Administrator Guide

Feature Description
Client authentication Controls access to files using local and remote client authentication, including LDAP, Active
Directory, and NIS.
Quota rules Control client space usage.
File security style Choice of file security mode for a NAS volume (UNIX, Windows, or Mixed).
Storage Center Data progression Automatic migration of inactive data to less-expensive drives.
Storage Center Dynamic capacity Thin-provisions the block-level storage allocated to the NAS pool and NAS volumes and
consumes space only when writes occur.
Cache mirroring The write cache is mirrored between NAS controllers, which ensures a high-performance
response to client requests and maintains data integrity in the event of a NAS controller failure.
Journaling mode In the event of a NAS controller failure, the cache in the peerg NAS controller is written to
storage and the peer NAS controller continues to write directly to storage, which protects against
data loss.
Backup power supply Maintains data integrity in the event of a power failure by keeping a NAS controller online long
enough to write the cache to the internal storage device.
NAS volume thin clones Clones NAS volumes without needing to physically copy the data set.
Deduplication Policy-driven post-process deduplication technology that eliminates redundant data at rest.
Compression LZPS (Level Zero Processing System) compression algorithm that intelligently shrinks data at
rest.
Metadata protection Metadata is constantly checksummed and stored in multiple locations on both the FS Series
appliance and within the Storage Centers for data consistency and protection.
Snapshots Redirect-on-write snapshots that are user-accessible over the network.
Replication NAS volume-level, snapshot-based, asynchronous replication to remote FluidFS clusters to enable
disaster recovery.
NDMP backup Snapshot-based, asynchronous, two-way backup (direct NDMP), or three-way backup (remote
NDMP) over Ethernet to certified third-party backup solutions.
Antivirus scanning SMB antivirus scanning offloading using certified third-party, Internet Content Adaptation
Protocol (ICAP)-enabled antivirus solutions.
Monitoring Built-in performance monitoring and capacity planning.
Overview of the FS8600 Hardware
Scale-out NAS consists of one to six FS8600 appliances configured as a FluidFS cluster. Each NAS appliance is a rack-mounted 2U
chassis that contains two hot-swappable NAS controllers in an active-active configuration. In a NAS appliance, the second NAS controller
with which one NAS controller is paired is called the peer controller. Scale-out NAS supports expansion, that is, you can start with one
NAS appliance and add NAS appliances to the FluidFS cluster as needed to increase performance.
NAS appliance numbers start at 1 and NAS controller numbers start at 0. Appliance 1 contains Controller 0 and Controller 1, Appliance 2
contains Controller 2 and Controller 3, and so on. To identify the physical hardware displayed in Storage Manager, you must match the
service tag shown in Storage Manager with the service tag printed on a sticker on the front-right side of the NAS appliance.
The following FS8600 appliance configurations are available. All NAS appliances in a FluidFS cluster must use the same configuration—
mixing 1GbE and 10GbE, or Fibre Channel and iSCSI, is not supported.
• 1Gb Ethernet client connectivity with 8Gb Fibre Channel back‐end connectivity to the Storage Center
• 10Gb Ethernet client connectivity with 8Gb Fibre Channel back‐end connectivity to the Storage Center
• 10Gb Ethernet client connectivity with 10Gb Ethernet iSCSI back‐end connectivity to the Storage Center
NOTE:
There are two RAM configurations for the 10GbE models - 24GB and 48GB, which should not be mixed in the
same appliance, but can be mixed in the cluster.
FluidFS Administration 325