h18116 Dell Powerstore Vmware Vsphere Best Practices - 2

Dell PowerStore: VMware vSphere Best Practices
May 2024
H18116.7
White Paper
Abstract
This document provides best practices for integrating VMware vSphere
hosts with Dell PowerStore.
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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.
Copyright © 2020–2024 Dell Inc. or its subsidiaries. All Rights Reserved. Published in the USA May 2024 H18116.7.
Dell Inc. believes the information in this document is accurate as of its publication date. The information is subject to change
without notice.
2 Dell PowerStore: VMware vSphere Best Practices

Contents
Contents
Executive summary.......................................................................................................................4
Introduction ...................................................................................................................................5
Host configuration ........................................................................................................................6
NVMe over Fabric (NVMe-oF) .......................................................................................................9
Sizing and performance optimization ........................................................................................16
Management and monitoring......................................................................................................20
Data protection and disaster recovery ......................................................................................26
References ...................................................................................................................................32
Dell PowerStore: VMware vSphere Best Practices 3

Executive summary
Executive summary
Introduction This document provides recommendations, tips, and other helpful guidelines for
integrating external VMware vSphere hosts with the Dell PowerStore platform.
Audience This document is intended for IT administrators, storage architects, partners, and Dell
Technologies employees. This audience also includes any individuals who may evaluate,
acquire, manage, operate, or design a Dell Technologies networked storage environment
using PowerStore systems.
Revisions Part number/

Date Description
revision
April 2020 H18116 Initial release PowerStoreOS 1.0
April 2021 H18116.1 Updates for PowerStoreOS 2.0
January 2022 H18116.2 Updates for PowerStoreOS 2.1. Document template

update.
July 2022 H18116.3 Updates for PowerStoreOS 3.0
December 2022 H18116.4 Updates for PowerStoreOS 3.2 and vSphere 8
May 2023 H18116.5 Updates for PowerStoreOS 3.5: Secure snapshots and
PowerStore backup to PowerProtect DD series
appliances
October 2023 H19163.6 Updates for PowerStoreOS 3.6
May 2024 H19163.7 Updates for PowerStoreOS 4.0

Removed references to PowerStore X
We value your Dell Technologies and the authors of this document welcome your feedback on this
feedback document. Contact the Dell Technologies team by email.
Author: Darin Schmitz
Contributor: Jason Boche
Note: For links to other documentation for this topic, see the PowerStore Info Hub.

Introduction
Introduction
PowerStore PowerStore is a robust and flexible storage solution that is ideal for use with VMware
overview vSphere.
PowerStore achieves new levels of operational simplicity and agility. It uses a container-
based microservices architecture, advanced storage technologies, and integrated
machine learning to unlock the power of your data. PowerStore is a versatile platform with
a performance-centric design that delivers multidimensional scale, always-on data
reduction, and support for next-generation media.
PowerStore brings the simplicity of public cloud to on-premises infrastructure, streamlining

operations with an integrated machine-learning engine and seamless automation. It also
offers predictive analytics to easily monitor, analyze, and troubleshoot the environment.
PowerStore is highly adaptable, providing the flexibility to host specialized workloads
directly on the appliance and modernize infrastructure without disruption. It also offers
investment protection through flexible payment solutions and data-in-place upgrades.
.
vSphere VMware vSphere is the industry-leading virtualization platform and a core building block to
overview the software-defined data center (SDDC). VMware vSphere is primarily composed of
vCenter for management and ESXi hosts that provide the hypervisor for compute and
memory virtualization.
Prerequisite Before implementing the best practices in this document, we recommend reviewing and
reading implementing the recommended configurations in the Dell Technologies Host Connectivity
Guide and reviewing other resources available at Dell.com/powerstoredocs.
Terminology The following table provides definitions for some of the terms that are used in this
document.
Table 1. Terminology
Term Definition
Appliance The solution containing a base enclosure and attached expansion

enclosures. The size of an appliance could include only the base
enclosure or the base enclosure plus expansion enclosures.
Base enclosure The enclosure containing both nodes (node A and node B) and the
NVMe drive slots.
Cluster Multiple PowerStore appliances in a single grouping.
Expansion enclosure An enclosure that can be attached to a base enclosure to provide

additional SAS-based drive slots.
Node The component within the base enclosure that contains processors
and memory. Each appliance consists of two nodes.
NVM Express over NVMe command fabric which includes Fibre Channel and TCP/IP
Fabrics (NVMe-oF) transport protocols, among others.
NVMe over Fibre Allows hosts to access storage systems across a network fabric
Channel (NVMe/FC) with the NVMe protocol using Fibre Channel as the underlying
transport.

Host configuration
Term Definition
NVMe over TCP Allows hosts to access storage systems across a network fabric
(NVMe/TCP) with the NVMe protocol using TCP as the underlying transport.
PowerStore Manager The web-based user interface (UI) for storage management.
Host configuration
Introduction While most settings for stand-alone ESXi hosts that are connected to PowerStore
appliances can remain at the default values, some changes are required for PowerStore
stability, performance, and efficiency. The recommended changes and instructions about
how to set them are specified in the document Dell Technologies Host Connectivity
Guide. While administrators can use this section for high-level explanations and reasoning
behind the recommendations, administrators should always consult the Host Connectivity
Guide for the current settings.
Note: The Virtual Storage Integrator (VSI) allows administrators to easily configure the ESXi host
best-practice settings with PowerStore. See Virtual Storage Integrator for more details.
Queue depth There are multiple locations in ESXi and the guest operating systems to modify queue
depth. While increasing the queue depth in an application, vSCSI device, or ESXi driver
module can potentially increase performance, modifying or increasing queue depths can
potentially overwhelm the array. For details about queue-depth settings, see the
document Dell Technologies Host Connectivity Guide.
Timeouts Setting disk timeouts is an important factor for applications to survive both unexpected
and expected node outages, such as failures or rebooting for updates. While the default
SCSI timeout in most applications and operating systems is 30 seconds, storage vendors
(including Dell Technologies) and application vendors typically recommend increasing
these timeouts to 60 seconds or more to help ensure uptime. Two of the main locations to
change the timeouts are at the ESXi host level and at the virtual-machine-guest-OS level.
For details about setting timeouts for ESXi, see the Dell Technologies Host Connectivity
Guide.
ESXi host timeouts

The timeout values set at the ESXi-host-driver level help ensure that the hosts and virtual
machines can survive a storage node failover event. For details about setting timeouts for
ESXi, see the Dell Technologies Host Connectivity Guide.
Guest operating system timeouts

If VMware Tools are installed into a guest operating system, they automatically set the
timeout values. However, if the guest operating system does not have VMware Tools
installed, the administrator can set these values manually. While VMware documentation
has examples for setting the disk timeouts in Microsoft Windows guest operating systems,
consult the knowledge bases from operating system vendors to obtain specific guest
settings.

Host configuration
Multipathing With the vSphere Pluggable Storage Architecture (PSA), the storage protocol determines
which Multipathing Plugin (MPP) is assigned to volumes mapped from the PowerStore
array. With SCSI-based protocols such as Fibre Channel and iSCSI, the Native
Multipathing Plug-in (NMP) is used, whereas with NVMe-oF, the VMware High
Performance Plug-in (HPP) is used.
Native Multipathing Plug-in

SCSI-based volumes using Fibre Channel and iSCSI are automatically assigned the
Native Multipathing Plug-in (NMP). However, the ESXi Storage Array Type Plug-in
(SATP) module and its corresponding path selection policy (PSP) may require you to
configure claim rules to use Round Robin (RR) with PowerStore appliances. Applying the
settings in the Dell Technologies Host Connectivity Guide ensures that all volumes
presented to the host use Round Robin as the default pathing policy.
Also, the recommended esxcli command sets the IOPS path-change condition to one I/O
per path. While the default setting in the RR PSP sends 1,000 IOPS down each path
before switching to the next path, this recommended setting instructs ESXi to send one
command down each path. This setting results in better utilization of each path’s
bandwidth, which is useful for applications that send large I/O block sizes to the array.
According to the Dell Technologies Host Connectivity Guide, SSH to each ESXi host
using root credentials to issue the following command (reboot required):
esxcli storage nmp satp rule add -c tpgs_on -e "PowerStore" -M

PowerStore -P VMW_PSP_RR -O iops=1 -s VMW_SATP_ALUA -t vendor -V
DellEMC
The claim rule can also be added to discovered ESXi hosts using VMware PowerCLI:
Note: The following commands are for vSphere 7 and 8 ESXi hosts. ESXi 6.7 hosts should also
include the disable_action_OnRetryErrors option. See the Dell Technologies Host Connectivity
Guide for more information.
# Add or remove a claim rule on each vSphere host

$esxlist | ForEach-Object {
$esxcli = Get-EsxCli -VMHost $_ -V2
# Fill the hash table (optional params are not required)

$sRule = @{
satp = 'VMW_SATP_ALUA' #esxcli: -s
psp = 'VMW_PSP_RR' #esxcli: -P
pspoption = 'iops=1' #esxcli: -O
claimoption = 'tpgs_on' #esxcli: -c
#option = 'disable_action_OnRetryErrors' #esxcli: -o
vendor = 'DellEMC' #esxcli: -V
model = 'PowerStore' #esxcli: -M
description = 'PowerStore' #esxcli: -e
}
# Call the esxcli command to add/remove the rule

Host configuration
Write-Host $selection "rule on" $_

$esxcli.storage.nmp.satp.rule.$selection.Invoke($sRule)
High Performance Plug-in

For NVMe-oF targets, the High Performance Plug-in (HPP) replaces the NMP. The HPP
will claim NVMe devices and is designed to improve storage performance for modern
high-speed interfaces.
The HPP has multiple Path Selection Schemes (PSS) available to determine which
physical paths are used for I/O requests. Load Balance – IOPs (LB-IOPS) is the preferred
Path Selection Scheme as recommended by the Dell Technologies Host Connectivity
Guide. In addition, the LB-IOPS path switching frequency should be changed from the
default value of 1,000 to 1.
using root credentials to issue the following command (reboot required):
esxcli storage core claimrule add -u -t vendor --nvme-controller-

model "dellemcpowerstore" -P HPP -g "pss=LB-IOPS,iops=1"
For more information about NVMe-oF and the High Performance Plug-in, see the
following resources on the VMware website:
• VMware NVMe Concepts

• VMware High Performance Plug-In and Path Selection Schemes
• Requirements and Limitations of VMware NVMe Storage
Operating While most versions of VMFS are backwards-compatible, it is a best practice to verify and
system disk use the latest version of VMFS recommended by VMware. Typically, new VMFS versions
formats are bundled with an ESXi upgrade. As a migration path, VMware vCenter allows
administrators to use VMware vSphere Storage vMotion to migrate virtual machines to
new VMFS datastores formatted with the latest version.

NVMe over Fabric (NVMe-oF)
Figure 1. Example of datastore properties showing the VMFS version
Introduction NVMe over Fibre Channel support was introduced in vSphere 7.0 and PowerStoreOS 2.0.
NVMe over TCP support was introduced with vSphere 7.0 Update 3 and PowerStoreOS
2.1.
NVMe-oF vVols PowerStoreOS 3.0 introduced NVMe-vVol host connectivity supporting NVMe/FC vVols.
NVMe-oF vVols is a new specification which introduces VASA 4.0 and vVols 3.0. This
new specification requires HBAs and fabric switches that are NVMe capable, to extend
the volumes from the array to the host. VMware added the corresponding NVMe-oF vVol
support in vSphere 8.0.
Support for NVMe/TCP vVols was introduced with PowerStoreOS 3.6 and VMware
vSphere 8.0 Update 1. NVMe/TCP yields high fibre channel-like performance at Ethernet
prices. Customers of any size can benefit from this feature by delivering enterprise level
performance for demanding application requirements.
Note: TCP ports 8009 and 4420 must be open for discovery and data respectively. In addition, the
ESXi host time must be synchronized with PowerStore. Time synchronization can be automated
using NTP or PTP for vSphere and NTP for PowerStore.

Figure 2. Enabling NVMe over TCP on a VMkernel port in the vSphere Client
Figure 3. Adding an NVMe over TCP adapter in the vSphere Client
Figure 4. Using PowerStore Manager to configure a PowerStore host with an NVMe vVol
initiator

Figure 5. Using PowerStore Manager to create an NVMe vVol Storage Container
Note: With NVMe-oF vVols, there is no physical Protocol Endpoint (PE): the PE is now a logical
object representation of the ANA group where the vVols reside. Until a VM is powered on, the vPE
does not exist. When a VM is powered on, the vPE is created so the host can access the vVols in
the ANA group. For more information, see What’s New with vSphere 8 Core Storage.
NVMe/FC host When configuring an ESXi host for NVMe/FC, before you add it to a PowerStore
configurations appliance or cluster, you must change the NVMe Qualified Name (NQN), which is similar
to an iSCSI Qualified Name (IQN), to the UUID format.
using root credentials, and issue the following command (reboot required):
esxcli system module parameters set -m vmknvme -p

vmknvme_hostnqn_format=0
To verify the host NQN was generated correctly after the reboot, use the following
command:

esxcli nvme info get
Also, you must enable NVMe support on the NVMe-capable HBAs.
According to the Dell Technologies Host Connectivity Guide, depending on the NVMe
HBA installed, issue the following commands with root privileges (reboot required):
For Marvell NVMe HBAs:
esxcli system module parameters set -p ql2xnvmesupport=1 -m

qlnativefc
For Emulex NVMe HBAs:
esxcli system module parameters set -m lpfc -p

lpfc_enable_fc4_type=3
Note: You must change the host NQN format parameter before adding the host in PowerStore
Manager. Changing the vmknvme_hostnqn_format parameter after the host has already been
added to the appliance changes its NQN, which causes the host to be disconnected from the
array.
NVMe over TCP NVMe over TCP support was introduced with vSphere 7.0 Update 3 and PowerStoreOS
(NVMe/TCP) 2.1. When planning to implement this new protocol, confirm that the host’s networking
hardware is supported in the VMware Compatibility Guide.
This section provides a high-level overview of configuration best practices, but for more
information, see the PowerStore resources on the Dell Technologies Info Hub.
NVMe/TCP host configurations

Like with iSCSI, ESXi 7.0 U3 adds a software adapter for NVMe over TCP (Figure 6).
After the software adapter is added, it becomes associated with a physical network
adapter (Figure 7).
Figure 6. Adding an NVMe over TCP software adapter

Figure 7. Associating the adapter with a physical NIC
The best practice for storage network redundancy is to add two NVMe over TCP adapters
and associate them with their respective storage network’s physical NICs (see the
following figure).
Figure 8. NVMe over TCP storage adapters
After you add the storage adapters, you can configure the cluster networking. The best
practice is to use a vSphere Distributed Switch (VDS) with two distributed port groups,
one for each of the redundant storage networks (see the following figure).
Figure 9. Distributed port groups used for storage networks
Note: It is a best practice to use two storage fabrics for redundance.

Since each NVMe over TCP storage adapter is bound to a physical NIC, you must adjust
the Teaming and Failover for each distributed port group. Set the physical uplink that is
bound to the vmhba to Active, and set the other NICs to Unused (see the following figure).
Figure 10. Teaming and failover settings for the distributed port group
Next, add the VMkernel adapters to their respective distributed port groups, and enable
the NVMe over TCP service (see the following figure). These VMkernel adapters supply
the IP addresses for each of the storage adapters (for example vmhba66 or vmhba67 as
shown in Figure 8).
Figure 11. VMkernel adapter with NVMe over TCP service enabled

After you configure the host and cluster networking pieces, the dual storage networks
should look like the example cluster shown in the following figure.
Figure 12. vSphere Distributed Switch topology view
After you complete the prerequisite networking configuration, add the storage controllers
to discover the PowerStore array ports and IP addresses. You can add the storage
controllers manually, by using direct discovery, or automatically by using the SmartFabric
Storage Software (SFSS) as a Centralized Discovery Controller (CDC). PowerStoreOS
3.0 added enhancements to automate PowerStore registration with the SFSS/CDC. For
more information, see the SmartFabric Storage Software (SFSS) for NVMe over TCP –
Deployment Guide.
After controller discovery, add the respective PowerStore front-end ports to each storage
adapter (see the following figure). For example, add storage network 1 ports to vmhba66,
and add storage network 2 ports to vmhba67. This process can be streamlined when
using zoning capabilities with SFSS.

Sizing and performance optimization
Figure 13. PowerStore ports added to each NVMe storage adapter
Finally, add the ESXi hosts to PowerStore Manager before provisioning volumes. If
everything is configured correctly, the host NQN should be associated with both VMK IPs
as listed in the Transport Address field as shown in the following figure.
Figure 14. PowerStore Manager—Adding NVMe/TCP host with both VMK Ips
Note: If an ESXi host has been previously configured with NVMe/FC, set the
vmknvme_hostnqn_format=1 variable back to the hostname option before configuring
NVMe/TCP. For more information, see the Dell Technologies Host Connectivity Guide.
Introduction There are several best practices for provisioning storage from a PowerStore appliance to
an external vSphere cluster. The size of VMFS datastores and the number of virtual
machines that are placed on each datastore can affect the overall performance of the
volume and array.
Volume and When a volume is created on PowerStore, the best practice is to create a volume no
VMFS datastore larger than needed and use a single VMFS partition on that volume.
sizing
While the maximum datastore size can be up to 64 TB, we recommended beginning with
a small datastore capacity and increase it as needed. Right-sizing datastores prevents
accidentally placing too many virtual machines on the datastore and decreases the
probability of resource contention. Since datastore and VMDK sizes can be easily

increased if a virtual machine needs extra capacity, it is not necessary to create

datastores larger than required. For optimal performance, the best practice is to increase
the number of datastores rather than increase their size.
If a standard for the environment has not already been established, the recommended
starting size for a VMFS datastore volume is 1 TB as shown in the following figure.
Figure 15. PowerStore volume creation wizard
Increasing the size of VMFS datastores

You can increase the size of VMFS datastores in PowerStore Manager by modifying a
volume’s properties and increasing the size. After rescanning the storage adapters on the
ESXi hosts, increase the VMFS partition size. Open the wizard, right-click the datastore,
and select Increase Datastore Capacity. The best practice is to extend datastores using
contiguous space within a single volume, and to avoid spanning volumes due to recovery
complexity.
Note: The VSI plug-in can automate the process of increasing the size of datastores with only a
few clicks.

Figure 16. Increasing the VMFS datastore size
Performance While ESXi storage performance tuning is a complex topic, this section describes a few
optimizations simple methods to proactively optimize performance.
Note: The VSI plug-in allows administrators to quickly set host best practices for optimal operation
and performance.
Virtual machines per VMFS datastore

While the recommended number of virtual machines per VMFS datastore is subjective,
many factors determine the optimum number of VMs that can be placed on each
datastore. Although most administrators only consider capacity, the number of concurrent
I/Os being sent to the disk device is one of the most important factors in the overall
performance. The ESXi host has many mechanisms to ensure fairness between virtual
machines competing for datastore resources. However, the easiest way to control
performance is by regulating how many virtual machines are placed on each datastore.
The best way to determine if a datastore has too many virtual machines is by monitoring
disk latency with either esxtop or PowerStore Manager. If the concurrent virtual machine
I/O patterns are sending too much traffic to the datastore, the disk queues fill, and higher
latency is generated.
Modifying VMFS queue depth

To regulate and ensure fairness of I/O sent from VMs to each datastore, ESXi has an
internal mechanism to control how many I/Os each virtual machine can send to the
datastore at a time. This mechanism is Disk.SchedNumReqOutstanding (DSNRO).
Although you can tune DSNRO for each datastore using esxcli, the best practice is to not

modify this setting unless operating in a test environment or directed by support

personnel.
Multiple-VM and single-VM-per-volume strategies

Although there are small performance, data service, and troubleshooting benefits to
placing a single virtual machine on a VMFS datastore, placing multiple virtual machines
on each VMFS datastore is common practice. Typically, using vVols achieves the same or
better performance benefits compared to placing a single VM on a datastore.
There are two disadvantages when placing a single VM on its own datastore: it reduces
consolidation ratios and increases the management overhead of maintaining numerous
items.
Partition Due to the PowerStore architecture, manual partition alignment is not necessary.
alignment
Guest vSCSI When creating a new virtual machine, vSphere automatically suggests the disk controller
adapter selection option based on the operating system selected (see the following figure). The Dell
Technologies Host Connectivity Guide recommends using the VMware Paravirtual SCSI
controller for optimal performance. You can find more information about the Paravirtual
adapter, including its benefits and limitations, in VMware documentation.
Figure 17. Selecting the virtual SCSI controller
Array offload VMware can offload storage operations to the array to increase efficiency and
technologies performance. This action is performed by vStorage APIs for Array Integration (VAAI), a
feature that contains primitives for both block and file storage types:
Block • Write Same (Zero): Also known as Block zeroing. This primitive is primarily used for
the ESXi host to instruct the storage to zero out eagerzeroedthick VMDKs.

Management and monitoring
• XCOPY (Extended Copy): Also known as Full copy. Instead of the ESXi host
performing the work of reading and writing blocks of data, this primitive allows the
host to instruct the array to copy data which saves SAN bandwidth. This operation
is typically used when cloning VMs.
• Atomic Test & Set (ATS): Also known as Hardware accelerated locking. This
primitive replaces SCSI-2 reservations to increase VMFS scalability with changing
metadata on VMFS datastores. With SCSI-2 reservations, the entire volume had to
be locked, and all other hosts in the cluster had to wait while that ESXi host
changed metadata. The hardware accelerated locking primitive allows a host to
lock only the metadata on disk it needs, not hampering I/O from other hosts while
the operation is performed.
• UNMAP: Also known as dead space reclamation. This primitive uses the SCSI
UNMAP command to release blocks that are no longer in use back to the array. For
example, after deleting a VM, the ESXi host issues a series of commands to the
PowerStore array to indicate that it is no longer using certain blocks within a
volume. This capacity is returned to the pool so that it can be reused.
File • Full File Clone: Enables the offloading of powered-off virtual disk cloning to the
array. Similar to XCOPY for block.
• Fast File Clone/Native Snapshot Support: Enables the creation of virtual machine
snapshots to be offloaded to the array.
• Extended Statistics: Enables visibility into actual space usage on NAS datastores
and is especially useful for thin-provisioned datastores.
• Reserve Space: Enables provisioning virtual disks using the Lazy Zeroed or Eager
Zeroed options on NFS storage.
Note: For more information about VAAI, see VMware vSphere APIs: Array Integration (VAAI).
Introduction This section describes PowerStore features used to manage and monitor storage.
Mapping or After a volume is created, mapping specifies the hosts that the PowerStore array presents
unmapping storage to.
practices
Cluster mappings
For ESXi hosts in a cluster, we recommend using host groups to uniformly present
storage to all initiators for reduced management complexity (see the following two
figures). This practice allows a volume or set of volumes to be mapped to multiple hosts
simultaneously and maintain the same logical unit number (LUN) across all hosts.
Note: It is required to use consistent LUN numbers for standard volume mappings and Metro
Volume mappings across hosts within the same vSphere cluster, hosts within other vSphere
clusters, or hosts not in a cluster. For additional information, please see the following references:
Dell KB Article 000191503 PowerStore: Inconsistent Logical Unit Numbers between hosts could

result in data access or data consistency issues
VMware vSphere Product Documentation: vSphere Storage | Setting LUN Allocations | Storage
provisioning
Figure 18. Example of vSphere cluster containing multiple ESXi hosts
Figure 19. Host group details for the vSphere cluster showing three ESXi hosts
Properly unmapping volumes from ESXi hosts

If a VMFS datastore is no longer required, the best practice is to unmount the datastore
from the vCenter (see the following figure). Then, detach the disk devices from each host
in the cluster (see Figure 21) before unmapping and deleting the volume from the
PowerStore Manager. This gracefully removes a datastore and can prevent an all paths
down (APD) state from occurring.

Figure 20. Unmount the datastore
Figure 21. Detach the disk device from a host
Thin clones PowerStore thin clones make block-based copies of a volume or volume group and can
also be created from a snapshot. Because the thin clone volume shares data blocks with
the parent, the capacity usage of the child volume mainly consists of the delta changes
from after it was created. Thin clones are advantageous in a vSphere environment
because a VMFS datastore full of virtual machines can be duplicated for testing purposes,
all while consuming less storage. For example, if a vSphere administrator has to clone a
multi-terabyte database server for a developer to run tests, the VM can be isolated and
tested. Also, the VM only consumes blocks that changed.

Within the PowerStore architecture, thin clones have several advantages for storage
administrators:
• The thin clone can have a different data protection policy from the parent volume.
• The parent volume can be deleted, and the thin clones become their own resource.
• VMs can be cloned for testing monthly patches or development.
Data encryption Data at rest encryption (D@RE) is enabled by default on the PowerStore array. No
configuration steps are necessary to protect the drives.
Space The VAAI dead space reclamation primitive is integrated into the array through the SCSI
reclamation protocol. Depending on the version of ESXi the host is running, the primitive can
automatically reclaim space.
VMFS-6 and ESXi versions that support automatic UNMAP: The best practice is to
keep or reduce the reclamation rate to the Low or 100 MB/s, which is the default setting
(see the following figure).
Figure 22. Setting the space reclamation rate
Note: vSphere 8 introduces the ability to configure the space reclamation rate to as low as 10
MB/s. This can be useful for environments where space reclamation at a higher rate can be
disruptive to the storage fabric or its consumers.
VMFS-5 and ESXi versions that do not support automatic UNMAP: The best practice
is to set the reclamation rate to 200.
esxcli storage vmfs unmap --volume-label=volume_label --reclaim-
unit=200

Note: In certain older versions of ESXi, you must manually invoke the dead space reclamation
primitive. See the VMware Knowledge Base for more information about which versions require
additional steps.
VASA VMware vSphere APIs for Storage Awareness (VASA) is a feature that allows vSphere
hosts to gain insight into the storage types backing the datastores and enables vSphere to
manage storage. For example, the VASA provider that is embedded into PowerStore
allows it to manage vVols.
Note the following points about the PowerStore VASA provider:

• The provider must be registered when using vVols.
• The provider can be manually or automatically registered on PowerStore.
▪ Registering the VASA provider is required for vCenter integration with
PowerStore.
• Before you create the vCenter server connection, you must enter the VASA
provider details on the vCenter Storage Providers screen in vCenter (see the
following figure).
a. In PowerStore Manager, create an account named vmadmin, and assign
the VMAdmin role.
b. In vCenter, add the storage provider, and specify the name, vmadmin
credentials, and the URL in the format: https://<management IP
address>:8443/version.xml
c. Do not select Use storage provider certificate.
d. For more information, follow the instructions in PowerStore Manager help by
searching for vCenter Server Connection.
Figure 23. PowerStore VASA provider registration

Caution: The VASA certificate is set with a one-year expiration by default, and you should
periodically renew it through the vCenter Storage Providers by clicking Refresh Certificate. If the
certificate is not refreshed before expiration, see KB 190731: How to renew the PowerStore VASA
storage provider certificate after expiration.
Note: To use the PowerStore VASA provider across multiple vCenter Servers, there are two
options: Use Enhanced Linked Mode or Share the vCenter root certificates across vCenter
Servers. For more information, see PowerStore: Using vVols across multiple vCenters: How to
register the PowerStore VASA provider across multiple vCenters.
Virtual Volumes VMware vSphere Virtual Volumes (vVols) can be used by external ESXi hosts from
PowerStore T models. vVols is a storage methodology that runs on top of existing storage
protocols such as Fibre Channel and iSCSI. It enables administrators to have more
granular control over virtual machines regarding performance, snapshots, and monitoring.
One of the key features of vVols is that it allows administrators to use storage policy-
based management (SPBM) for their environment. This enables you to align application
needs with the appropriate storage resources in an automated manner.
Because vCenter is required for binding and unbinding vVols from the protocol endpoints
during power-on, power-off, and other operations such as vMotion, you should regard
vCenter as a tier 1 application.
Caution: Never migrate the VMware vCenter virtual appliance to a vVol datastore or storage
container. Because vCenter is required for bindings to power on vVol-based virtual machines, this
action might prevent powering on vCenter after the VM is shut down or has experienced an
unplanned outage.
Note: PowerStoreOS 3.0 introduced NVMe-vVol host connectivity supporting NVMe/FC vVols.
PowerStoreOS 3.6 introduced NVMe-vVol host connectivity supporting NVMe/TCP vVols.
Scripting and The PowerStore platform has a REST API and PowerShell cmdlets to automate
automation management tasks. Find more information at Dell Support.
Virtual Storage Another tool for storage management is the Virtual Storage Integrator (VSI) which is the
Integrator vSphere web client plug-in for PowerStore and other Dell Technologies storage products.
You can download the VSI appliance as an OVA and install it into the virtual
infrastructure. It is given an IP address and added to vCenter as part of the installation
process. This plug-in allows administrators to create datastores, expand datastores, apply
ESXi host best-practice settings, perform capacity monitoring, and more.

Data protection and disaster recovery
Figure 24. Virtual Storage Integrator vSphere web client plug-in
vRealize PowerStore also supports VMware vRealize Orchestrator (vRO) as a plug-in. vRO
Orchestrator enables administrators to automate many common workflows with PowerStore
appliances. Download the vRO plug-in for PowerStore at Dell Support.
Figure 25. PowerStore vRealize Orchestrator plug-in example
Introduction PowerStore has integrated snapshot and replication capabilities to protect data, and it is
policy driven for ease of administration.
Snapshots and To automate and simplify protecting data, PowerStore uses protection policies. These
recoveries policies are a set of snapshot and replication rules that are applied to a volume or group
of volumes. Snapshot policies can also be applied to file systems and starting with

PowerStoreOS 3.0, replication policies can be assigned to NAS servers. Protection

policies help protect data, set retention policies, and help guarantee recovery point
objectives (RPOs) for an organization.
Also, protection policies can be applied to individual volumes or to volume groups. When
a protection policy is applied to a volume group, it allows multiple volumes to have
snapshots taken, to be replicated, or to be recovered, simultaneously. This ability allows
protecting complex applications that are interdependent and span across multiple
volumes.
You can take vVol snapshots from either the PowerStore Manager or the vCenter client,
but they are inherently managed by vCenter. When you create virtual machine snapshots
from the vCenter client, the best practice is to disable the option for virtual machine
memory which may increase snapshot time significantly.
Secure Starting with PowerStoreOS 3.5, the secure snapshot setting can be enabled for
snapshots snapshots on volumes and volume groups. Snapshot rules can also be configured to
create secure snapshots automatically. With secure snapshots enabled, the snapshots
and parent resource are protected from accidental or malicious deletion and serve as a
cost-effective line of defense against ransomware attacks. If an unauthorized user gains
access to a system, the attacker cannot delete secure snapshots and cause data loss.
Figure 26. Workflow to create a snapshot of a volume or volume group

Snapshots and Using array-based snapshots is an effective way to protect virtual machine data and
options for establish an RPO. In the PowerStore architecture, you can create the snapshot schedule
application using protection policies. Each protection policy can define snapshot rules to establish a
backup and schedule and retention, and replication rules to specify a destination array and RPO.
restore
Figure 27. Protection policies screen in PowerStore Manager
PowerStore has data-recovery mechanisms that behave differently depending on the

usage scenario (see the following figure).
• Snapshot: These represent a specific point in time for data stored on a volume that
can be used for recoveries to refresh, restore, or create thin clones.
• Thin clone: This takes an existing snapshot from a parent volume and creates a
child volume from that point in time.
• Refresh: This allows snapshot data to replace existing data in the volume. The
existing data is removed, and snapshot data from the new source is copied to it in-
place. A parent volume can refresh a child, and a child can refresh a parent.
• Restore: The restore operation replaces the contents of a parent storage resource
with data from an associated snapshot. Restoring resets the data in the parent
storage resource to the point in time the snapshot was taken.
Caution: Using the refresh and restore operations on active virtual machine volumes may cause
unexpected results and behaviors. All host access to the volume must cease before attempting
these operations.

Figure 28. PowerStore snapshot and recovery
If a virtual machine residing on a VMFS datastore requires recovery, the best practice is
to create a thin clone from a snapshot. The high-level steps are as follows:
1. In PowerStore Manager, create a thin clone from a snapshot, and present it to the
vSphere cluster.
2. In the vSphere client, rescan the storage, add a datastore, select the newly created
volume, and assign a new signature (see the following figure).
3. Register the VM from the snap-xxxxxxxx-originaldatastorename datastore.
4. Use Storage vMotion to migrate the virtual machine back to the original datastore, if
applicable.
Figure 29. New datastore wizard > Assign a new signature
Crash consistent When taking array-based snapshots of virtual machines, remember that snapshots taken
and application without application coordination are considered crash consistent. Crash consistency is
consistent the storage term for data that has a snapshot taken in-progress without application
snapshots awareness. While most modern applications can recover from crash consistent data, their

recovery can yield varying levels of success. For example, when recovering a Microsoft
Windows virtual machine, as the operating system boots, it responds as if it has
encountered an unexpected power-loss event and can potentially check the disk (chkdsk)
on startup.
Application consistent snapshots are supported by products such as Dell AppSync. This
enables coordination between the array and the application to help assure that the data is
quiesced, the caches are flushed, and the data is preserved in a known good state.
Application consistent snapshots such as these offer a higher probability of recovery
success.
Note: When taking managed snapshots such as with vVols in PowerStore Manager, virtual
machine memory is not included. When performing snapshots from vCenter, we recommend not
including virtual machine memory.
Replication and PowerStore offers asynchronous and synchronous replication of block storage (including
remote recovery volume groups) as well as asynchronous and synchronous replication of NAS Servers
and its underlying File Systems and NFS Exports as of PowerStoreOS v3.0. In addition,
synchronous replication with Metro Volume support was also added as of PowerStoreOS
v3.0. Replication is used to transfer data to one or more remote PowerStore clusters.
When the remote cluster is in a different location than the local cluster, this feature can
help to protect virtual machine data from localized geographical disasters. Replication
RPOs and options are set within protection policies (see the following figure).
Figure 30. Creating a replication rule
Note: The document Dell PowerStore: Replication Technologies provides comprehensive

information about replication between PowerStore clusters. See this document for more details
about replication.

PowerStore Starting with PowerStoreOS 3.5, PowerStore can back up virtual machine data to a
backup to physical PowerProtect appliance or to a PowerProtect DD Virtual Edition (DDVE) either
PowerProtect DD on premises or in the cloud. This enables a simplified native backup solution for volumes
series and volume groups and the virtual machine data contained within them. No backup
appliances application is required. By configuring remote backup sessions from PowerStore
Manager, users can quickly back up resources, retrieve remote snapshots, and initiate
instant access sessions. Instant access allows the host to view the content of a remote
snapshot without retrieving the data back to the PowerStore system. Users can instantly
access deleted, corrupted, or modified data within the snapshot and copy it back to the
host for quick recovery. Users can also discover and retrieve snapshot backups created
on a different PowerStore cluster.

References
References
Dell The following Dell Technologies documentation provides other information related to this
Technologies document. Access to these documents depends on your login credentials. If you do not
documentation have access to a document, contact your Dell Technologies representative.
See the following document:
• Dell Technologies Host Connectivity Guide
• Dell PowerStore Protecting Your Data
See also the following documents on the PowerStore Info Hub:
• Dell PowerStore Replication Technologies

• Dell PowerStore Snapshots and Thin Clones
• Dell PowerStore: Metro Volume
VMware See the following links for related VMware resources:

documentation
• VMware Documentation
• VMware Hardware Compatibility List (HCL)
• VMware vSphere APIs: Array Integration (VAAI)
• What’s New with vSphere 8 Core Storage

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Dell PowerStore: VMware vSphere Best Practices

2 Dell PowerStore: VMware vSphere Best Practices

Host configuration ........................................................................................................................6

NVMe over Fabric (NVMe-oF) .......................................................................................................9

Sizing and performance optimization ........................................................................................16

Management and monitoring......................................................................................................20

Data protection and disaster recovery ......................................................................................26

Dell PowerStore: VMware vSphere Best Practices 3

Revisions Part number/

April 2020 H18116 Initial release PowerStoreOS 1.0

April 2021 H18116.1 Updates for PowerStoreOS 2.0

January 2022 H18116.2 Updates for PowerStoreOS 2.1. Document template

July 2022 H18116.3 Updates for PowerStoreOS 3.0

December 2022 H18116.4 Updates for PowerStoreOS 3.2 and vSphere 8

October 2023 H19163.6 Updates for PowerStoreOS 3.6

May 2024 H19163.7 Updates for PowerStoreOS 4.0

Author: Darin Schmitz

Contributor: Jason Boche

4 Dell PowerStore: VMware vSphere Best Practices

PowerStore brings the simplicity of public cloud to on-premises infrastructure, streamlining

Appliance The solution containing a base enclosure and attached expansion

Cluster Multiple PowerStore appliances in a single grouping.

Expansion enclosure An enclosure that can be attached to a base enclosure to provide

Dell PowerStore: VMware vSphere Best Practices 5

ESXi host timeouts

Guest operating system timeouts

6 Dell PowerStore: VMware vSphere Best Practices

Native Multipathing Plug-in

esxcli storage nmp satp rule add -c tpgs_on -e "PowerStore" -M

# Add or remove a claim rule on each vSphere host

# Fill the hash table (optional params are not required)

# Call the esxcli command to add/remove the rule

Dell PowerStore: VMware vSphere Best Practices 7

Write-Host $selection "rule on" $_

High Performance Plug-in

esxcli storage core claimrule add -u -t vendor --nvme-controller-

• VMware NVMe Concepts

8 Dell PowerStore: VMware vSphere Best Practices

Figure 1. Example of datastore properties showing the VMFS version

NVMe over Fabric (NVMe-oF)

Dell PowerStore: VMware vSphere Best Practices 9

Figure 3. Adding an NVMe over TCP adapter in the vSphere Client

10 Dell PowerStore: VMware vSphere Best Practices

Figure 5. Using PowerStore Manager to create an NVMe vVol Storage Container

esxcli system module parameters set -m vmknvme -p

Dell PowerStore: VMware vSphere Best Practices 11

esxcli nvme info get

Also, you must enable NVMe support on the NVMe-capable HBAs.

For Marvell NVMe HBAs:

esxcli system module parameters set -p ql2xnvmesupport=1 -m

For Emulex NVMe HBAs:

esxcli system module parameters set -m lpfc -p

NVMe/TCP host configurations

Figure 6. Adding an NVMe over TCP software adapter

12 Dell PowerStore: VMware vSphere Best Practices

Figure 7. Associating the adapter with a physical NIC

Figure 8. NVMe over TCP storage adapters

Figure 9. Distributed port groups used for storage networks

Note: It is a best practice to use two storage fabrics for redundance.