VMware vSphere web client power on these VMs in the following order:
   1. PowerFlex gateway
   2. Both CloudLink Center VMs.
   3. PowerFlex Manager
3. Power on the PowerFlex appliance nodes by doing the following:
   1. Use SSH to connect to all network switches:
      • To verify that connected interfaces are not in a "not connected/down" state, use the command: show interface status
   2. Use iDRAC to power on all the PowerFlex appliance storage nodes and verify that they are fully booted to the Linux prompt.
   3. Log in to the PowerFlex GUI.

      PowerFlex

      Versions prior to PowerFlex 3.5

      Verify that all software-defined storage (SDS) is online. Verify that all disks are online. In Configuration > Protected domain, select the protected domain, click More > Activate and repeat for each protection domain. Repeat the steps for source and destination, if asynchronous replication is enabled Verify the following if asynchronous replication is enabled Click Protection > SDR. Verify all the SDRs are healthy. Click Protection > Journal Capacity. Ensure journal capacity has already added. Click Protection > RCGs. Verify that the RCG in the replication cluster returns to a working state.

      Verify that all software-defined storage (SDS) is online by noting SDSs widget on the Dashboard. Verify that all disks are online by looking at Backend > Property Sheet > General for each SDS node. Select Backend/Storage > Protection Domain > Activate and repeat for each protection domain. Verify that there are no errors, warning, or alerts on the system. Exit the PowerFlex GUI.

   4. Use iDRAC to power on all the PowerFlex appliance compute nodes and verify that they are fully booted to the VMware ESXi console screen.
   5. Using the VMware vSphere Web Client of the vCenter that manages the PowerFlex appliance cluster:
      1. Take each PowerFlex appliance compute-only node out of maintenance mode.
      2. Enable DRS and HA on the PowerFlex appliance compute-only cluster.
      3. Rescan to rediscover PowerFlex storage datastores.
      4. Power on the customer VMs.