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DELL/EMC CX SERIES INITIAL CONFIGURATION BEST PRACTICES PLANNING

Abstract This white paper provides basic best practice recommendations for Dell/EMC CX Series® storage system settings. The recommendations provide parameters that will apply to 80 percent of the configurations installed. February 2007

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Dell/EMC CX Series Initial Configuration Best Practices Planning

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CONTENTS Executive summary.............................................................................................5 Introduction..........................................................................................................6 Audience........................................................................................................................................6

General hardware ...............................................................................................6 Drive type differentiation................................................................................................................6 RAID groups..................................................................................................................................7 RAID group general ..................................................................................................................7 RAID group settings...................................................................................................................8 LUNs..............................................................................................................................................9 LUN creation settings................................................................................................................9 Special LUN considerations....................................................................................................10 LUN expansion: MetaLUNs.....................................................................................................10 RAID type to file type match....................................................................................................11 Application profiles...................................................................................................................11 Drive count...............................................................................................................................13 Drive types...............................................................................................................................13 Hot spares...................................................................................................................................13 Drive type.................................................................................................................................13 Vault and configuration drives.....................................................................................................14 Simple and efficient storage system configurations....................................................................14 Storage Groups.....................................................................................................