Dell PowerScale

Model number: A300
Storage Category: Scale-out NAS
Drive quantity, size, type: 15 – 4TB SATA HDD, 2 – 1.6TB SSD (per node)
Storage configuration: Default +2d:1n protection was used (OneFS erasure coding protection level that protects against two drive failures or one node failure)
Firmware version: OneFS 9.5
Connection protocol and speed: SMB 25 GbE
Additional support: All configurations of PowerScale (formerly Isilon) with specifications equivalent or greater than the above

General product family overview:
PowerScale is a scale-out NAS that supports 3 to 252 nodes in a cluster.  Files are automatically distributed, balanced, and protected across the cluster and all files are accessible from all nodes.

Vendor Settings:

• Does vendor solution support SMB write-through? Yes, SMB3 Continuous Availability was enabled which uses write-through.  To enable, create a new SMB share with the option “Enable continuous availability on the share” selected.  This setting cannot be disabled and cannot be enabled on existing shares, only new shares.
• Was SMB write-through enabled during the testing? Yes
• Caching used: SSD
• Read/write caching: The OneFS L1, L2, and L3 cache are described in the following article

Additional Considerations:

• Dell PowerScale has a default maximum file size of 4TiB, optionally 16TiB on supported cluster configurations. Active Full + Incremental processing is advised.
• Veeam Scale Out Backup Repository can distribute the load across the PowerScale cluster via multiple Backup Repository Extents each defined to use a different cluster node DNS A record and path. When backups exceed the maximum file size (as noted above), even with Veeam deduplication and compression, other considerations should be made such as the below software.
• The dsmISI software automates load balancing, mitigate file size limitations, and supports block cloning for fast synthetic processing and to save space (Read More).