Dell FluidFS NAS Solutions Administrator's Guide

To access the system, define an IP address that your clients can access. It is recommended that you add this IP address to your DNS server so that clients can access the system using a name in addition to an IP address.

Since the system's architecture is a cluster of two or more controllers, this IP address is a VIP which serves every controller in the cluster. This allows clients to access the system as a single unit, enables the system to perform load balancing between controllers, and additionally allows services to continue even if a controller fails. Clients benefit from the system's high availability and high performance.

Client users access the system through a variety of network topologies. Depending on the physical capabilities of the network infrastructure, the NAS cluster solution:

• Belongs to all LAN or client subnets. From a performance perspective, this is the most optimal configuration. In such network configurations, it is sufficient to define one client access VIP for each subnet.
• Does not belong to any of the LAN or Client subnets, in which case, all clients are considered routed. In such situations, the clients access the data using a router or layer 3 switches. In such network configurations, it is recommended to define multiple client access VIPs in a single subnet, and provide some mechanism for clients to select an IP address from that list.
• Belongs to some of the LAN or Client subnets, in which case some clients are flat and some are routed. In such network configurations it is recommended to use both methods described above, and inform the users about the VIPs they must use, depending on whether they are flat or routed.

It is recommended that you define an entry in the DNS for every subnet that the system belongs to, so that clients can access data without remembering the VIPs. If there are multiple VIPs in the subnet, define a single name in your DNS server that issues IP addresses from that list in a round-robin fashion and that all the clients can access the system.