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ECS CONCEPTS AND

FEATURES

PARTICIPANT GUIDE

PARTICIPANT GUIDE
Internal Use - Confidential
ECS Concepts and Features-SSP

Internal Use - Confidential

Introduction to ECS .................................................................................. 4

Digital Transformation .......................................................................................................... 5

Benefits of Digital Transformation ........................................................................................ 6
Today's Storage Challenges ................................................................................................ 7
ECS Solution ..................................................................................................................... 10
ECS Benefits ..................................................................................................................... 11
ECS Value Proposition ...................................................................................................... 13
ECS Features .................................................................................................................... 15
Object Storage Evolution ................................................................................................... 16
ECS in Use ........................................................................................................................ 17
ECS Today and the Future ................................................................................................ 24
ECS Product Packaging..................................................................................................... 25
ECS Software Licensing Options ....................................................................................... 26

Understanding ECS Storage Structure ................................................. 27

ECS Storage Abstraction Layers ........................................................................................ 28

ECS Hardware Building Blocks .......................................................................................... 30
Physical and Logical ECS Constructs ................................................................................ 33
Logical ECS Constructs ..................................................................................................... 36
Users and Roles ................................................................................................................ 40
ECS Data Storage Principles - Chunks .............................................................................. 42

ECS Architecture .................................................................................... 44

ECS Architecture Overview ................................................................................................ 45

ECS Hardware Layer ......................................................................................................... 47
Capacity-Based Node Models ............................................................................................ 48
ECS Node Options............................................................................................................. 50
ECS Gen3 Rack Capacity Comparison .............................................................................. 56
ECS Infrastructure Layer.................................................................................................... 59
Encapsulated in Docker Containers ................................................................................... 66

ECS Concepts and Features-SSP

Page ii © Copyright 2020 Dell Inc.

Fabric Layer ....................................................................................................................... 68
Storage Engine Layer ........................................................................................................ 71
Data Services Layer........................................................................................................... 73
ECS Portal and Provisioning Layer .................................................................................... 75

ECS Features and Functionality ............................................................ 77

ECS Features and Functionality Overview ......................................................................... 78

ECS Portal ......................................................................................................................... 79
Rest API Management Interface ........................................................................................ 81
Multi-tenancy and Namespaces ......................................................................................... 82
User Authentication and Authorization ............................................................................... 84
Multi-protocol Support ........................................................................................................ 86
Metadata Search................................................................................................................ 88
Local Data Protection ......................................................................................................... 89
Multi-VDC, Multi-site Data Protection ................................................................................. 94
Data Encryption ............................................................................................................... 101
Retention and Compliance ............................................................................................... 103
Quotas ............................................................................................................................. 108

Monitoring and Reporting .................................................................... 110

ECS Monitoring ................................................................................................................ 111

ECS Portal Dashboard ..................................................................................................... 113
ECS Portal Navigation - Monitor ..................................................................................... 114
Advanced Monitoring ....................................................................................................... 123
ECS Portal: Report Time Period Filtering ......................................................................... 126
Dell EMC SRM Integration ............................................................................................... 127
Secure Remote Services Integration ................................................................................ 129

ECS Concepts and Features-SSP

Internal Use - Confidential

ECS Concepts and Features-SSP

Page
Internal Use - Confidential 4 © Copyright 2020 Dell Inc.
Digital Transformation

Digital Transformation (DX) has become a ubiquitous component of nearly every

strategic plan of an organization over the last few years. DX-related emerging
technologies will have profound effects on the means of production and will
transform the way consumers interact with every organization in the future.

IDC projects, that through 2022, 75% of successful digital strategies will be built by
a transformed IT organization. As such, it may involve a modernized and
rationalized infrastructure, applications, and data architectures.

[...] within the next four years, the global economy will finally reach digital
supremacy, with more than half of Gross domestic product (GDP)1. - IDC
FutureScape2

Simultaneously, many organizations still struggle to tactically apply DX learnings to

their own business.

1 Gross Domestic Product (GDP) is a monetary measure of the market value of all
the final goods and services that are produced in a specific time period.

2IDC FutureScape: Worldwide IT Industry 2020 Predictions: October 2019, IDC

#US45599219

ECS Concepts and Features-SSP

Thriving organizations ("Thrivers") have embraced automation and shifted to data-

driven decisions. According to IDC, greater investment in advanced infrastructure
helps Thrivers overcome management complexities and shift to more autonomous
operations.

1: Thrivers reduce operational costs by a 2.7 times more than Survivors.

2: Thrivers have a much higher rate of innovation when it comes to new products
and features—being able to deliver 46% faster on new products/services.

3: Thrivers are able to deliver new IT services 64% faster because automated and
data-driven delivery of IT services underpins innovation.

4: Thrivers achieve 39% higher overall IT staff productivity.

5: Thrivers improve their customer service levels, resulting in higher customer

satisfaction (up to 75%) and reduced churn rates.

ECS Concepts and Features-SSP

Page 6 © Copyright 2020 Dell Inc.

Today's Storage Challenges

Customers are facing major challenges with storage in the current market. These
challenges that are shown here can be solved or mitigated by deploying ECS within
the customers’ businesses for object-based workload needs.

Unstructured Data

The explosion in 3rd Platform technologies results in the rapid

growth of unstructured data. The challenge involves the volume,
variety, velocity, veracity, and value of the data. Organizations that
do not establish a sound strategy for responding to unstructured
data growth will find themselves being out competed by those that do. The facts
are:

• IDC predicts that the Global Datasphere will grow from 33 zettabytes in 2018 to
175 zettabytes by 2025.
• Most (80%) of the data that is generated comes in the form of unstructured
data.
• Data will continue to amass at exponential rates for the foreseeable future.
• Millions of applications and billions of devices coming online
• Most organizations do not have the right infrastructure solutions in place to
effectively scale out resources as they become necessary.
• When hitting capacity limits, there is an arduous process to spin up new storage
infrastructure.

Inadequate Foundation

Many businesses fall into the trap of operational silos, which occur
when data is not shared across the organization and processes are
not connected.

• In an era of data-driven decision making, companies still struggle to capture,

comprehend, and act on insights available to them

ECS Concepts and Features-SSP

© Copyright
Internal Use - Confidential 2020 Dell Inc. Page 7
• Many organizations do not have a unified, centralized data repository by which
they store data and extract value from the same massive data lake
• In order to discover insights from data, IT must be able to efficiently store and
access the right data, at the right time. Many enterprises create data
management and monetization capabilities, thus enhancing enterprise
functions, strengthening competitiveness, and creating new sources of revenue.

Data Security and Compliance

Managing data security and compliance in the digital age is crucial.

• Many organizations realize the data they possess has value,

most of them indicate that their top concern about public cloud is
security for corporate data
• Data security and compliance are their top reasons for choosing on-premises
based object storage solutions
• Enterprises who don’t get compliance right, run the risk of paying severe
monetary penalties and sustaining irrevocable harm to their reputations

Inflexible Stack

Many companies are re-platforming their workloads and developing

new applications that require modern storage solutions to function
optimally.

• As organizations turn to new application architectures, microservices,

containers, and the like, they are finding that traditional storage solutions and
databases do not offer the simplicity and flexibility these new workloads require
• Traditional storage is too costly and complex to deploy and manage data at the
petabyte scale
• Enterprises require solutions that can keep data available for possible data
mining, while minimizing the expense of storing large volumes of primarily cold
data
• For many organizations, data volumes have grown so large that it is difficult to
migrate, integrate, share, govern, and analyze; thus maximizing the full value of
the data

ECS Concepts and Features-SSP

Page 8 © Copyright 2020 Dell Inc.

• Leveraging agile processes and technologies that support frequent integration
and product releases are critical behavioral elements that lead to effective
digital results
• By 2022, 90% of all new apps will feature microservices architectures, 35% of
all production apps will be cloud native
• By 2024, 80% of all new applications developed using a programming language
will be deployed in containers to gain the benefits of deployment speed,
application consistency, and portability

Cloud Repatriation

Many customers are realizing the public cloud may not be optimal
environment for many of their workloads, especially mission critical
ones.

• Many applications should remain in-house as hybrid and multi-

cloud strategies. By 2024, 90% of G1000 organizations will have a multi-cloud
management strategy.
• 50% of organizations that have adopted the public cloud have faced serious
security and compliance issues
• 64% of organizations have experienced higher total costs of service than
originally anticipated
• Public cloud vendors make it very easy to get data into their cloud platform and
quite difficult to get it out. Often, they offer free ingress services but when it
comes time to pull data from the cloud, the high egress fees really squeeze
companies.
• According to IDC, 50% of public applications are expected to be repatriated
over the next two years

ECS Concepts and Features-SSP

A critical part of the solution for the current challenges that are faced by traditional
infrastructure is Software-Defined Storage (SDS)3. SDS lets organizations use
commodity platforms which means they can bring hyperscale capabilities to their
data center.

Metering, Monitoring, and Reporting Object, File, and HDFS

Software Defined Storage

Standards Based Platform

3Software-defined means that storage and data services like metering, monitoring,
and reporting are delivered as software that can run on any type of storage device
and support many different datatype and access protocols.

ECS Concepts and Features-SSP

Page 10 © Copyright 2020 Dell Inc.

ECS Benefits

ECS key benefits are of four aspects.

1: ECS is a single, shared, global object storage platform built for the next
generation applications. ECS is the third generation object platform from Dell EMC
designed for mobile, cloud, big data, and social networking applications. ECS is
designed with great storage efficiency, and management simplicity. ECS can store
billions of files from tiny byte sized files to large terabyte sized files in a single
shared cloud storage platform. The same data can be concurrently used by modern
apps, Hadoop analytics, and traditional applications.

2: ECS is software-defined storage that is built from the ground up with the ability
to scale up to Exabyte level with superior economics. ECS supports multiple
protocols for unstructured object and file workloads on a single cloud-scale storage
platform. ECS natively provides storage for traditional archive applications and 3rd
platform modern applications.

3: ECS can provide the benefits of a public cloud without data residency and
compliance risks. Public cloud storage platforms are driven by compelling
economic advantages over traditional SAN and NAS storage systems. However,
public cloud storage platforms involve consideration of some fundamental trade-
offs in the areas of data residency, compliance with local laws and regulations, and
potential unforeseen costs for data retrieval.

ECS Concepts and Features-SSP

© Copyright
Internal Use - Confidential 2020 Dell Inc. Page 11
4: ECS is easy to deploy, scale, migrate to, and distribute across the globe. ECS
delivers simple storage management of globally distributed infrastructure under a
single global namespace with anywhere access to content. ECS incorporates
enterprise-grade features that are designed to reduce risks of data availability
outages, eliminates the need for protocol translations, gateways, and data
movement.

ECS Concepts and Features-SSP

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ECS Value Proposition

ECS key value propositions are of four main aspects.

2 4

1 3

1: ECS is a multi-purpose platform that supports billions of files of all types and all
major object protocols. It has Native support for Hadoop, S3, Swift, CAS, Atmos
APIs and it also supports API extensions such as Atomic appends and byte-range
updates. ECS enables simultaneous access to data using several standard
industry protocols like HDFS and NFS.

2: ECS has smart storage that provides instant metadata search, integrated HDFS
and erasure coding in the background. With ECS, customers can access all types
of files across the globe as one storage, protect against a full site disaster, and
handle temporary outages effectively. With native NFS v3 capability, global
namespace, global locking, multi-protocol access to object, NFS and HDFS, there
is no need for a file gateway and no need to change on the application level. All
those contribute to accelerating the move to an object platform, which give
customers better security and simple architecture. It also has integrated metadata
management and metadata search, which helps customers access metadata
without having to write additional code to connect and perform instant search once
data is written.

3: ECS multi-tenant capabilities provide the elasticity that is needed to expand or

amend storage service offerings to meet the demands of a diversified clientele and
to ensure the integrity of customers’ data stored on common arrays. It enables
enterprises and service providers to offer storage as a service.

ECS Concepts and Features-SSP

© Copyright
Internal Use - Confidential 2020 Dell Inc. Page 13
4: ECS has Enterprise-class storage that has great security and compliance
capabilities including data encryption at rest and in-flight, SEC 17-A4 compliance,
and more ISV support and capability. Only data and user-defined metadata are
encrypted and encrypted inline prior to being stored onto disks. ECS provides
object access for mobile, desktop, and enterprise applications. It protects the data
within each rack to ensure recovery even if a disk fails. Superior economics with
low management overhead, a small data center footprint, and high storage
utilization. ECS provides a cloud-scale storage architecture that is designed to
support modern applications with unparalleled availability, protection, simplicity,
and scale. It allows access to storage for next-gen apps with superior agility and
economics.

ECS Concepts and Features-SSP

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ECS Features

ECS comes with a complete set of storage features that are desired by most
organizations seeking to modernize their storage platform.

5
1

3 4

1: ECS scales to meet the ever-growing customer requirements. Both compute and
capacity are added as additional ECS nodes and racks are added to the cluster.

2: ECS is built from the ground up as an object storage platform with APIs
supporting HTTP and HTTPS requests. The extensive APIs allow quick and easy
web integration using commands native to a web environment.

3: ECS supports files and objects of any size. ECS can divide a large object into
storage efficient chunks. Simultaneously, it can pack hundreds or thousands of tiny
byte size objects into a single chuck for storage efficiency.

4: ECS is designed to scale from small single site cluster to large clusters covering
multiple sites with varied relationships between sites.

5: Multi-tenancy is supported natively on ECS. ECS provides for both physical and
logical separation, based on the organization's needs.

6: ECS has built in system metadata, and custom metadata capabilities to meet the
needs or the organization and applications. Data objects can be extended to
different policies for immutability, retention, access, and more.

ECS Concepts and Features-SSP

Dell EMC object storage solution has evolved through the years.

4
3

1: Dell EMC created the object storage market with the introduction of Centera in
2001. Centera has a proprietary API and provides for WORM archive storage only.

2: Dell EMC knew from customers and internal engineering, that the benefits of
scale-out object storage would be useful for read/write workflows and collaboration
across multiple sites. Atmos was introduced to offer storage at a much larger scale,
and the secure multi-tenant platform supports industry standard REST protocols.
Soon the Cloud became an increasingly well-known concept.

3: Innovation in 3rd Platform applications demand hardware flexibility, more

intelligence from big data, and ever-expanding data access methods and device
support. With ECS, you get much of the Atmos and Centera functionality in the
same box, plus support for Hadoop and new interfaces. ECS delivers scale-out
elastic object storage, and file storage at an efficient and affordable economic price
point.

4: ECS is now in its 3rd generation. Denser storage, more computing capability for
better handling of more load and data. ECS is on a continuous curve of evolution,
answering to the most demanding customer needs.

ECS Concepts and Features-SSP

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ECS in Use

Traditional Use Cases

Global
Video Modern
Content
Cloud Evidence Apps
Archive Repository
Repository Analytics
Backup IoT

Traditional Use Cases

... and More

Site 1 Site 2 Site 3

The traditional primary target use cases for ECS include:

• Geo protected archive4
• Cloud backup5

4 Geo protected archive - Using ECS as an archive tier and moving inactive data to
that tier can reduce primary storage capacities significantly. The archive process
reduces the load on the backup process. The process has fewer data to back up,
and fewer data to store and manage. A 10/2 erasure coding scheme for cold
archives is used. A chunk is broken down into 10 data fragments and 2 erasure
coding, or parity fragments. 10/2 erasure coding enables for better storage
efficiencies for cold storage use cases.

ECS Concepts and Features-SSP

© Copyright
Internal Use - Confidential 2020 Dell Inc. Page 17
• Video surveillance evidence repository6
• Global content repository7

5Cloud backup - ECS can be used as a cloud target backup for customer’s primary
data. For instance, use of Isilon CloudPools to tier data from Isilon to ECS. Third-
party cloud backup solutions also can typically be redirected to ECS as the cloud
backup target.

6 Video surveillance evidence repository - In contrast to IoT data, video surveillance

data has a smaller object storage count, but a higher capacity footprint per file.
While data authenticity is important, data retention is not as critical. ECS can be a
low-cost landing area or secondary storage location for this data. Video
management software can leverage ECS’ rich metadata to tag files with important
details like camera location, retention requirement, and data protection
requirement. Also, ECS’ metadata can be used to set the file to a read-only status
to ensure a chain of custody on the file.

7 Global content repository - Unstructured content repositories containing images,

videos, and similar content are currently stored in high-cost storage systems. The
high-cost system use makes it impossible for organizations to cost-effectively
manage massive data growth. The desire for on-premises clouds to manage and
store cold or archive data with ease. Newer applications, such as, ride-sharing,
social media, and messaging are being written to take advantage of massive data
availability, anytime, anywhere through open APIs. Enterprise developers are
creating shadow IT by deploying applications in public clouds.

ECS Concepts and Features-SSP

Page 18 © Copyright 2020 Dell Inc.

Modern Use Cases

Global
Video Modern
Content
Cloud Evidence Apps
Archive Repository
Repository Analytics
Backup IoT

Modern Use Cases

... and More

Site 1 Site 2 Site 3

The modern primary target use cases for ECS include:

• Storage for IoT8

8 Storage for IoT - The Internet of Things offers a new revenue opportunity for
businesses who can extract value from customer data. ECS offers an efficient
platform for data collection at massive scale. ECS also streamlines analytics
because the data can be analyzed directly on the ECS platform without requiring
time consuming ETL (extract, transform, load) processes. Organizations can point
their Hadoop compute cluster at ECS, and run queries from the primary data. As an
object storage system, ECS can store all the IoT data in a very cost effective
manner and leverage its built-in data checking to ensure data integrity. The addition
of more sensors or more detail per sensor increases capacity requirements. With
ECS’ scale-out design, it can easily keep up with increases in capacity or retention
requirements as well as increased file size due to higher detail per sensor. The rich
metadata can be used to tag this sensor data with the serial number of the device
that created the data, the location or the product that it is on. Also, retention times

ECS Concepts and Features-SSP

© Copyright
Internal Use - Confidential 2020 Dell Inc. Page 19
• Modern applications:
− Traditional storage was never designed for new web, mobile and cloud
applications. They were built for access over a LAN for specific applications.
Provisioning and access is driven by IT. The basic design makes it difficult, if
not impossible, to provide self-service access to traditional storage in an IT-
as-a-Service model. Writing to multiple file systems and proprietary APIs
increases development time and cost. Data that locked into on premise file
systems is not accessible by web-based and mobile applications.
− ECS is a great solution for the above with its multiple protocol access and a
very simple geo-capability. Developers only have to worry about the apps,
not the ops. ECS is made to support next-gen web, mobile and cloud
applications. Multi-site read/writes with strong consistency make developers’
job much easier. As the ECS capacity changes and grows, developers never
need to re-code their apps.
− The target audiences are C-level and IT leadership that are looking to
deploy new Web, mobile and cloud applications; they may have some apps
already deployed in a public cloud. ECS Software and/or ECS appliance lets
them deploy on their own infrastructure. The VP of Apps/App architecture
will also be interested – especially if they are not able to use public cloud –
they can be influencers in an account since ECS appliance will make their
development efforts less risky and speed time to production.
• Data Lake values:

for each object can be stored in metadata, ensuring that data governance policies
are upheld. For this use case, customers will enjoy faster time to market, cloud
scale and better data privacy, security, and compliance.

ECS Concepts and Features-SSP

Page 20 © Copyright 2020 Dell Inc.

− Time to Market9
− Storage Efficiencies10
− Future proof Architecture11 .
− Reduce Risk/Deliver Value on existing Infrastructure12
• And more every day - More use cases are being implemented every day. The
new ECS Gen3 hardware solutions enable a broader platform, which enables
ECS to satisfy a larger scope of customer needs.

9 Time to Market - Improve time to market for new products & applications
leveraging Objects and HDFS delivered as a service. “In-place” analytics
capabilities reduce risk, resources and time-to-results.

10 Storage Efficiencies - Efficiently store PBs of data, billions of small files and/or
large media files in a low cost, state-of-art, commodity-based storage system

11Future proof Architecture - Addresses challenges with traditional HDFS enabling

enterprise features like erasure coding and geo replication with reduced data
protection efficiency. Industry accepted standard API support for all interfaces.

12 Reduce Risk/Deliver Value on existing Infrastructure – Enables analytics on your

existing storage infrastructure without moving your data. For analytics, again, this
can be a c-level discussion or even in the business units that are trying to better
understand their data and extract business insight. Do they have projects for
information-based applications? Data scientists are also targets - they are
responsible for business intelligence and analytics and are trying to tap new data
sources.

ECS Concepts and Features-SSP

File Object Hadoop

ECS enables simultaneous access to data via several standard industry protocols
NFS, CIFS, HDFS, and object storage protocols for S3, OpenStack Swift, and
Atmos. The same data can be object or file data stored on the ECS system. NFSv3
and CIFS support enables customers to have file access, and interact with the
same data via HDFS. This multi-protocol interoperability provides object access for
mobile, desktop, and enterprise applications without switching system or data
modification.

Geo Distributed

Any Protocol - Any Location

ECS Concepts and Features-SSP

Page 22 © Copyright 2020 Dell Inc.

ECS can be run on non-EMC hardware for select custom solutions. ECS virtual
data centers, or VDCs can be federated, or related together to protect data across
multiple sites, and to provide local access to data using the applications already in
use. When federated, data in ECS is not only protected within a cluster, it is also
protected across sites so that even if a site fails, the data can still be accessed
without interruption.

The protocol distribution for any site is customizable to meet the needs of the
organization. The relationship between VDCs is easily established and managed
using the ECS Portable, the GUI management interface.

ECS Concepts and Features-SSP

Play the video and listen to Dell EMC Senior Vice President for Unstructured Data
Storage, Manuvir Das, and Vice President of ECS Software Engineering, Srikanth
Satya, provide insights into ECS.

Movie:

The web version of this content contains a movie.

ECS Concepts and Features-SSP

Page 24 © Copyright 2020 Dell Inc.

ECS Product Packaging

ECS can be delivered as an Appliance or as a Software-only solution.

1 2

1: With the ECS Appliance, the storage system is delivered, serviced, and
prepared by Dell EMC. Also, customers get a single integrated hardware and
software solution offering the best configuration for object storage environments.

2: ECS Software enables customers to bring their own commodity hardware and
run object and HDFS data services on their own equipment. With this option,
customers benefit from both the low cost of commodity hardware while not
compromising enterprise storage capabilities.
- ECS Software delivers a complete solution.
- ECS Software is used only for large deployments and requires a qualification from
Dell EMC.
- ECS Software Defined storage can only run on approved hardware.
- Dell EMC works with the customer to customize the ECS software to run on their
platform.

ECS Concepts and Features-SSP

ECS software only licensing options include a free trial edition and a fully licensed
production version.

1
2

1: The ECS Community Edition is a fully containerized version of ECS available for
free download. Customers can use the Community Edition for development and
testing, and includes unlimited capacity, and no built in time limits. The Community
Edition is only supported through the online community.

2: The licensing model of ECS Software is based on the amount of raw storage
that is deployed per customer site. The licensing costs consist of the software
license, plus the cost of premium and professional services support. The licensed
version is available for production environments. Dell EMC support services and
provides support.

ECS Concepts and Features-SSP

Page 26 © Copyright 2020 Dell Inc.

Understanding ECS Storage Structure

ECS Concepts and Features-SSP

© Copyright 2020 Dell Inc. Page 27

ECS Storage Abstraction Layers

This lesson examines how data objects are stored in ECS. Data objects are stored
using multiple layers of physical and virtual constructs. A construct is a grouping of
physical elements, or a separation of a physical element into virtual elements.

1: The ECS Virtual Data Center – VDC is both a physical and logical construct.
VDCs are physically connected racks that are logically defined as a cluster. VDCs
are the top-level resource that represents the collection of ECS infrastructure to
manage as a unit, also called an ECS cluster. Multiple VDCs can be located within
a single physical location or site.

2: The storage pool provides a mechanism for creating physical separation, by

logically grouping the storage on different sets of nodes. The grouping logically
separates that storage from the storage on other sets of nodes. The storage pool is
also used in determining which nodes are used when protecting copies of data.

3: ECS Replication Group is a logical construct that defines the storage pool
protection relationship. Similar to federation between VDCs, a replication group
defines a relationship between storage pools, or locally within the storage pool.
Storage pools are placed into a replication group to provide flexibility where data
can be accessed. Replication groups can be local or global. Local replication
groups protect objects within the same VDC against disk or node failures. Global
replication groups protect objects against disk, node, and site failures. Both global
and local replication groups can be created for later configuration selection.

ECS Concepts and Features-SSP

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Internal Use - Confidential 28 © Copyright 2020 Dell Inc.
4: A namespace is a logical construct that provides the equivalent to a dynamic
logical volume. Each namespace creates a logically defined storage separation
within a replication group. A namespace is associated with one replication group.
Multiple namespaces can be associated with the same replication group. When this
occurs, the objects that are written through multiple namespaces are stored within
and replicated across the same physical storage.

5: Buckets are object containers that are created on top of a namespace that can
be used to control access to objects and to set properties that define attributes for
all contained objects, such as retention periods and quotas. As namespaces are
also global resources, an object can be addressed using its bucket and namespace
from any linked VDC.

6: VDCs can be federated together and share a global configuration. Two or more
VDCs, separated locally by just a few meters or globally by hundreds of kilometers,
can be federated together. Federation is the first step to protecting and sharing
objects for global access.

ECS Concepts and Features-SSP

ECS systems are built using fundamental building blocks to form clusters in a
distributed storage architecture. Nodes and network switches are combined to form
racks. Racks are added to expand the cluster.

Nodes

Gen2 Hardware Gen3 Hardware

Front

EX300/EX500
Compute &
Front
Storage
Servers

Back

U-Series &
Front
D-Series EX3000S/D

Front

EX3000S
Disk Array Enclosures Back Compute &
Storage

Back

Compute &
EX3000D
Storage
Back

ECS Concepts and Features-SSP

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Internal Use - Confidential 30 © Copyright 2020 Dell Inc.
Nodes are the fundamental building blocks. A node consists of compute resources,
or server components, and storage capacity in the form of a storage enclosure with
drives.
• ECS Gen2 nodes - Gen2 nodes use compute chassis and external storage
enclosures. The compute chassis can contain up to four compute modules or
servers. The disk array enclosure or DAE is a separate 4U component that
connects to the server with SAS cables. A server and DAE combination make
up a Gen2 node.
• ECS Gen3 nodes - Gen3 nodes include the compute and disk storage
components within the same enclosure. Each chassis contains either a single
node, or can contain two nodes. The EX300, EX500, and EX3000S models
include one node per chassis. The EX3000D model includes two nodes within a
single 4U chassis.

Network Switches

Gen2 Switches Customer Gen3 Switches

Switches

Data Switches Front-end Switches

Arista 10 Gbps Switches Dell EMC 10/25 Gbps Switches

Rack Nodes Rack Nodes

Management Switch

Arista 1 Gbps Switch Back-end Switches

Dell EMC 10/25 Gbps Switches

Top of rack or ToR switches are part of the integrated solution and provide the
communications infrastructure from the nodes to the customer network, and
between nodes.
• ECS Gen2 switches - Gen2 utilizes two 10 Gbps Arista data switches and a
single 1 Gbps Arista management switch. The data switches are connected to
the nodes, and to the customer network. All traffic between nodes, between

ECS Concepts and Features-SSP

© Copyright
Internal Use - Confidential 2020 Dell Inc. Page 31
racks, and to the customer applications are carried over the data switches. The
management switch provides connectivity for in-band and out-of-band node
management.
• ECS Gen3 switches - Gen3 utilizes two 10/25 Gbps Dell EMC front-end
switches, and two 10/25 Gbps Dell EMC back-end switches. The front-end
switches are connected to the nodes and to the customer network. All traffic
between nodes, between racks, and to the customer applications are carried
over the data switches. The back-end switches currently provide connectivity for
in-band and out-of-band node management.

Racks

Gen2 Racks Gen3 Racks

Switches Switches

Servers

DAEs

Switches Switches

Switches

Nodes
Nodes

U-Series, EX300 EX3000S,

D-Series EX500 EX3000D

Nodes and network switches are combined into racks. Racks are both physically
separated, and logically separated in building an ECS cluster.
• Racks provide a physical separation for ECS configurations. Racks must
contain a single node type. Racks must contain a minimum number of nodes.
• Racks are identified in ECS configuration files as a separate logical elements.
Racks are individually configured with each rack having a master configuration
node.

ECS Concepts and Features-SSP

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Physical and Logical ECS Constructs

A construct is a way to define a grouping. Physical constructs are groupings and

separations of physical components. The physical building blocks that are used are
the racks, and the nodes within the racks to build the groupings.

Virtual Data Centers

Virtual Data Center - VDC

Inter-rack
connectivity

• The VDC defines which racks are grouped into the cluster. The racks are
physically networked together, and virtually defined in the ECS software.
− A VDC can be configured to contain one or multiple racks.
− Increasing the number of racks expands capacity and adds compute
resources to the VDC.
− The total storage available across all racks in a VDC can be presented as a
single storage space.
• When racks are combined and placed into a VDC together, they must be
connected to one another through the management or backend switch(es). The
connected network of multiple ECS appliances is referred to as the Nile Area
Network (NAN).

− The NAN is created on the management or backend switch(es).

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− When multiple racks are combined within a VDC through the NAN, the
management and capacity of all the nodes in all the racks are combined and
managed as a single cluster.

Storage Pools

Storage Pools Storage

Pool 3

Storage Storage
Pool 1 Pool 2
Storage
Pool 4

The storage that is associated with the nodes can be partitioned into storage pools.
Storage pools allow the organization of storage resources based on business
requirements. For example, an organization requires physical separation of data,
the nodes can be grouped into multiple different storage pools.
• All storage within a given node can belong to only one storage pool.
• A storage pool requires at least four nodes. However, five nodes are
recommended as a minimum to enable enhanced node loss protection.
• The first step in configuration is to create at least one storage pool, which
occurs before creating a VDC. The first storage pool that is created in a VDC
may not be deleted. You may join additional nodes to the storage pool from the
same or different racks later in the implementation process.
• View the displayed illustration for examples of possible storage pool
configurations within a VDC. The storage pools should be created before
creating the VDCs.

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− VDC A and VDC B each have a single storage pool and VDC C has two
storage pools.
− The racks in VDC B are connected together through the Nile Area Network
(NAN), and Storage Pool 2 includes the storage that is attached to all the
nodes in both Rack 1 and Rack 2.
− The rack in VDC C has been split into two storage pools, each storage pool
includes storage from only part of the nodes in the rack.

ECS Concepts and Features-SSP

Logical constructs are software defined groupings and separations. Logical

constructs are built on top of the physical constructs. Most ECS storage is defined
and related together using logical constructs.

Federation

Federation enables VDC

A and VDC B for
replication and shared
access

A federation establishes a relationship between the VDCs to allow data to be

replicated from one site to another to increase availability and data durability, and
to ensure that ECS is resilient against site failure.

The figure displays two federated VDCs, VDC A and VDC B.

ECS Concepts and Features-SSP

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Replication Groups

Local
Replication Groups Replication
Groups

Global
replication
group

• In the example displayed, Replication Group X is a global replication group

containing Storage Pool 1 in VDC A and Storage Pool 2 in VDC B. Placing
federated VDCs and storage pools into a replication group improves protection
of data by identifying the nodes and VDCs that participate in the protection of
objects. When an object is written to a replication group that contains nodes
from federated VDCs, the data for the object is protected both by distributing
that data across the nodes in the storage pool within the local VDC, and by
copying the data to a storage pool in another VDC. If a VDC fails for some
reason, the data from that VDC is recoverable from the remaining VDCs in the
replication group. Placing federated VDCs into a replication group also
improves access to data by establishing multiple local geo-distributed access
points for data stored within the replication group.
• Continuing with the example displayed, Replication Groups Y and Z are local
replication groups. When an object is written to a replication group that contains
nodes from a single VDC, the data for the object is protected only by distributing
that data across the nodes in the storage pool. For example, data stored in
Replication Group Y on VDC C is only written to disks on the nodes within
Storage Pool 3. If additional racks contained nodes also in Storage Pool 3, the
data protection is extended to include all nodes in the replication group and not
only the nodes in the single rack.

ECS Concepts and Features-SSP

Namespaces

The namespace provides the capability to separate ECS users using logical
boundaries around storage pools. The logical separation enables ECS to handle
multi-tenant operations. Each tenant is defined by the namespace and the set of
users who can store and access objects within that namespace. Users of one
namespace cannot access objects from another namespace. For a service
provider, this architecture can be used to separate one tenant from the other. For
enterprise IT, this architecture could be used to isolate one business unit from
another such that it has its own user management, replication configuration, as well
as encryption policy. Namespaces can be used to represent a company, a
department within an organization, a group within a department, or isolated storage
for a specific application.

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Buckets

Object
Buckets
Object Users

Objects are stored by writing into a bucket. Likewise, objects are retrieved by
reading from a bucket. This occurs when the object application connects to the IP
address of one of the nodes within the namespace containing the desired bucket.
The port on the IP address that the application connects through depends on
whether the application uses the S3 protocol, OpenStack Swift protocol, EMC
Atmos protocol, or Centera CAS protocol. Once the application has connected, it
reads or writes the selected object. When writing an object, the node to which the
application is connected determines which VDC owns the object. Note, however,
that regardless of the VDC ownership, the application can access the object by
connecting to the nodes in any other VDC in the same replication group.

S3, Atmos, or Swift buckets can be configured to support file system access for
NFS and HDFS. A bucket that is configured for file system access can be read and
written by using its object protocol and by using the NFS or HDFS protocol.

ECS Concepts and Features-SSP

ECS supports a hierarchy of different types of users, who are defined as roles.
Each role has a set of tasks a user can perform.

6 7

1 4

2 5

1: The system admin role is the highest privileged role for ECS. Users with a
system admin role can perform all configuration and management tasks that are
required for ECS. System admins configure and manage the VDC, storage pools
(SP), replication groups (RP), authentication providers, namespaces, buckets, and
users. System admins have full access to all monitoring and reporting available
with an ECS system.

• A system admin can configure namespaces, and perform namespace

administration, add buckets to a namespace, and create object users. The
system admin role can create namespace administrators, and add them to
specific namespaces.
• ECS has a root user account. The root account is assigned to the system admin
role. The root account can be used to perform initial configuration for some ECS
versions.

2: Users assigned the system monitor role can only view all configuration data, but
cannot make any configuration changes. System monitor role users can view the

ECS Concepts and Features-SSP

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same information available to the system admins. Local system monitors can only
modify their own passwords.

3: The lock admin is a pre-defined, pre-provisioned local user named emcsecurity.

The lock admin role can lock and unlock nodes through ECS Portal or the ECS
Management API. Locking a node disables remote SSH access to the node for
security purposes. The lock admin can only change their passwords, and lock and
unlock nodes. The role cannot be assigned to another user.

4: Users assigned the namespace admin role can configure namespace settings,
such as creating buckets, and administering quotas and retention periods.
Namespace admins can map domain users to the namespace, and assign local
users as object users for that namespace. Namespace admin operations can be
performed using the ECS Portal interface, using the ECS Rest API for programmed
application integration.

5: Object users are end-users of ECS object storage. Object users access storage
through object clients using the ECS supported access protocols, for example S3,
OpenStack Swift, CAS, or Atmos client applications. Object users are assigned
privileges to perform operations within the namespace they are assigned to. Object
users may be enabled to create or delete buckets, and assigned read, write, modify
privileges for data object access.

6: ECS system administration - The system admin, system monitor, and lock admin
roles are used to perform, or monitor tasks associated with cluster or VDC level
configuration and management.

7: User space administration - Name space administrator and object user roles are
used to manage the logical storage space defined by the system admin role.

ECS Concepts and Features-SSP

1: ECS creates separate chunks to store actual data object and the object's
associated metadata. Whether the data is file data, or object data, ECS stores the
data using the same method and mixes the data within the same chunks.

2: As data is added to the ECS system, the objects are added to the next available
chunk regardless of the size of the object. Multiple smaller objects are added to the
same chunk, and larger objects are divided into multiple chunks.

3: Chunks are referred to as open when less than a 128 MB of data is added to the
container or a set period of time has not been reached. New data and modified
data is written as an append-only to the next available open chunk.

4: Existing data blocks are never modified in place, which prevents the need to lock
a file for modification. ECS continues to add data to an open chunk until it is filled
with 128 MB or a set period of time has been reached. When a chunk is filled or
after a set period of time, the chunk is closed. Closing a chunk is referred to as
sealing.

5: ECS data protection methodology protects the data at the chunk level rather
than the individual object or file level. ECS always provides a minimum protection
level to guarantee data availability. Metadata chunks are triple mirrored, open data

ECS Concepts and Features-SSP

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chunks use a combination of mirroring and erasure encoding, and sealed data
chunks are fully erasure encoded with forward error correction.

6: ECS data storage principles use the concept of equal sized logical containers.
ECS stores data and metadata in continuous logical containers called chunks.
Each chunk is always 128 megabytes in size.

ECS Concepts and Features-SSP

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ECS Architecture Overview

ECS provides a software-defined cloud storage platform that can be deployed on a

set of qualified industry standard hardware or a turnkey storage appliance. At a
high level, ECS is composed of many different components:

1 2

1: Data Services – The data services layer provides the services, tools and APIs to
support Object, HDFS, and file protocols.

2: Portal and Provisioning Services – Portal services provides a web-based portal

that allows self-service access, management automation, reporting, and ECS node
configuration and management. The service also handles licensing, authentication,
multi-tenancy, and provisioning services.

3: Storage Engine – The storage engine is responsible for storing and retrieving
data, managing transactions, data protection, and data replication.

4: Fabric – Fabric provides clustering, health, software and configuration

management, upgrade capabilities, and alerting.

ECS Concepts and Features-SSP

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5: Infrastructure – Infrastructure is the core node operating system, and networking
components. ECS uses SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 12 as the base operating
system. Certified network switches complete the physical infrastructure.

6: Hardware – Hardware provides the physical compute and storage components,

or nodes. Nodes are based on ECS appliance, or customer provided qualified
industry standard hardware.

ECS Concepts and Features-SSP

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ECS Hardware Layer

ECS foundation begins with the hardware the ECS software runs on. The hardware
layer specifically refers to the node hardware that is combined with the racks
designations included in the VDC.

Data Provisioning &

Services ECS Portal

Storage Engine
Nodes &
Racks
Fabric

Infrastructure

Hardware

ECS appliance options are defined by the generation of the associated introduction
of hardware models. ECS appliance hardware remains consistent within a
generation. To date, ECS has had three hardware generations, including ECS
Gen3 hardware introduced in late August 2018.

ECS Concepts and Features-SSP

1 2 3

4 5 6

7 8 10 9

1: Gen1 hardware consists of the C-Series and the U-Series. The C-Series was
intended for smaller deployments with higher compute to storage ratios. The C-
Series has been discontinued. The U-Series contained 6 TB drives, and is mostly
phased out with the introduction of the Gen2 U-Series with larger capacity drives.
Gen1 used rack capacity for ordering part numbers. Gen1 introduced Arista data
and management switches. Both original switch models were replaced with newer
models with the Gen2 introduction.

2: Gen2 hardware consists of higher capacity options for the U-Series, and the D-
Series. The U-Series received 8 TB drives, and later 12 TB drives were introduced.
The D-Series is a high capacity dense solution for archival and deep archival
solutions. Gen2 continued to use rack capacity for ordering part numbers. Gen2
introduced newer Arista switches for both data and management networks.

3: Gen3 hardware consists of four new models based on three Dell server models,
the EX300, the EX500, the EX3000D, and the EX3000S. The new models expand
the range of the ECS appliance offering a much lower entry point, and expanding
the top end rack capacity. Gen3 hardware introduces high availability pairs Dell
EMC 25 Gbps switches for front-end connectivity, and back-end management.

4: Drive Capacity Options: 6 TB drives

5: DAEs contain up to 60 drives, and each DAE is directly SAS-connected to a

single node. The number of drives is configurable within the DAE. Any node within
the same rack must contain the same size and number of drives.

ECS Concepts and Features-SSP

Page 48 © Copyright 2020 Dell Inc.

• Available drive-size options are 8 TB or 12 TB.
• Drives per DAE – For new orders, DAEs are available with 10, 30, 45, or 60
drives each.

6: Each DAE contains up to 98 drives and is directly SAS-connected to a single

node. The number of drives is configurable within the DAE. Any node within the
same rack must contain the same size and number of drives.

• The D-Series is offered with a single 10 TB drive capacity.

• Each DAE can contain either 70 or 98 drives.

7: EX300 nodes contain 12 x 3.5-inch hard disk drives or HDDs. The HDDs are
available in 1 TB, 2 TB, 4 TB, 8 TB and 16 TB capacities, which provide per-node
capacities of 12 TB, 24 TB, 48 TB, 96 TB, and 192 TB respectively.

8: EX500 nodes contain two drive bays with 12 x 3.5-inch hard disk drives or HDDs
in each bay for a total of 24 drives. The HDDs are available in 8 TB, 12 TB, and 16
TB capacities.

9: EX3000S nodes are available with either 45, 60, or 90 - 12 TB and 16 TB drives.
All drives in the chassis are available to the EX3000S compute node. The chassis
contains a single midplane to enable access to all available drives. Upgrade kits
are available in 15- and 30-drive kit increments. All nodes within a single rack must
contain the same number of drives per node.

10: EX3000D nodes are available with either 30 or 45 - 12 TB and 16 TB drives.

Half of the drives in the chassis are available to the individual EX3000D compute
nodes. The chassis contains a split or dual midplane to separate the drives
between the compute nodes. Upgrade kits are available in 30-drive kit increments,
providing 15 drives per node. All nodes within a single rack must contain the same
number of drives per node.

ECS Concepts and Features-SSP

1 2 3 4 6 5

7 9

1: The U-Series is the main ECS Gen2 solution for most workflow applications. The
U-Series provides the broadest number of configuration options, and a higher
compute-to-storage ratio than the D-Series.

DAEs contain up to 60 drives, and each DAE is directly SAS-connected to a single

node. The number of drives is configurable within the DAE. Any node within the
same rack must contain the same size and number of drives.

Drive Boot Disks per Disk Rack Rack Rack

capacity drive per node/DAE type min/max minimum maximum
node nodes capacity capacity

8 TB 1 x 400 10, 15, 20, 25, HDD Min 5 – 400 TB 3,840 TB

drives GB SSD 30, 35, 40, 45, Max 8
50, 55, 60

12 TB 1 x 400 10, 15, 20, 25, HDD Min 5 – 600 TB 5,760 TB

drives GB SSD 30, 35, 40, 45, Max 8
50, 55, 60

2: The D-Series is the main ECS Gen2 solution for archive and deep archive
workflow applications. The D-Series provides a select number of configuration
options and a higher storage-to-compute ratio than the U-Series.

ECS Concepts and Features-SSP

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D-Series racks are available as entire rack solutions only. Each rack contains 8
nodes and associated DAEs.

Drive Boot drive Disks per Disk Rack Rack Rack

capacity per node node type min/max minimum maximum
nodes capacity capacity

10 TB 1 x 400 GB 70 or 98 HDD Min 8 – 5,600 TB 7,840 TB

Drives SSD Max 8

3: The ECS EX300 nodes add a new lower-capacity platform to use as building
blocks for enterprise object and cloud storage. Built on Dell server technology, the
EX300 combines industry-standard server technology and ECS enterprise-grade
storage software.

Drive Boot Disks Disk Rack Rack Rack

Capacity drive per per type min/max minimum maximum
node node nodes capacity capacity

1 TB drives 480 GB 12 HDD Min 5 / 60 TB 192 TB

M.2 drives Max 16
(BOSS)
system
disk

2 TB drives 480 GB 12 HDD Min 5 / 120 TB 384 TB

M.2 drives Max 16
(BOSS)
system
disk

4 TB drives 480 GB 12 HDD Min 5 / 240 TB 768 TB

M.2 drives Max 16
(BOSS)
system
disk

ECS Concepts and Features-SSP

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8 TB drives 480 GB 12 HDD Min 5 / 480 TB 1,536 TB
M.2 drives Max 16
(BOSS)
system
disk

16 TB 480 GB 12 HDD Min 5 / 960 TB 3,072 TB

drives M.2 drives Max 6
(BOSS)
system
disk

4: EX500 is a versatile option for midsized enterprises looking to support either

modern application or deep archive use cases. It has a denser capacity than
EX300 but still maintains the high compute performance. The EX500 is built on the
same Dell server technology as the EX300, combining industry-standard server
technology and ECS enterprise-grade storage software.

Drive Boot Disks Disk type Rack Rack Rack

Capacity drive per per node min/max minimum maximum
node nodes capacity capacity

8 TB 480 GB 12 or 24 HDD Min 5 / 480 TB 3,072 TB

drives M.2 drives Max 16
(BOSS)
system
disk

12 TB 480 GB 12 or 24 HDD Min 5 / 720 TB 4,608 TB

drives M.2 drives Max 16
(BOSS)
system
disk

ECS Concepts and Features-SSP

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16 TB 480 GB 12 or 24 HDD Min 5 / 960 TB 6,144 TB
drives M.2 drives Max 16
(BOSS)
system
disk

5: The ECS Gen3 EX3000D utilizes server chassis based on Dell Datacenter
Scalable Server or DSS architecture. The EX3000D is a direct replacement for the
Gen2 U-Series ECS appliance offerings with medium drive counts.

Drive Boot Disks Disk type Rack Rack Rack

Capacity drive per per node min/max minimum maximum
node nodes capacity capacity

12 TB 480 GB 30 or 45 HDD Min 6 / 2,160 TB 8,640 TB

drives SSD drives Max 16
system
disk

16 TB 480 GB 30 or 45 HDD Min 6 / 2,880 TB 11,520 TB

drives SSD drives Max 16
system
disk

6: The ECS Gen3 EX3000S uses server chassis based on Dell Datacenter
Scalable Server or DSS architecture. The EX3000S is a direct replacement for the
Gen2 U-Series with higher drive counts, and for the Gen2 D-Series ECS appliance
offerings.

Drive Boot Disks Disk type Rack Rack Rack

Capacity drive per per node min/max minimum maximum
node nodes capacity capacity

12 TB 480 GB 45, 60, or HDD Min 5 / 2,700 TB 8,640 TB

drives SSD 90 drives Max 8
system
disk

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16 TB 480 GB 45, 60, or HDD Min 5 / 3,600 11,520 TB
drives SSD 90 drives Max 8 TTB
system
disk

7: Gen2 fixed server specifications provide a consistent and predictable compute

performance. Each server contains dual Intel 6-core Haswell processors and 64
GB of RAM.

• All boot partitions and the ECS software are contained on local SSD drives
dedicated to each server in the 2U server chassis.

Gen2 uses Arista switches for the public and private networks. The Arista switches
are the only option available through Dell EMC for the public switches. A Cisco
switch is available by RPQ for the private switch.

• Two public data network switches – Arista 7050SX-64

• One private management network switch – Arista 7010T-48, or Cisco 3048 48-
P through RPQ

• EX300/EX500 nodes are two rack units or U high. Up to 16 nodes can be

configured in a single rack.
• Different EX300 and EX500 nodes with different drive sizes can be placed
within the same rack. Each node contains only a single drive size. However, a
minimum number of the same capacity nodes are required. The minimum
recommendation is five nodes containing drives of the same size.
• Nodes are connected to each front-end and back-end switch using 10 GbE
SFP+ ports for high availability. The nodes support up to 10 Gbps, and connect
seamlessly to the new 25 Gbps switches. The Dell iDRAC port on each node is
connected using 1 GbE connectors to the Fox back-end switch for direct access
management. The iDRAC card replaces the RMM port that is used with Gen2
hardware.
• Each rack contains Ethernet switches. The provided Ethernet switches are now
Dell switches for Gen3. The Dell switches replace the Arista switches for Gen1
and Gen2. The speed is increased from 10 Gbps to 25 Gbps for node-to-switch
communications and customer uplink ports. Four 100 GbE QSFP ports are also

ECS Concepts and Features-SSP

Page 54 © Copyright 2020 Dell Inc.

available for customer uplink. A high-availability approach is now implemented
for management switches using the same 25 Gbps switches used for the front-
end network.

• The EX3000S and EX3000D models use the same server/storage chassis. The
EX3000D chassis contains double nodes. The D stands for double. The
EX3000S chassis contains a single node per chassis. The S stands for single.
• Each EX3000 chassis is 4U high, and can contain up to 90 hot-pluggable
drives. In the EX3000D, up to 45 drives are available to each node, and are
physically separated using a split midplane. The drives are pull-out drawer
accessible from the front of the rack.
• EX3000D nodes have dual compute modules, and EX3000S have single
compute modules per 4U chassis. The compute modules are the same and
each contain the same processors and the same amount of RAM regardless of
which EX3000 model is chosen.
• The EX3000D requires a minimum of three chassis with six nodes to create a
new rack. A single rack can contain up to 8 chassis with 16 nodes. Racks can
be ordered with 6, 8, 10, 12, 14, or 16 nodes. Single-chassis, 2-node
incremental upgrades are available for later rack expansion.
• The EX3000S requires a minimum of five chassis or nodes to create a new
rack. A single rack can contain up to 8 nodes. Racks can be ordered with 5, 6,
7, or 8 nodes. Single-node incremental upgrades for later rack expansion are
available.

ECS Concepts and Features-SSP

These charts display each of the standard shipping minimum and maximum rack
capacities for EX30013, EX50014, EX3000D15, and EX3000S16 Gen3 appliance
models.

13The EX300 offers a lower capacity entry point to meet customer requirements.
The linear expansion maintains a consistent compute-to-storage ratio as capacity is
added to the rack. The lower-capacity entry point expands ECS as a solution to
more customer workflows. The EX300 nodes are excellent replacements for ECS
Gen2 U-Series nodes with lower drive counts, by offering similar capacities and
greater incremental node expansion per rack.

14With rack capacity ranging from 480 TB to 4.6 PB, the EX500 is a versatile
option for midsized enterprises. It overlaps the EX300 maximum drive configuration
but with more capacity and better performance. The EX500 also overlaps the
EX3000 but does not require the infrastructure that is needed by the EX3000. The
EX500 nodes are excellent replacements for Gen2 U-Series nodes with lower drive
counts, by offering similar capacities and greater incremental node expansion per
rack.

15The EX3000D offers the greatest range of capacity expansion per rack. The
EX3000D is the ECS Gen2 U-Series replacement for performance-oriented
workflows. The limited range of 30 or 45 drives per node offers consistent
performance with the linear expansion. The higher rack capacities and lower entry
points provide performance and density in a single offering.

16The EX3000S offerings are targeted at the active archive and deep archive
workflows. The EX3000S provides the best value in cost per terabyte for high-
density storage workflows. The EX3000S is a direct replacement for the ECS Gen2

ECS Concepts and Features-SSP

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Click image to enlarge.

D-Series, with the added benefit of partial rack implementations, and single node
expansion.

ECS Concepts and Features-SSP

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ECS Infrastructure Layer

Infrastructure Layer Overview

Data Provisioning &

Services ECS Portal

Storage Engine

Node Operating
Fabric System

Infrastructure Java Virtual Machine

Networking
Hardware

ECS infrastructure consists of the software operating system running on the nodes,
and the networking infrastructure used for connectivity, communications, and virtual
network separation.

Each ECS node runs a specific operating system. SuSE Linux Enterprise 12 to
provide the operating system infrastructure for ECS appliance and approved
customer provided industry standard hardware. Custom deployments for RedHat
Enterprise Linux, or CoreOS may be approved through a formal special request
and extensive validation process.

Docker is installed on the infrastructure to deploy the encapsulated ECS layers.

The ECS software is written in Java, the Java Virtual Machine (JVM) is installed as
part of the infrastructure.

The node connectivity and communications are provided using physical and virtual
networking infrastructure.

ECS Concepts and Features-SSP

Application Customer
Network
Clients

Front-end / Data switches

Back-end / Management switches

Public Network
North - South

Virtual LANs

East - West
Private Network

Public IPs

Private IPs

Virtual IPs

ECS networking comprises many separate components that forms a critical part of
the ECS infrastructure. The network traffic is responsible for all communications
between the applications and clients and ECS nodes, between ECS nodes,
between ECS racks, and between network functions. The networking is comprised
of physical switches and cabling, and virtual network components.
• Physical Components - Network switches serve separate infrastructure
functions.

ECS Concepts and Features-SSP

Page 60 © Copyright 2020 Dell Inc.

− Front-end or Data switches17
− Back-end or Management switches18
• Virtual network components are used to separate and route different types of
traffic.

− North - South communications19

− East - West communications20
− Public, private, and virtual IP addresses21
− Public and private networks22

17 Front-end or Data switches are used to connect to the customer network, and
provide a logical pathway to the Back-end or Management switches. Every front-
end switch is redundantly connected for high availability to the nodes in the rack,
and to the customer network. All application, client, rack-to-rack, node-to-node, and
site-to-site traffic utilizes the front-end switches for communications.

18Back-end or Management switches are used to connect the nodes for in-band,
and out-of-band management. The back-end switches are connected to the front-
end switches to enable management access from the front-end switches.

19North - South communications are between the applications and clients on the
customer network to the ECS nodes.

20
East - West communications are between ECS nodes, and between racks in the
VDC.

21 Public, private, and virtual IP addresses are assigned for use by different access
and ECS functions. As an example, nodes are assigned public IP addresses for
client access, and for node management. Private IP addresses are used for
internal traffic functions.

ECS Concepts and Features-SSP

ECS Gen2 hardware solutions include two data switches and one management
switch in an ECS rack solution.
• The data switches currently shipped with Gen2 racks are Arista 7150S-64
switches. The switches are configured in pairs and utilize Arista's MultiChassis

22Public and private networks define the types of traffic communications. Virtual
local area network, or VLAN separation, known as VLAN tagging, separates and
routes the associated traffic within the ECS VDC.

ECS Concepts and Features-SSP

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Link Aggregation, or MLAG, between the switches to enable high availability.
Data switch 1 is named Rabbit, and data switch 2 is named Hare.
− The data switches handle all data-related traffic, and provide network
connectivity to the management switch.
− The data switches are connected to the customer network, and to each node
in the rack.
• The management switch currently shipped with Gen2 racks is the Arista 7010T-
48 switch. A Cisco Nexus 3048 switch can be substituted for the Arista switch
via an RPQ process. The management switch is named Turtle.

− The Turtle switch is used for only in-band and out-of-band management
connectivity to the nodes.
− In a multi-rack VDC, the Turtle switches in each rack are physically and
virtually connected together to form a uniform VDC and provide cluster-wide
management access.

ECS Concepts and Features-SSP

ECS Gen3 switches utilize the Dell S5148F switches, and are installed in
redundant high availability pairs for both the front-end, and back-end networks. The
Gen1 and Gen2 data switches are renamed the front-end switches in Gen3. The
pair of Gen3 back-end switches replace the Gen1 and Gen2 single management
switch.
• Each pair of front-end and back-end switches are connected together with
redundant high speed links, and utilizing spanning-tree protocol. Dell switches
use Virtual Link Trunks, or VLT, which is similar to and provides the same
capabilities as Arista's MultiChannel Link Aggregation, or MLAG, and Cisco's
Virtual Port Channel, or vPC.

ECS Concepts and Features-SSP

Page 64 © Copyright 2020 Dell Inc.

• The front-end switches are used for the majority of the traffic. The Dell S5148F
switches feature 25 Gbps, and 100 Gbps connectivity options to the customer
network. The switches form the primary link from the nodes to the customer
network.
• The back-end switch functionality remains for management.

ECS Concepts and Features-SSP

ECS runs on top of the operating system as a java application and encapsulated
within several Docker containers. The containers are isolated but share the
underlying operating system resources and hardware. Some parts of the ECS
application run on all nodes, some run on one node, and some run on a select
number of the nodes.

1 2 3 4

1: Fabric-registry manages the location or registry of the ECS Docker images. Only
one instance of is running per four nodes. An eight node rack would have two
instances running.

2: Fabric-zookeeper is a centralized service for coordination and synchronization of

distributed processes, configuration information, groups, and naming services. The
fabric-zookeeper is referred to as the persistence manager, and runs on three or
five nodes depending on number of nodes that are deployed within ECS system.

3: Fabric-lifecycle contains the processes, information, and resources required for

the monitoring, configuration management, and health management of the system.
Depending on the number of nodes in the system, there will be three instances
running on a four node system, or five instances for an eight node system.

4: Object-main contains the resources and processes relating to the data services,
storage engine, portal, and provisioning services. object-main runs on every node
in ECS.

ECS Concepts and Features-SSP

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5: Additional related processes and tools run outside of the Docker containers,
including the Docker fabric node agent, and hardware abstraction layer or HAL
tools.

6: Docker is installed on the infrastructure to deploy the encapsulated ECS layers.

ECS Concepts and Features-SSP

Fabric Layer Components

Node agent

Data Provisioning &

Services ECS Portal Hardware Manager

Storage Engine Lifecycle manager

Fabric Persistence manager

Infrastructure Registry

Event library
Hardware

The fabric layer includes different components to manage the overall system. The
fabric layer is a distributed piece of software that runs on every node. The fabric is
a lightweight java agent that runs on each node, and runs natively. The agent
manages Docker, and handles Docker related issues. The node agent provides an
API and semantic to deploy and manage the applications dynamically. The fabric
layer provides constant monitoring, and dynamically reacts to changes.
• Node agent23

23Node agent – The agent manages node resources; disks, network, Docker
containers, etc; and system processes. The node agent runs on each node.

ECS Concepts and Features-SSP

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• Hardware Manager24
• Lifecycle manager25
• Persistence manager26
• Registry27
• Event library28

24Hardware Manager - Provides status, event information and provisioning of the

hardware layer to higher level services. These services have been integrated to
support commodity hardware.

25Lifecycle manager – Manages the application lifecycle, which involves starting

services, recovery, notification, and failure detection.

Persistence manager – Provides the coordination and synchronization of the

ECS distributed environment.

27 Registry – Stores all the Docker images for ECS.

28 Event library – Records and stores events occurring on the system.

ECS Concepts and Features-SSP

Install services

Data Provisioning & Manage services

Services ECS Portal

Controlled changes
Storage Engine
Monitor, detect, and
Fabric alert on system and
application health

Infrastructure Track & react to

environment changes

Hardware Enable cluster & node

management

The fabric responsibilities include provisioning, installing, and upgrading the ECS
software components and system environment. The fabric plays a key role in
maintenance and upgrade activities.

The fabric monitors and maintains the various services, and is responsible to keep
the services running. The fabric monitors, and manages the health of node
resources, and provides alerting services. If a container is down, or a port needs to
be opened, or disk health is failing, the fabric alerts and reports accordingly. The
fabric attempts to restore whatever resources are missing, or not working properly.

The fabric alerts, and query capabilities are available via REST APIs. The fabric
provides a uniform command line experience to system administrators to enable
node management, and allow access to real time events within fabric.

ECS Concepts and Features-SSP

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Storage Engine Layer

1: Resource Service - Stores information such as user, namespace, bucket, and

more.

2: Transaction Service - Parses object requests, and manages reads and writes of
object data to/from chunk operations.

3: Index Service - Manages file-name/data-range to chunk mapping, and

secondary indexes.

4: Chunk Management Service - Manages chunk information, e.g. location, and per
chunk operations.

5: Storage Server Management Service - Monitors the storage server and disks,
and re-protects the data upon hardware failures.

6: Partitions Record Service - Records and manages the owner node of a partition,
and records B+ tree and journal entries.

7: Storage Server Service - Chunk I/O - Manages direct I/O operations to the disks.

8: Space Reclamation - The background process removes invalidated information

from chunks, and consolidates the chunks to reclaim space for reuse.

ECS Concepts and Features-SSP

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Internal Use - Confidential 2020 Dell Inc. Page 71
9: Consistency Checker - The background process performs checksum verification
periodically over the entire data set to ensure data integrity.

ECS has a layered architecture, with every function in the system built as an
independent layer. This design principle makes each layer horizontally scalable
across all nodes in the system and ensures high availability. The ECS storage
engine includes the services in each layer that is shown here, which run on top of
the infrastructure and hardware components. The services of the storage engine
are encapsulated within a Docker container and installed on each ECS node, thus
providing a distributed and shared service.

ECS Concepts and Features-SSP

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Data Services Layer

Data Services Layer Overview

Data Provisioning &

Services ECS Portal Protocol to
Storage Engine
Storage Engine interpreter

Fabric

Infrastructure

Hardware

Client access to data stored in ECS is through object, HDFS, and file protocols.
The data services, which are also referred to as head services, are responsible for
handling client requests, extracting the required information, and passing the
request to the storage engine for further processing (e.g. read, write, etc.). The
data services layer acts as an interpreter between the protocols and storage
engine.

ECS Concepts and Features-SSP

Applications

Data Head Services

ECS Client
Access Layer

REST API Proprietary

Storage Engine Layer

The data head services is referenced as access head services, and the ECS client
access layer. All head services are combined to one process running on the
infrastructure layer to handle each of the protocols called dataheadsvc, in order to
reduce overall memory consumption. All protocols share the same access method
to the storage engine layer. The shared access method enables multi-protocol
access to the same data stored on ECS.

ECS Concepts and Features-SSP

Page 74 © Copyright 2020 Dell Inc.

ECS Portal and Provisioning Layer

1: ECS provides a web-based GUI for management, licensing, provisioning, and

reporting of ECS nodes. The portal has comprehensive reporting capability for
capacity utilization per site, pool, node, and disk levels. The ECS Portal provides
performance monitoring that provides information about latency, throughput,
transactions per second, and replication progress and rate. The ECS Portal
displays diagnostics information such as node and disk recovery status, and per
node statistics on hardware and process health. The ECS Portal information is
useful in identifying performance and system bottlenecks. The dashboard provides
overall system level health and performance. The dashboard's unified view
enhances overall administration visibility. ECS alert management notifies system
administrators when certain critical events occur such as capacity limits, quota
limits, disk and node failures, and software failures.

2: ECS provides command-line tools to install, upgrade, and monitor the ECS
system. SSH access to the nodes is used for command-line management.

3: Management of ECS is also conducted using the REST management APIs.

Administrative users, and application developers incorporate the APIs within their
tools, scripts, or existing applications to administer the ECS system. The ECS GUI
and command line tools were built using the ECS REST Management APIs.

ECS Concepts and Features-SSP

© Copyright
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4: SRM incorporates ECS monitoring information, and provides dashboards and
reports relating to object utilization. For instance, object dashboards include a
summary of configured usable capacity, capacity trends, and configurable usable
capacity by service level. The inventory namespace report provides detailed
information of quota that is used and percentage by namespace. The namespace
charge-back reports show total used capacity local and remote, total number of
objects for each namespace to identify service levels, cost contributors and
charges. Bucket level reports provide details on number of objects, quota, capacity
used and percentage of quota used by bucket. Also through SRM, performance
views and capacity trends over a specified period of time can be observed for ECS.

Management of ECS is done through the ECS portal and provisioning services.

ECS Concepts and Features-SSP

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ECS Features and Functionality

ECS Concepts and Features-SSP

© Copyright 2020 Dell Inc. Page 77

ECS Features and Functionality Overview

ECS is a feature rich enterprise grade multi-protocol object storage platform. The
platform design provides easy to configure and manage features. ECS provides
feature rich functionality to meet multiple enterprise and workflow requirements. In
this lesson, some of the significant features and functionality are covered.
• ECS Management interfaces and their value
• Native multi-tenancy significance
• User authorization and authentication
• Multi-protocol support
• Metadata search functionality
• Local data protection
• Multi-site data protection
• Data at Rest Encryption
• Advanced data retention capabilities
• Quotas

ECS Concepts and Features-SSP

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ECS Portal

The ECS Portal is a graphical user interface that provides access and enables ECS
management users to configure, manage, and monitor an ECS VDC. Management
users are assigned System Admin, System Monitor, and Namespace Admin roles.
Namespace administrators can access their namespace to create and configure
buckets, and assign object users. The ECS Portal interface displays only the
information appropriate for the management user's role. Object storage users do
not have access to the ECS Portal. Object users access ECS using the supported
clients, and object protocols APIs.

8 7 2

1
3
4
5
6

1: Dashboard - The dashboard provides a system status view, and management

overview of the VDC.

2: Logged in user

3: Monitor - The Monitor section provides access to detailed monitoring

information.

ECS Concepts and Features-SSP

© Copyright 2020 Dell Inc. Page 79

4: Manage - The Manage section provides management users, or administrator
access to configure ECS storage and users.

5: Settings - The Settings section provides management users, or administrator

access to configure the object base URL, Secure Remote Services, licensing,
event notifications, and more.

6: Advanced Monitoring dashboards provide critical information about the ECS

processes on the VDC you are logged in to.

7: Connected VDC

8: The help icon link in the ECS Portal opens the appropriate help guide based on
the selected menu area. The help is context sensitive and links to the appropriate
guide, and section within the guide. Context sensitive help enables administrators
to quickly identify the correct configuration settings, or interpret the information that
is displayed in the ECS Portal page. The example displays help for the ECS Portal
Dashboard in the ECS Monitoring Guide.

Click image to enlarge.

ECS Concepts and Features-SSP

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Internal Use - Confidential 80 © Copyright 2020 Dell Inc.
Rest API Management Interface

Rest API for ECS

Management

Storage
provisioning

The ECS API code examples are available online, or are

downloadable for offline use.

Click image to enlarge.

REST application programming interface calls, or APIs are available for all levels of
ECS management and application integration. REST APIs enable programmatic
ECS management through customer created scripts and applications.

REST APIs are available for ECS Management, Amazon S3 object service support,
OpenStack Swift object service support, Atmos object service support, and CAS
object service support.

Important: The online documents are available at

http://doc.isilon.com/ECS/3.5/API/apidocs/

ECS Concepts and Features-SSP

© Copyright 2020 Dell Inc. Page 81

Multi-tenancy and Namespaces

Tenant A Tenant B

Namespace Namespace
A Admin B Admin
Logically
separated tenant
data and access

Shared physical storage and

storage pools

Multi-tenancy

ECS provides native multi-tenancy capabilities.

• Namespaces provide a logical separation for administration and tenant data.

• Buckets provide an additional logical separation for subtenant data isolation.
• ECS provides a simple to deploy, and easy to manage multi-tenant storage
environment.
• The enterprise level features and simple management design enable customers
and services providers to offer storage as a service.
• Multi-tenancy expands ECS capabilities to meet multiple demands for a wide
range of customers.

Namespace Administrator

The namespace administrator has the rights to create buckets, create and assign
users to the namespace, and manage namespace attributes. For example:

• The namespace admin has the capability to create and assign retention
policies, and quotas on the entire namespace, or for specific buckets.

ECS Concepts and Features-SSP

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Internal Use - Confidential 82 © Copyright 2020 Dell Inc.
• The namespace admin can assign and modify client permissions.
• Namespace administrators have access to namespace specific monitoring.
• The namespace monitoring is a subset available to system administrators.

Example

In the example displayed, Namespace A and Namespace B are created on the

federated ECS deployment. Both namespaces share storage pool space on VDC A
and VDC B associated using Replication Group X. Each namespace is a logical
separation and provides separated tenant access. A namespace administrator can
be assigned to manage the object users, and add buckets to the namespace. In the
example, separate namespace admins are assigned to each namespace. A bucket
can belong to only a single namespace, and creates a logical subtenant separation
of data. Applications write to the buckets.

ECS Concepts and Features-SSP

© Copyright 2020 Dell Inc. Page 83

User Authentication and Authorization

Click image to enlarge.

ECS includes authentication and authorization control at multiple levels. ECS

supports local users, domain users, and domain groups through AD, LDAP, and
OpenStack Keystone integration.
• Authorization permissions are set using a protocol client at the object level,
using the authentication provider, or using the management REST APIs.
• Local users including management user, and objects user roles, are created
using the ECS Portal, or management REST API.
• Roles can be assigned to AD and LDAP groups.

ECS Concepts and Features-SSP

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Internal Use - Confidential 84 © Copyright 2020 Dell Inc.
Important: For additional information, please reference the ECS
Security Configuration Guide.

ECS Concepts and Features-SSP

© Copyright 2020 Dell Inc. Page 85

Multi-protocol Support

ECS supports multi-protocol access to the same data stored on ECS. Access to the
data is independent of the protocol that is used to write, modify, or read the data.
Client protocol access to the storage engine layer is managed through the data
services layer. The data services layer acts as an interpreter between the data and
the protocol. Having a separate on disk storage function, and a common protocol
interpreter enables multi-protocol access.

CAS object data is proprietary, and only accessible using CAS APIs, clients, and
applications.

Each protocol can access ECS using different tools and APIs.

4
1 2 3

1: Hadoop uses configurable access to ECS to simulate direct attached storage.

Hadoop on ECS enables analytics on live data that is stored on ECS. ECS stores
Hadoop file system data, which allows organizations to create big data repositories
on ECS that Hadoop analytics can consume and process.

The HDFS data service is compatible with specific versions of Apache Hadoop,
with support for fine-grained ACLs and extended file system attributes. ECS
integrates with Ambari to easily deploy ECS HDFS clients (jar file), and specifies
ECS HDFS as the default file system in a Hadoop cluster.

2: File access is provided using NFSv3 exports, and CIFS shares.

ECS Concepts and Features-SSP

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Internal Use - Confidential 86 © Copyright 2020 Dell Inc.
ECS native file support with NFSv3. NFS clients include Solaris, Linux, and
Windows. The main features of NFSv3 file data service include:

• Rich ACLs - ECS NFSv3 supports rich access control lists, ACLs, that allow for
a more complex set of permission models and extended attributes.
• Global namespace - Global namespace provides the ability to access the file
from any node at any site using a load balancer.
• Global locking - Global locking is the ability to lock files from any node at any
site.
• Multi-protocol access - File multi-protocol access provides the ability to
access data created by S3 and Swift object protocols, HDFS, and NFS.

CIFS protocol access to ECS is provided by using a CIFS client. The CIFS client
provides S3 object services to ECS. CIFS is not part of the native ECS protocol
stack.

3: Object protocols can use specific protocol clients, and client applications using
HTTP/HTTPS by object APIs. Object protocols include the Amazon S3 protocol,
OpenStack Swift protocol, EMC Atmos protocol, and Centera CAS.

• The UDP/TCP port number that is used varies based on the application protocol
used.
• Object protocol specific client examples include the Amazon S3 client, and
Cyber Duck multi-protocol client. Clients provide additional direct object data
access and management capabilities.
• CAS object data uses proprietary APIs. The data is not accessible by other
protocols. CAS object data access has specific network configuration
requirements.

4: ECS supports multiple object APIs. ECS provides native support for Amazon S3,
OpenStack Swift, EMC Atmos, and Centera CAS APIs. Programs and applications
that are written for native object protocols can be easily migrated to ECS without
extensive modification. ECS provides additional ECS specific API calls that extend
standard API functionality to take advantage of ECS capabilities. The ECS API
calls are in addition to the native object APIs.

Click here to access the ECS REST API Reference page:

http://doc.isilon.com/ECS/3.5/API/apidocs

ECS Concepts and Features-SSP

Metadata Search

Click image to enlarge.

Metadata search is available for S3 buckets, and must be enabled during bucket
creation. Metadata search enables large datasets to be searched on a metadata
value to extract wanted data. Search keys use the system metadata, and custom
metadata attributes as search keys. System metadata includes creation time,
owner, or object name. Custom metadata includes any custom applied attribute, for
example name of an event, or location information. The query operators are used
to refine a search. Up to 30 search keys can be set per bucket for a query.

ECS Concepts and Features-SSP

Overview

Data is locally protected on each ECS cluster. A

combination of protection mechanisms are applied to
assure data availability and integrity.
• Data chunks29
• Data and metadata protection30
• Distributed data31
• Data integrity32
• Disk and node health monitoring33

29Data chunks - The data and metadata are stored separately in 128 MB append
only chunks. Data protection is applied per chunk, rather than applied per object, or
using hardware based protection.

30Data and metadata protection - Data and metadata are protected using different
methods. Metadata is protected using mirroring for performance. Object data is
protected using Reed-Solomon erasure coding once the chunk is sealed.

31Distributed data - All data is distributed across the storage pool. The distribution
algorithm places chunk fragments on different disks, and different nodes.

32 Data integrity - Checksums are applied to all data and metadata chunks and
fragments to ensure data integrity.

33 Disk and node health monitoring - The health and availability of disks and nodes
is monitored. Unhealthy disks are detected and marked as failed by the system,

ECS Concepts and Features-SSP

Mirroring and Erasure Coding

Metadata
Chunk

Object
* Metadata chunks
triple mirrored Data
Chunk Fragments and mirrors
saved on nodes
Fragments and mirrors
distributed across
different disks and
nodes within storage
pool

* Object data chunks

divided into data chunk
fragments

* Erasure coding
fragments created

Metadata and object data are stored on the local ECS using a combination of
mirroring and Reed-Solomon erasure coding.
• Chunk level protection34

and the data is recovered to healthy disks. If a node is unavailable, the data is
recovered to the remaining available nodes.

34Chunk level protection - ECS protects the data and metadata. All protection
algorithms are applied at the chunk level in ECS. Unlike most storage systems,
ECS does not apply protection to the individual file level, or at the hardware layer
using RAID. The use of chunk level protection enables predictable protection
overhead regardless of the file size. Small file and metadata protection efficiencies
are realized using chunks.

ECS Concepts and Features-SSP

− Sealed chunks37
− Unsealed chunks38

35Metadata chunks - Metadata chunks are triple mirrored. The mirrors are
distributed across the storage pool so that only a single mirror is located on the
same node. Triple mirroring guarantees metadata availability with up to two node
losses.

36 Object data chunks - Object data is protected using the Reed-Solomon erasure
coding. An object data chunk is sealed when filled with 128 MB of data or a set
period of time has been reached. A chunk containing less than a 128 MB is partially
filled or unsealed. ECS protects sealed and unsealed chunks differently for
efficiency.

37 Sealed chunks - When a chunk is filled completely or a set period of time has
been reached, the chunk is sealed. Erasure coding is performed on the chunk, and
the protection fragments are created. The object data, and erasure coding
fragments are distributed across the storage pool. If the sealed chunk is created all
at once, the process of creating the object data chunk fragments, and erasure
coding happens simultaneously.

38Unsealed chunks - Chunks with less than 128 MB of object data are protected
using chunk fragments and mirroring. Three copies of the chuck are maintained,
two mirrors and a one copy consisting of chunk fragments. Erasure coding is not
applied to the chunk fragments. The mirror copies and chunk fragments are
distributed across the nodes and disks in the storage pool. When a previously
unsealed chuck is filled or a set period of time has been reached, the chunk is
sealed. When sealed, the distributed fragments are updated, and the erasure

ECS Concepts and Features-SSP

− Erasure coding options39

Failure Handling and Data Recovery

Node
Failure
Data fragments and metadata mirrors
recreated and distributed to other nodes
Disk and disks in storage pool

Failure

Data fragments and metadata

mirrors recreated on other disks in
Storage Engine storage pool

Managed by storage engine layer

in ECS software

The most common failures in ECS storage are disk and node hardware failures.
ECS protects against data loss and self heals against disk and node loss failures.
• Storage engine layer40

coding fragments are created and distributed. The mirror object data copies are
removed from access.

39Erasure coding options - ECS support two erasure coding protection levels. The
protection level is set on the storage pool. The protection levels are 12 data + 4
erasure coding, called 12+4 for most ECS use cases, and 10 data + 2 erasure
coding, called 10+2 for cold archive use cases.

ECS Concepts and Features-SSP

40Storage engine layer - Disks and nodes are monitored by the ECS storage
engine software layer. The storage engine monitors the health and status for data
availability. If errors or predictive failure alerts are detected, ECS takes proactive
steps to re-protect the data.

41Disk loss protection - Disk failure is the most common issue with any storage
system. ECS proactively monitors disk health and drive status information. When a
disk fails, or ECS receives predictive failure alerts, ECS proactively re-protects the
data. The data and metadata contained on the disk is re-created using mirrored
copies, or erasure coding fragments. The data is redistributed across the storage
pool to healthy disks. Once a disk is marked bad, the disk cannot be re-added to
the ECS node.

42 Node loss protection - Node failures are much less common than disk failures.
ECS assumes the loss is permanent and re-protects the data contained on that
node. The data is re-created and redistributed, similar to the loss of a single disk, to
other healthy nodes and disk in the storage pool. However, if a node failure
corrected, and the lost node is restored to a healthy state, the re-protection process
is halted. During a node loss or node failure situation, other ECS processes running
on the node are also moved to healthy and available nodes.

ECS Concepts and Features-SSP

Multi-VDC, Multi-site Data Protection

Multi-VDC Replication Overview

Geo-distributed
Federation

This graphic represents an ECS federation - a logical group of different VDCs or clusters.

• ECS natively supports multi-VDC and multi-site data protection.

• An organization can deploy multiple VDCs in a single location.
• The VDCs can be added to the same federation.
• In a local multiple VDC scenario, ECS's geo replication capabilities are used to
protect against VDC loss, or data center network connectivity failures.
• A more common data protection scenario is to protect against site or location
loss.
− To enable site loss protection, an organization creates a federation with
geographically separated VDCs.
• In a geo dispersed scenario, ECS's geo replication capabilities enable access to
data from multiple locations, or create data duplication for protection.

ECS geo replication options include active-active replication with full replication
copies, active-active with space efficient storage, and active-passive replication
with space efficient storage.

ECS Concepts and Features-SSP

Local VDC Data

Replication Data

Replication matrix - All sites

replicate to all sites

Geo-distributed Federation

Full copy of other VDC

data from each site

Geo replication with replicate to all sites sends a full duplicate data copy from each
VDC to every other VDC. Replicate to all sites is an active-active replication with
each site serving as a source and target location.
• Each VDC stores the complete data set from all other VDCs. The storage
capacity at each location must be large enough to contain all data from all sites.
• Replicate to all sites enables fast storage reads and writes from any location.
Read requests do not require data retrieval, or experience WAN traffic delays to
fulfill the requests.
• Replication traffic occurs between each VDC as data is written or modified at
any site. Replication copies are updated and maintained at each location as the
updates occur.
• Replicate to all sites is only available for three or more sites. In the use case of
two sites, it is always a full copy.

ECS Concepts and Features-SSP

Geo Replication - XOR Optimized Storage

Local VDC Data

Replication Data

XOR'd Replication

Replication matrix - All sites

replicate to all sites

Geo-distributed Federation

Replication data
from other VDCs

XOR operation combines into

single smaller capacity space

Geo replication with replicate with XOR optimized storage sends a full duplicate
data copy from each VDC to every other VDC. On each target VDC, an XOR
operation is performed to combine the data into a single consolidated storage
space. The storage space consumed for all sites is equivalent to one single
location. XOR optimized storage replication is an active-active replication with each
site serving as a source and target location.
• Each VDC stores a consolidated data set from all other VDCs. The storage
capacity at each location is a proportion of the all data from all sites. When a full
chunk from each site is received, the chunks are XOR'd together.
• Read requests may require WAN traffic to complete. XOR calculations require
some system overhead to create and extract data. Read requests for XOR'd
data may be slower to fulfill.
• Replication traffic occurs between each VDC as data is written or modified at
any site. Replication copies are updated and maintained at each location as the
updates occur.

ECS Concepts and Features-SSP

Replication data
XOR operation combines Local VDC Data
from active VDCs
into single smaller
capacity space
Replication Data

XOR'd Replication

Passive Site

Active Site

Replication matrix - Active sites

replicate to passive site

Geo-distributed Federation

Active Site Active Site

Geo passive replication feature allows customers to set ECS site as a dedicated
backup or disaster recovery site. Geo passive replication is optimized for replication
to a single site with optimized storage efficiency.
• Geo passive replication must contain a minimum of three sites, and a maximum
of five sites. One of the sites serves as the passive replication target site. The
other sites are identified as active replication source sites. The target site is
where data is being replicated to. Sources sites are where data is actively being
written to and read from.
• When a write operation is performed on a source site, the data is replicated to
target site. Replication only occurs between the source sites and the target site.
WAN traffic is optimized using geo passive replication.
• Data replicated from the active sites is XOR'd on the target site for storage
efficiency.

ECS Concepts and Features-SSP

Failure Handling

Geo-active Replicate to
All Sites

Geo-active XOR Geo-passive XOR

In addition to individual disk and node failures, ECS handles site failures in
federated ECS deployments. ECS manages data availability differently based on
the replication method used. Site failures are only protected against if the sites are
geographically separated. Many types of failures can occur in large, scalable
systems. ECS uses several approaches to provide resilience when a failure occurs.
ECS handles network and VDC failures to continue uninterrupted service.
• Two site ECS federated deployment
− During ECS can detect and automatically handle any such temporary site
failures. ECS provides options that affect how objects can be accessed
during a TSO.
o By default, the ECS retains a strong consistency by allowing access to
data owned by sites that are accessible and prevents access to data
owned by an inaccessible site. An example of strong consistency occurs
when a read request is initiated in one site, it will always validate the

ECS Concepts and Features-SSP

Page
Internal Use - Confidential 98 © Copyright 2020 Dell Inc.
consistency of the data from the owning site. If the site does not have the
current version of object, then a read of the data will be requested from
the owning site.
− During the connectivity outage, if Access During Outage (ADO)43 is enabled,
each VDC allows applications to read, and optionally write, and update
objects despite the inability to communicate with an object or bucket owner.
If the same object is updated at more than one site during the failure, ECS
decides which version to use based on object ownership.
− If ADO is not enabled, the data in the VDC/site which has the temporary
outage is not available for access from other sites.
− In the event of a complete and unrecoverable VDC or site failure, the other
VDC has a full copy of all data written to either site and can continue
operating after a permanent failover has occurred.
• Multi-site Geo active with XOR optimized storage

• For the most common multi-site deployment with more than two VDCs, ECS
uses an XOR scheme across chunks from different VDCs to efficiently store
the protected data. XOR enables low storage overhead that improves with
an increased number of sites in a replication group. If one of the VDCs fails,
ECS can reconstruct all data within the failed VDC using available chunks in
the other VDCs.

43Access During Outage (ADO) is an option that allows read and optionally write
access to all geo-replicated data including that which is owned by the site marked
as failed. This is performed by enabling the “access during outage” bucket option.
This temporarily switches to eventual consistency during a TSO; once all sites are
back online it will revert back to strong consistency. An additional 'read-only access
during outage' option is available during bucket creation. This option cannot be
changed after the bucket is created. Once this option is enabled, the bucket and it's
data are only accessible in read-only mode during the outage.

ECS Concepts and Features-SSP

• Read, write, and update operation continued functionality are more
complicated than with a two site mirrored data deployment. ECS read
requests are available, although write and update requests require additional
actions.

ECS Concepts and Features-SSP

ECS enables three important encryption capability options: data-at-rest encryption,

or D@RE, secure sockets layer, or SSL, in-flight encryption, and client-side
encryption.

1
2

1: SSL in-flight encryption - SSL certificates are supported across an ECS

installation. HTTPS protocol access is natively supported. Each link between the
client and ECS, or between ECS VDCs can be secured using SSL certificates. In-
flight data is encrypted before sending over the link, and decrypted on the receiving
device. In-flight encryption works in both directions of a transaction.

Links in a transaction occur from the client or application to the ECS. In most
configurations a load balancer is used to enhance routing capabilities, and possibly
perform SSL offload functionality. Any link in the transaction can be secure or open
based on the organizational requirements. ECS can encrypt and decrypt SSL
transactions as required.

2: Client-side encryption - The encryption keys and encryption process occur on

the client side of the transaction. The data is encrypted by the application, and sent
from the client, with or without SSL, to the ECS. The encrypted data is stored on
the ECS in the encrypted format. Client-side encryption is supported by the ECS
Object Client for Java.

ECS Concepts and Features-SSP

3: Data at Rest Encryption - D@RE encrypts the data that is stored on the ECS
nodes. The data is stored using software encryption. D@RE prevents sensitive
data from being read from disks that are removed from the ECS system. Protected
data cannot be acquired, recovered, or recreated from a failed or stolen disk.
Unlike SED drives, D@RE can be selected for specific data rather than for all data.
Key ECS D@RE features include:

• D@RE is a free license, and enabled on the VDC using the ECS Portal.
• D@RE is enabled at the namespace or bucket level. Namespace and bucket
granularity provides granular controls, and enhances multi-tenant capabilities.
• Key management is performed automatically. No complicated key management
simplifies encryption management across multiple namespaces. Native and
External key management supports D@RE.
• Supports S3 encryption semantics for server-side encryption for object
encryption, for example X-amx-server-side encryption.

ECS Concepts and Features-SSP

Retention Overview

ECS Portal: Namespace page and Bucket page

ECS includes retention capabilities without additional licensing, and without

additional implementation. Retention establishes a time period that related objects
are not modifiable. Objects under retention cannot be modified or deleted until the
time period expires.

Retention is established at the namespace and bucket levels. System and

namespace administrators can create retention policies with specific retention
periods. Applications apply the policies to the objects when stored. Optionally
admins can set bucket retention periods. Bucket retention sets a retention period
on all objects that are stored in the specific bucket. Note that any bucket retention
period must be equal to or less than the retention period applied by the application
to avoid potential application errors.

ECS Concepts and Features-SSP

Retention Policies and Periods

Retention periods are established using the namespace policies, or the general
bucket period. Time period options range from seconds and minutes, to years and
infinite, or forever. Retention periods are assigned at the object and/or bucket level.
Each time an attempt is made to modify or delete an object, the expiration time is
calculated. The object's retention expiration time is calculated as object creation
time plus retention period applied. Applying a retention period to a bucket sets the
minimum retention period for all objects in that bucket. Applications and
administrators using an object client can override an object's retention period set by
a bucket to a longer retention period.

An administrator can create any number of retention policies for a namespace.

Created policies are namespace specific. Tenants in one namespace can have
different policies to meet their requirements than tenants in other namespaces.
Retention policies enable predefined retention periods to be applied to different
objects in the namespace based on the use case. For example an organization
might have client work products with a 5 year retention policy, a shorter 2 year
retention policy for non-client work, and a 10 year policy for corporate digital
assets. Any policy associated with the namespace can be assigned to an object
belonging to the namespace. The use of retention policies provides the flexibility to
change the period associated with a policy. Changing the associated period,
automatically changes the retention period of any objects with that policy assigned
to them.

ECS Concepts and Features-SSP

Compliance can have different meaning to different organizations. With ECS

compliance refers to the Securities and Exchange Commission compliance
requirements. SEC compliance enables enhanced retention capabilities to meet
the SEC Rule 17a-4(f) requirements. Compliance retention is applied at the
namespace level, and must be enabled during namespace creation. Compliance
cannot be disabled after the namespace is created.
• Platform hardening44

44Platform hardening - Compliance settings address security configuration

requirements in ECS. Hardening implements a platform lockdown by disabling
certain access to nodes or clusters; closes all non-essential access ports, e.g. ftpd,
sshd; and enables full audit logging for all sudo commands.

ECS Concepts and Features-SSP

• Compliance Reporting45
• Policy Based Record Retention and Rules46

CAS Advanced Retention Management

CAS
ARM on
ECS

45Compliance Reporting - A system agent runs to verify and report on the cluster's
compliance status. The agent reports a system status as either Good for in
compliance, or Bad when out of compliance. If Bad is reported, one of these
conditions exist.

46Policy Based Record Retention and Rules - Compliance limits the ability to
modify or delete objects under retention, or change retention periods by modifying
retention policies. Time periods are fixed at the time the object is created. The
ability to adjust the policy retention time period by altering the rule is removed.

ECS Concepts and Features-SSP

Page
Internal Use - Confidential 106 © Copyright 2020 Dell Inc.
ECS supports the advanced retention management, ARM features available
through the CAS API. No additional ECS licensing is required. ARM features
include:
• Event-based retention47
• Litigation hold48
• Min/Max governor49

47 Event-based retention - ECS supports the ability to configure an object through

its C-Clip to trigger setting a retention period or retention class when the CAS
application receives a specified event.

48Litigation hold - ECS supports the ability to prevent deletion of an object if the
CAS application has applied a litigation hold to the object through its C-Clip. The
CAS application can apply up to 100 litigation holds to an object by creating and
applying unique litigation hold IDs.

49Min/Max governor - An administrator can set a bucket-level fixed retention period

or variable retention period. A variable retention period is set in response to an
event. ECS a system or namespace administrator can set the values with the ECS
Portal. Programmers can use the ECS Management API to set the values.

ECS Concepts and Features-SSP

Quotas

Quotas are enabled at the ECS namespace and bucket levels. Enabling quotas
provides a simple mechanism to allocate and limit tenants and subtenants storage
space. At the namespace level, a default bucket quota can be set to help automate
initial bucket quota management. Quotas are optional and can be turned on and off
for the namespace and bucket after creation. Three quota options are available,
Notification Only at, Block Access Only at, and Block Access at. The
appropriate quota space allocation is configured for the chosen option.

4 2
5 1
6 3

1: Block Access Only option is referred to as a hard quota. The quota limit that is
applied creates a not-to-exceed boundary for the namespace or bucket. When the
quota is reached, additional writes and modifications are blocked from occurring.
Notifications are sent when the quota limit is reached.

2: Notification Only option is referred to as an advisory quota. When the quota is

reached, only notification is sent, and write/modify access is allowed to continue.

3: Block Access option is referred to as a soft quota. The settings provide a

combination of a notification and a hard quota. Two settings are provided, limit to
send the advisory notification, and a hard limit to deny new writes to the
namespace or bucket.

4: Notification Only option is referred to as an advisory quota. When the quota is

reached, only notification is sent, and write/modify access is allowed to continue.

5: Block Access Only option is referred to as a hard quota. The quota limit that is
applied creates a not-to-exceed boundary for the namespace or bucket. When the

ECS Concepts and Features-SSP

Page
Internal Use - Confidential 108 © Copyright 2020 Dell Inc.
quota is reached, additional writes and modifications are blocked from occurring.
Notifications are sent when the quota limit is reached.

6: Block Access option is referred to as a soft quota. The settings provide a

combination of a notification and a hard quota. Two settings are provided, limit to
send the advisory notification, and a hard limit to deny new writes to the
namespace or bucket.

ECS Concepts and Features-SSP

Monitoring and Reporting

ECS Concepts and Features-SSP

ECS Portal

Grafana

Click image to enlarge.

ECS monitoring provides increased visibility and determined capacity across

various metrics. It monitors the usage across the enterprise. The ECS web-based
GUI provides comprehensive reporting, health, and performance on the overall

ECS Concepts and Features-SSP

© Copyright
Internal Use - Confidential 2020 Dell Inc. Page 111
system. The ECS portal incorporates the open source software, Grafana50 to
provide graphic visualization, analysis in real time, and alerting and notifications.

ECS reporting is a view of historical information through the ECS Portal. Most
monitoring capabilities offer historical textual or graphical reporting information for
up to two months. Data points are displayed on each chart. Historical information
can help identify issues at specific points in time. Organizations wanting external
reporting can implement Dell EMC SRM with an ECS SolutionPack.

50Grafana is an open source visualization and analytics software. It allows you to

query, visualize, alert on, and explore your metrics no matter where they are
stored.

ECS Concepts and Features-SSP

ECS Portal Dashboard

Requests Performance

Click to drill
down for
details

Capacity Utilization Geo Monitoring Nodes & Disks

Storage Efficiency Alert

VDC level details

Click image to enlarge.

The ECS Portal dashboard opens as the default view. The dashboard provides a
quick overview to the key management information. The dashboard displays
information about transaction requests, capacity, health status, and replication
activity on the VDC.

The dashboard also serves as a navigation tool for more detailed information. Each
section heading is a hyperlink to the underlying detailed monitoring information. A
user with the roles of system administrator or system monitor can click the section
title to go to the monitoring section containing additional or historical details. The
same monitoring pages can also be accessed through the navigation pane on the
left side.

ECS Concepts and Features-SSP

The ECS Portal provides top level and detailed views of critical information that is
needed for VDC management. The monitoring capabilities are user-friendly, simple
to go to, and clearly understood. ECS monitoring is the view of current, or most
recent VDC status and activities. The monitoring pages are accessed through the
navigation pane.

1: Namespace and bucket metering provides insights for namespaces, buckets,

and objects contained on the VDC. Each namespace is listed, and available for
selection as metering criteria. A search feature enables you to quickly locate
specific namespace by name. Each bucket within the namespace is listed for
metering criteria selection. The selection criteria is used to generate the output
details containing key namespace and bucket information. Key output information
includes bucket size, number of objects in the bucket, and the date the bucket was
last updated.

Outside of the ECS Portal, namespace administrators can use protocol specific
clients to obtain detailed access. As an example, the Amazon S3 client is
commonly used for accessing S3 object namespaces and buckets.

ECS Concepts and Features-SSP

Click image to enlarge.

Events and alerts consist of management activity auditing, and error condition
recording and notification. Error condition severity ranges from warning to critical.
Warning events are low severity, critical events are high importance severity.
• Event auditing - ECS logs details of management activity on the VDC,
including login activity, and configuration change activity.
− Syslogs - ECS supports syslogs for auditing events. Events are logged
externally for external auditing and reporting.
• ECS event alerting - Alerts are generated automatically in ECS, and by the
ECS support tool xDoctor.

ECS Concepts and Features-SSP

© Copyright
Internal Use - Confidential 2020 Dell Inc. Page 115
− SNMP traps - ECS supports SNMP traps, which can be set up for customer
monitoring and alerting.
− Secure Remote Services - Secure Remotes Services is set up during initial
installation, and provides Dell EMC call home notifications for alerts.
− xDoctor support tool - xDoctor support tool sends alerts and logs to a
secure ECS support site for additional alerting, and support assistance.

Click image to enlarge.

Capacity utilization is available for the entire VDC, and for each node. Predefined
views include overall capacity, used capacity, garbage collection, erasure
encoding, and CAS processing. Each view provides relevant details that are
required for capacity management.
• Capacity - Capacity provides a snapshot of the total, used and available space
for each storage pool in the VDC. A link is provided to examine node level
details.
• Used Capacity - The Used Capacity tab displays graphical and numerical
reporting on capacity consumption. The VDC and storage pool level capacity
are presented. Capacity consumption is provided by data storage type,
including user data, system metadata, protection overhead, geo caching, and
geo copy.
• Garbage Collection - Garbage Collection provides information for space
reclamation. The detected space available for reclamation, capacity that is

ECS Concepts and Features-SSP

reclaimed, capacity pending reclamation, and any un-reclamable space are
displayed.
• Erasure Encoding - The erasure coding process information is displayed. The
total coding data, and the amount of data that is coded on the VDC provide the
potential and current amounts in process. The percentage of total and coded
data is reported. For the data pending erasure coding, the coding rate and the
estimated time to completion are provided.
• CAS Processing - CAS processing displays the CAS blob and reflection
processing status by namespace.

Click image to enlarge.

ECS includes monitoring VDC hardware and process health, and monitoring any
recovery process from disk and node failures.
• Hardware Health - The Hardware Health tab provides node status, the
associated storage pool, number of online disks, and number of offline disks.
Offline nodes and disks can be selected for additional information.
• Process Health - The Process Health opens up a Grafana page which displays
the Process Health - Overview. This monitors key node utilization statistics.
Statistics include the average NIC bandwidth, average CPU utilization, and

ECS Concepts and Features-SSP

© Copyright
Internal Use - Confidential 2020 Dell Inc. Page 117
average memory usage. Process health also reports on relative NIC and
relative memory percentages. The Process Health dashboards also include
metrics Process Health - by Nodes and Process Health - Process List by
Node.
• Node Rebalancing - The Node Rebalancing opens up a Grafana page. This
provides information that pertains to the process of rebalancing data between
storage pool nodes. Rebalancing can occur as a maintenance task or in the
event of a node failure.

Click image to enlarge.

The Transactions tab opens up a Grafana page, Data Access Performance -

Overview. This page provides information about data access to the VDC.
Transaction metrics are available at the namespace, node, and protocol levels.
• Requests - Requests tab provides information by successful and unsuccessful
requests for data. Unsuccessful requests are divided in to system failures and
user failures. Each error type is displayed with the corresponding error code,
request protocol, and total failures with the error code.
• Performance - Performance tab provides details about read and write latency,
bandwidth, and transaction rates.

ECS Concepts and Features-SSP

Click image to enlarge.

6: The Recovery Status opens up a Grafana page. This page displays the data that
is recovered by the system. Recovery is the process of rebuilding data after any
local condition that results in bad data (chunks).

ECS Concepts and Features-SSP

7: The Disk Bandwidth opens a Grafana page, Disk Bandwidth - Overview. This
page reports read and write activity by process. The report is available at the VDC
and individual node levels. Activities include hardware recovery, erasure coding,
XOR processing, consistency checker, geo replication, and user traffic.

ECS Concepts and Features-SSP

Click image to enlarge.

8: The Geo Replication section provides insights into replication data processing,
recovery point objective status, and failover processing, which rereplicates data
following a permanent failure of a remote VDC. Geo Replication in a multi-site
federation provides valuable status information pertaining to protection status and
activity.

ECS Concepts and Features-SSP

9: Advanced Monitoring opens Grafana in a new web browser tab. Provides

graphic visualization and analysis in real time.

This graphic can be viewed in greater detail in the Advanced Monitoring page of this training.

ECS Concepts and Features-SSP

Advanced Monitoring

Advanced Monitoring from Grafana is integrated into ECS user interface. Advanced
Monitoring dashboards provide critical information about the ECS processes on the
VDC you are logged in to. The advanced monitoring dashboards are based on time
series database.

1 2

1: Dashboard dropdown shows which Dashboard is showing, and provides the

ability to easily switch to a new Dashboard.

ECS Concepts and Features-SSP

2: The time period for the dashboard can be controlled by the time range controls.
Either select a preset time range or create a custom range.

ECS Concepts and Features-SSP

Click image to enlarge.

3: Select Related Dashboards to view other dashboards options that are similar to
the dashboard currently being viewed.

ECS Concepts and Features-SSP

ECS uses the Filter to set the time period for reporting.

Selecting Filter expands a selection criteria area.

The drop down menu

provides standard ranges for
selection from Current to
Last 2 Months as options.

Detailed view of a narrow range to help in identifying any issue

Report granularity varies based on time frame selected

Select Custom to input a

specific range

ECS Concepts and Features-SSP

Dell EMC SRM Integration

Dell EMC SRM is separate paid product offering that provides extended monitoring
and reporting capabilities. Dell EMC SRM offers a SolutionPack for ECS. The
benefits of Dell EMC SRM include automated capacity monitoring and reporting. It
provides monitoring and troubleshooting assistance for service levels at risk. Dell
EMC SRM enables management of all storage from a single platform. Some of the
Dell EMC SRM features include:
• Enterprise dashboards and explore views51
• Define, consolidate, and manage alerts52

51Enterprise dashboards and explore views -Dell EMC SRM provides a multi-
vendor view into an enterprise storage infrastructure to help visualize, optimize
capacity, and manage devices.

ECS Concepts and Features-SSP

© Copyright
Internal Use - Confidential 2020 Dell Inc. Page 127
• View current and historical capacity, performance, and health53
• Chargeback and showback reports54
• Quota reporting by namespace and buckets55

52 Define, consolidate, and manage alerts - Dell EMC SRM platform provides a
single view of all devices in the storage infrastructure. Alerts are defined,
consolidated, and managed as a group.

53View current and historical capacity, performance, and health - Dell EMC SRM
provides access to reports that display information about storage, devices, and
connectivity.

54 Chargeback and showback reports - Namespace chargeback reports show total

used capacity for local and remote systems, and the total number of objects per
namespace. The reports are used to identify service levels, cost contributors, and
allocate charges.

55Quota reporting by namespace and buckets - Namespace and bucket level

reports provide details on the number of objects, used capacity, and the
percentage of quota used by a namespace or bucket.

ECS Concepts and Features-SSP

Secure Remote Services Integration

Common platform for Dell EMC Secure communications and

products remote support gateway

Dell EMC Customer

Dell EMC Products Support

Dell EMC Secure Remote Services, formerly called ESRS, is an IP-based, bi-
directional remote connection between the customer's Dell EMC environment and
Dell EMC customer support. Secure Remote Services enables proactive remote
monitoring, diagnosis, and support services. Secure Remote Services helps assure
system availability, and optimization. Secure Remote Services enables Dell EMC to
provide proactive remote support for ECS implementations. Secure Remote
Services is set up as part of the ECS software installation process.

ECS Concepts and Features-SSP

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