Dell PowerFlex with ESXi 8.0 and 9.0
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Dell PowerFlex with ESXi 8.0 and 9.0

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Article ID: 312201

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Updated On:

Products

VMware vSphere ESXi

Issue/Introduction

This article provides information about support for the deployment of Dell PowerFlex software (formerly known as VxFlex OS or ScaleIO) in ESXi 9.0 and 8.0 environments. PowerFlex is fully
supported in systems deploying the VMware configurations described below. For more information on engaging VMware support see Broadcom Support.

Disclaimer: The partner products referenced in this article are hardware devices or software that are developed and supported by stated partners. Use of these products is also governed by the end user license agreements of the partners. You must obtain the application, support and licensing for using these products from the partners. For more information, see Dell Support.

Environment

  • VMware vSphere ESXi 8.x
  • VMware vSphere ESXi 9.x
  • VMware Site Recovery Manager 8.7
  • VMware Site Recovery Manager 8.8
  • VMware Live Site Recovery 9.0

Resolution

PowerFlex

  • Dell PowerFlex is a software-based storage area network (SAN) that converges storage and compute resources to form a hyper-converged, enterprise-grade storage product.
    PowerFlex is elastic and delivers linearly scalable performance. Its scale-out server SAN architecture can grow from a few to thousands of servers.

  • For a detailed support matrix of PowerFlex versions supported with VMware ESXi please refer to Dell Simple Support Matrices. (Note: To review the preceding link, a registered account with Dell is required.)

Minimum Requirements

These are the minimum system requirements for a PowerFlex implementation:

  • Three ESXi servers with 240 GB of free capacity per server
  • 10 Gbps network
 
VMware vSphere ESXi 8.x
 
  • PowerFlex versions 4.5.x ¹ ², and 5.x with SDC
  • PowerFlex version 4.5.x and 5.x with NVMe/TCP
VMware vSphere ESXi 9.x
  • PowerFlex version 5.x with SDC
  • PowerFlex versions 5.x with NVMe/TCP

    Note: for guidelines on how to install or upgrade the SDC, see PowerFlex documentation
    For PowerFlex NVMe/TCP support per release, see Broadcom Storage/SAN Compatibility Guide

1. Asynchronous replication available with PowerFlex 4.5.x is limited to a ‘2-layer’ configuration.

2. An upgrade from ESXi 8.0 to ESXi 9.0 for PowerFlex versions 4.5.x and 5.x requires SDC removal and re-installation. For detailed upgrade procedure, please refer to PowerFlex upgrade guide.

Supported Features

These VMware features are supported by PowerFlex:

  • vMotion
  • Storage vMotion
  • Fault Tolerance
  • DRS
  • Storage DRS
  • VAAI (except Full Copy primitive)
  • ESX 8 only: Site Recovery Manager (SRM) – supported only with the SDC driver with PowerFlex starting at version 4.5.x.x. There is no support for NFS or NVMe/TCP.

Clustering Support

  • Any application requiring physical RDMs with SCSI3-PR is supported with the SDC, e.g., Windows Server Failover Cluster (WSFC), Veritas Cluster Server/Infoscale
  • Clustered VMDK is only supported with NVMe/TCP in the following versions:
    • PowerFlex 5.0 on ESXi 8 and VCF 9.0
    • PowerFlex 4.x on ESXi 8
      Note: Clustered VMDK is not supported with the SDC

For additional information on WSFC requirements, refer to Microsoft Windows Server Failover Clustering (WSFC) with shared disks on VMware vSphere 7.x: Guidelines for supported configurations.

Note: SDC is not listed as a storage protocol in the above KB and is covered via doc PowerFlex: SDC to NVMe/TCP conversion for clustered applications utilizing RDMs on vSphere

 

PowerFlex Storage Replication Adapter (SRA) for VMware Live Site Recovery (vLSR)

PowerFlex 4.x only and ESXi 8

  • PowerFlex SRA is only available to download directly from Dell Support. It is compatible with the Photon OS based VMware vLSR appliance using the PowerFlex SDC.
  • Currently supported releases:
VMware Site Recovery Manager 8.7 PowerFlex versions 4.5.x,4.6.x
VMware Site Recovery Manager 8.8 PowerFlex versions 4.5.x,4.6.x
VMware Live Site Recovery 9.0 PowerFlex versions 4.5.x,4.6.x


For additional information on using PowerFlex with VMware vLSR, refer to document Dell PowerFlex Storage Replication Adapter (SRA) Plugin for VMware Live Site Recovery

Note: To review the preceding link, a registered account with Dell is required.

Note: ESXi or vCSA images for RCM and IC need to be downloaded from the Broadcom download page and uploaded to the PowerFlex Manager UI. For more information, refer to the documentation in Dell Support for Rack and Appliance.

Additional Information

For more information on configuration guidelines and deployment best practices, see Dell PowerFlex Software - Technical Documentation 

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