Author: Danilo

Gracefully Shut Down or Reboot a PowerFlex Node shows all the necessary steps to shut down or reboot a PowerFlex Node. Enter the node into maintenance mode and gracefully shut down/reboot it to prepare it for a patching or maintenance operation. This is a common task for a PowerFlex administrator! 1- When shutting down/rebooting a node that is a Primary MDM (manager), it is recommended that you manually switch MDM ownership to a different node.Access the primary node by SSH and check the MDM cluster status: As we can see in the following picture, the Primary MDM node has the…

Introducing PowerFlex File Services is an article that introduces PowerFlex File Services. PowerFlex File Services was introduced in PowerFlex 4.0. This feature enabled file-based access via sharing protocols such as SMB (Server Message Block) and NFS (Network File System), expanding PowerFlex’s capabilities beyond block storage to include file storage functionalities. The PowerFlex cluster can offer File Shares using the SMB and NFS protocols. Before providing these shares, a NAS Server must be running on the system. A NAS Server is a file server that supports the SMB, NFS, FTP, or a combination of these protocols to share data with host…

PowerFlex Manager LDAP Integration shows how to integrate the PowerFlex Manager with LDAP for authentication purposes. Our lab environment has a PowerFlex Manager 4.5.2 and an Active Directory on a Windows Server 2022.The default username to access the PowerFlex Manager UI is “admin.” It is a local username, and its password is created during the deployment. We can create additional local usernames and associate a role for each (SuperUser, SuperAdmin, Monitor, etc). A role is a set of permissions in the system. In addition to local users, we can access the PowerFlex Manager UI using remote users, such as LDAP/Active…

Installing the SDC on Windows shows how to install the SDC software on a Windows-based server. Our Windows system is a Windows Server 2022 Standard, and our PowerFlex Cluster runs on a 4.5.2 version. Both are running on a virtual (nested) environment. 1- Copy the SDC software to the Windows system and execute the installation: Afterward, reboot the system to load the SDC drive on the system’s boot. 2- The SDC configuration is stored on the Windows registry: The “drv_cfg” command line is helpful to perform some tasks under the SDC, as we can see below: 3- Checking available volumes…

Resizing a PowerFlex Volume shows how to resize an existing PowerFlex Volume and the steps necessary to reflect it in the filesystem. Our PowerFlex cluster has version 4.5.2 and runs on a lab (nested) environment.The PowerFlex volume is already mapped to a Linux SDC (there is an EXT4 filesystem). 1- Access the PowerFlex Manager UI –> Block –> Volumes –> Select the volume (in this case, for instance, “Linux-Vol-01” –> Modify –> Resize: 2- We can only increase the size. It is not possible to reduce the volume’s size: Since our volume has 64GB, we will add 32GB more, resulting…

Mounting a PowerFlex Volume on Linux’s SDC Boot shows how to properly configure the /etc/fstab file to mount a PowerFlex Volume during the system’s boot. Our PowerFlex Cluster has the 4.5.2 version and runs on a virtual environment (nested). Our SDC is a Ubuntu-based Linux! 1- The first step is to identify the disk partition to be mounted. In this case, for instance, the disk partition is /dev/scinia1: 2- Next, we need to grab the disk-id absolute path: As we can see in the following output, the absolute disk path for /dev/scinia1 is “/dev/disk/by-id/emc-vol-8c40194f563e090f-29039d3800000001-part1” (this is the information that we…