Technical White Paper Dell EMC PowerScale: Network Design Considerations Abstract This white paper explains design considerations of the Dell EMC™ PowerScale™ external network to ensure maximum performance and an optimal user experience. May 2021 H16463.20 Revisions Revisions Date Description March 2017 Initial rough draft July 2017 Updated after several reviews and posted online November 2017 Updated after additional feedback. Updated title from “Isilon Advanced Networking Fundamentals” to “Isilon Network Design Considerations.” Updated the following sections with additional details: • Link Aggregation • Jumbo Frames • Latency • ICMP & MTU • New sections added: • MTU Framesize Overhead • Ethernet Frame • Network Troubleshooting December 2017 Added link to Network Stack Tuning spreadsheet Added Multi-Chassis Link Aggregation January 2018 Removed switch-specific configuration steps with a note for contacting manufacturer Updated section title for Confirming Transmitted MTUs Added OneFS commands for checking and modifying MTU Updated Jumbo Frames section May 2018 Updated equation for Bandwidth Delay Product August 2018 Added the following sections: • SyncIQ Considerations • SmartConnect Considerations • Access Zones Best Practices August 2018 Minor updates based on feedback and added ‘Source-Based Routing Considerations’ September 2018 Updated links November 2018 Added section ‘Source-Based Routing & DNS’ April 2019 Updated for OneFS 8.2: Added SmartConnect Multi-SSIP June 2019 Updated SmartConnect Multi-SSIP section based on feedback. July 2019 Corrected errors 2 Dell EMC PowerScale: Network Design Considerations | H16463.20 Acknowledgements Date Description August 2019 Updated Ethernet flow control section January 2020 Updated to include 25 GbE as front-end NIC option. April 2020 Added ‘DNS and time-to-live’ section and added ‘SmartConnect Zone Aliases as opposed to CNAMEs’ section. May 2020 Added ‘S3’ section under ‘Protocols and SmartConnect allocation methods’, updated ‘Isilon’ branding to ‘PowerScale’, and added ‘IPMI’ section. June 2020 Added ‘QoS’ and ‘Software-Defined Networking’ sections. Updated the ‘NFSv4’ section with Kerberos and updated the ‘IP Address quantification’ section. July 2020 Added ‘SmartConnect service name’ section. August 2020 Added ‘Isilon 6th generation 1 GbE interfaces’ and ‘VLAN and interface MTU’ sections. Updated ‘IPMI’ section. September 2020 Updated ‘DNS delegation best practices’ and ‘SmartConnect in isolated network environments’ sections. February 2021 Updated ‘IPMI’ section. May 2021 Added IPv6 Router Advertisements and Duplicate Address Detection sections. Acknowledgements Author: Aqib Kazi The information in this publication is provided “as is.” Dell Inc. makes no representations or warranties of any kind with respect to the information in this publication, and specifically disclaims implied warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose. Use, copying, and distribution of any software described in this publication requires an applicable software license. This document may contain certain words that are not consistent with Dell's current language guidelines. Dell plans to update the document over subsequent future releases to revise these words accordingly. This document may contain language from third party content that is not under Dell's control and is not consistent with Dell's current guidelines for Dell's own content. 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[4/27/2021] [Technical White Paper] [H16463.20] 3 Dell EMC PowerScale: Network Design Considerations | H16463.20 Table of contents Table of contents Revisions ..................................................................................................................................................................... 2 Acknowledgements ...................................................................................................................................................... 3 Table of contents ......................................................................................................................................................... 4 Executive summary ...................................................................................................................................................... 8 Note to readers ............................................................................................................................................................ 8 1 Network architecture design ................................................................................................................................... 9 1.1 General network architecture considerations ................................................................................................ 9 1.2 Triangle looped topology ............................................................................................................................ 10 1.3 Link aggregation ......................................................................................................................................... 11 1.3.1 Multi-chassis link aggregation ..................................................................................................................... 12 2 Latency, bandwidth, and throughput .................................................................................................................... 13 2.1 Latency ...................................................................................................................................................... 13 2.2 Bandwidth and throughput .......................................................................................................................... 14 2.2.1 Bandwidth delay product ............................................................................................................................ 14 2.3 PowerScale network stack tuning ............................................................................................................... 15 3 Ethernet flow control ............................................................................................................................................ 17 3.1 Checking for pause frames ......................................................................................................................... 17 3.1.1 4th and 5th generation Isilon nodes .............................................................................................................. 18 3.1.2 6th generation Isilon nodes .......................................................................................................................... 18 4 SyncIQ considerations ......................................................................................................................................... 19 4.1 SyncIQ disaster recovery with SmartConnect ............................................................................................. 19 4.2 Replication traffic over dedicated WAN links ............................................................................................... 19 5 Quality of Service (QoS) ...................................................................................................................................... 20 6 Software-Defined Networking .............................................................................................................................. 21 7 PowerScale OneFS ports .................................................................................................................................... 22 8 SmartConnect considerations .............................................................................................................................. 23 8.1 SmartConnect network hierarchy ................................................................................................................ 23 8.2 Load balancing ........................................................................................................................................... 24 8.3 Static or dynamic IP address allocation ...................................................................................................... 25 8.4 Dynamic failover ......................................................................................................................................... 25 8.4.1 Dynamic failover examples ......................................................................................................................... 26 8.5 Protocols and SmartConnect allocation methods ........................................................................................ 28 8.5.1 SMB ........................................................................................................................................................... 28 8.5.2 NFS ........................................................................................................................................................... 29 4 Dell EMC PowerScale: Network Design Considerations | H16463.20 Table of contents 8.5.3 HDFS 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