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Dell Customer Communication - Confidential about the PowerStore

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Volume 6
PowerStore Bulletin June 2023

Welcome The following are some of the new features and

enhancements that have been introduced for PowerStore
We are pleased to introduce the sixth edition of the
in version 3.5.
PowerStore Bulletin. This technical newsletter is produced
by the PowerStore Engineering Technical Services team. Hardware
Our goal is to provide the PowerStore community with
• PowerStoreOS 3.5.0.0 only supports PowerStore
information about product releases, best practices, and
T model types. PowerStore X will no longer be
product tips.
supported.
Mobility/Import
Recommended Code Release
• Provides customers the ability to backup volumes
Dell has established recommended code versions for directly from PowerStore to Data Domain, either
PowerStore to ensure stable and reliable environments. As physical or virtual and located on premise or in the
a best practice, Dell recommends that you operate at the cloud (virtual only).
recommended code levels for your PowerStore. There
may be features, enhancements or fixes in newer code PowerStore Manager (GUI)
that may benefit or be required for a specific environment.
Dell Technologies Support Services can provide you with • Provides a generic OEM-ready version of
guidance. Unless otherwise directed, continue to use the PowerStore Manager.
current target code for upgrades. Our target code is a
• Through PowerStore Manager and REST, users
highly trusted and recommended code release that is
can now manage file share permissions (ACLs).
evaluated against criteria including runtime time in field,
number of installations, quality metrics, etc. • Added visual information to the Local Connectivity
and Metro Connectivity options in the Host
https://PowerStoreKB175213
Connectivity settings for ESXi hosts with Fibre
PowerStoreOS Release Date Release Notes Target Code Channel or iSCSI initiators.
1.0.3.0.5.007 Dec. 2020
2.1.1.0-1649887 May 2022 Release Notes Data Protection
2.1.1.1-1690550 May 2022 Release Notes
• Support for Secure Snapshots: These are
3.0.0.1-1756676 Aug 2022 Release Notes
immutable and secure snapshots that cannot be
3.2.0.0-1828615 Dec 2022 Release Notes
deleted prior to their expiration date.
3.2.0.1-1860013 Jan 2023 Release Notes YES
3.2.1.0-1989710 April 2023 Release Notes • Metro Volume has some added UI enhancements
3.5.0.0-2050321 May 2023 Release Notes to help guide customers on selecting appropriate
host connectivity options.

1
 Dell Customer Communication - Confidential
Support
• Support now has a script/tool for capacity
accounting that provides them an indicator that
the data is potentially encrypted/pre-compressed
and allows service to report on it.
• Provides multi-factor authentication. Highly
secure, yet simple and familiar to users, MFA
shields PowerStore from hackers and mitigates
poor password protection from users.
Storage-File
• Introduction of a Recycle bin: This feature will
allow PowerStore users the ability to retrieve
deleted resources like volumes or snapshots from
the recycle bin.
• Support for Fail-Safe Networking: Provides a high
availability feature that extends a port/link failure
into the network stack by providing switch-level
redundancy support.
• Increased NAS capabilities that vary by model,
but include up to 4x more snapshots per
appliance, up to 4x more file systems, and up to
5x more NAS servers per appliance.
• Enterprise level scalability with higher limits for
file systems, volumes, vVols, and more.
• Merged the independent limits for file systems,
volumes, and vVols into a single pool to support
per object scale growth.
• Added the ability to manage the permissions of
an SMB share using the PowerStore REST API
or PowerStore Manager.
Security
• PowerStore has been STIG-hardened to meet
the security requirements of the US Federal
Government.
• Support for third party certifications for VMware
VASA: Allows customers to use their 3rd party
certs to replace the self-signed
certificates PowerStore VASA currently uses
today.
• PowerStoreOS 3.5 is compliant with USGv6
Revision 1 (USGv6-r1).
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Introducing System Health Check
SHC: System Health Check
The PowerStoreOS package has included a new System
Health Check (SHC) tool since PowerStoreOS 2.0. Starting
from PowerStoreOS 2.1, stand-alone health check thin
packages have been supported. This thin package adds
essential validations that are performed by the SHC feature
to monitor the health of the PowerStore cluster. Prompt
installation of the package is essential for ensuring optimal
system health.
The System Health Check tool is most useful in the
following use cases:
• Before an upgrade of the system is performed.
Software upgrades may be blocked until the
validations for the Upgrade Extensions profile in
the Health Check thin package are performed. For
more information about all health checks to be
applied prior to an upgrade, see:
https://NDU_health_checks
• Before maintenance operations. This is important
to ensure there are no latent conditions that may
cause the maintenance operation to fail or result
in undesirable side effects.
• Periodically to monitor general system health.
You can read more about how to use the System Health
Check feature here:
https://how_to_use_system_health_check
You can view the landing page for all available system
health checks here:
https://landing_page_for_system_health_checks
 Dell Customer Communication - Confidential
PowerStore Upgrade Readiness
The following should be adhered to when planning for a
non-disruptive upgrade (NDU) within the PowerStore
environment.
Pre-Upgrade Health Check
• Perform a Health Check of the PowerStore
appliance(s) being upgraded at least 7 days prior
to the scheduled upgrade event.
• PowerStore offers two tools to help you check the
health of your system pre-NDU. There is the Pre-
Upgrade Health Check (PUHC) tool, and there is
the System Health Check (SHC) which is an
integrated utility that has been shipped with
upgrade packages starting from PowerStoreOS
2.0. Details about how to run these tools and how
to best prepare for a PowerStore NDU can be
found here: https://support.emc.com/kb/183630
• Review and ERROR and WARNING messages
raised during the Pre-Upgrade Health Check and
address each accordingly. Consult Dell
Technologies Support Services for assistance.
• Review the overall health state for each node in
the appliance even if a green check mark is
present indicating health of the node is OK. See
https://PowerStoreHealthCheck
Outstanding Alerts
• Log into PowerStore Manager of the appliance
being upgraded and review any outstanding alerts
present by selecting the Monitoring tab.
• Determine if any alerts are outstanding that
require attention. Review alerts with a Critical,
Major, or Minor severity. If possible, attempt to
rectify any raised alerts reported.
• Consult the Events and Alerts Reference Guide for
actions to resolve outstanding alerts.
• If needed, contact Dell Technologies Support
Services for assistance with evaluating and
addressing any outstanding alerts prior to
proceeding with the upgrade.
3
Knowledge Base Articles
Knowledge Base articles have been published to address
how to, best practices, known issues for specific
PowerStore environments. You can access these KB’s
through the following link and in many cases, these are in
multiple languages.
• This article provides information regarding the
potential for increased wear levels on SSDs in
PowerStore v3.0.0 code: https://wear_levels
• This article provides information on how to use
the new System Health Check feature to check
system health: https://system_health_check
• This article covers the Dell PowerStore family
security update for multiple vulnerabilities:
https://DSA-2023-129
• This article covers the Dell PowerStore family
security update for VMware Vulnerabilities:
https://DSA-2023-038
• This article tells you what to do if the Pre-Upgrade
Health Check (PUHC) detects that the
maintenance window has not been configured:
https://PUHC_no_maintenance_window
• This article tells you what to do if the System
Health Check detects lack of space in /cyc node:
https://SHC_no_space_in_cyc_node
Host Configuration Guide
This document provides the latest guidelines and best
practices on attaching and configuring external hosts to
PowerStore systems. It includes information on topics such
as multipathing, zoning, and timeouts.
https://PowerStoreHCG
The PowerStore Host Configuration Guide document is
planned to be decommissioned soon. Following this
change, PowerStore Host Configuration Guide content will
only be available within the E-Lab Host Connectivity Guide
documents. E-Lab Host Connectivity Guide documents
can be found on the E-Lab Interoperability Navigator site
located at:
https://elabnavigator.dell.com/eln/hostConnectivity.
 Dell Customer Communication - Confidential

PowerStore Simple Support Matrix PowerStore Hyper-V Best Practices

This article provides tips for integrating external VMware
Simple Support Matrices are produced through extensive
vSphere hosts with Dell PowerStore storage:
testing by Dell E-Lab. The PowerStore SSM is a
configuration summary. The versions listed represents the Https://Hyper-V
supported Platform / Operating Systems, information on
Backup & NDMP applications, Limits, Replication, Anti-
Virus, Dell Technologies Ecosystem, Third-Party
Ecosystem, Migration and VMware licensing / support,
CloudIQ for PowerStore Monitoring
Refer to this link for the latest version July 25, 2022: CloudIQ AIOps, the proactive monitoring and predictive
https://PowerStore-Simple-Support-Matrix analytics app that comes with your ProSupport contract,
has been enriched for PowerStore with security advisories
and capacity anomaly detection (a.k.a., short-term capacity
prediction), and more!
Performance / Best Practices
Learn more with these short CloudIQ videos
XCOPY: Performance boost. • Storage Expert Explains CloudIQ
https://CloudIQ
There has been a performance boost for customers utilizing
• Storage Capacity Planning Demo
the VMware VAAI (VMware Array API Integration) primitive
https://Capacity_Planning
known as XCOPY.
• Storage Performance Monitoring Demo
XCOPY can be used to offload operations like migration or https://Performance_Monitoring
cloning of virtual machines to the array instead of • CloudIQ Cybersecurity Monitoring Demo
consuming vSphere resources. XCOPY enables the https://Cybersecurity_Monitoring
storage arrays to make full copies of data within the array
without having the host HBAs read and write the data. And see the new features list
PowerStore XCOPY implementation is a metadata-copy
operation instead of full data-copy operation and only https://new_features
updates mapping-pointers of the Logical Block Address
(LBAs). XCOPY operations also impact regular host IO
serviced by the storage array. This is because XCOPY
From Itzik Reich’s Blog
operations received from ESXi servers are large and bursty. Itzik Reich is Dell VP of Technologies for PowerStore. In
these blogs he focuses on PowerStore technologies and
PowerStore’s Quality-of-Service functionality regulates
feature rich capabilities.
XCOPY operations to keep impact on regular host IOs at a
minimum. XCOPY operations are split into smaller pieces,
What’s new with PowerStore
which are still big enough to be very efficient, but small
enough to complete very quickly, allowing host IOs to be
served when needed. PowerStore can achieve high • In this article PowerStore discusses Dell
throughput for XCOPY operations with this autonomous Container Storage Modules (CSM) 1.6 -
QoS functionality and efficient implementation of XCOPY PowerStore Resiliency
operations. https://CSM1.6

• In this article PowerStore discusses integrating

PowerStore VMware vSphere Best Practices Dell AppSync 4.6 with PowerStore for
This article provides best practices for configuring Microsoft Kubernetes Copy Data Management
Windows Server Hyper-V to perform optimally with Dell https://AppSyncIntegration
PowerStore storage:

https://VMware • In this article PowerStore discusses what’s new

in PowerStoreOS release 3.5.0.0
https://New_in_PowerStore_3.5.0.0