Best Practices for the Dell EqualLogic Storage Array

Review the following best practices before using Dell EqualLogic.

• Ensure that sufficient disk space is available for snapshot operations and the disk space used by snapshots is monitored frequently.
  The space requirement for snapshots created during IntelliSnap backup can vary based on your environment. The space utilization is dependent on the number of snapshots created and the retention period defined for the snapshots.

• If you have SELinux enabled on the client computer, run the following commands as a root user before performing any snapshot operations:

  chcon -t texrel_shlib_t /opt/<software installation directory>/Base/libManageEquallogic.so

  chcon -t texrel_shlib_t /opt/<software installation directory>/Base/libpsapi.so

  chcon -t texrel_shlib_t /opt/<software installation directory>/Base/libpsapi-2.1.2.so

• If you use the PSAPI's in Dell EqualLogic's SDK, concurrency issues might arise. You can can serialize the access to the array by setting sSerializePSAPIOperations to Y, y, or true. Setting the additional setting serializes map, unmap, snapshot revert, delete, and reconcile operations. Snapshot backups are not serialized not to miss the 10 second time out window to create the snapshot.

• Use nMaxLockCount if you need to define the number of serialized operations before releasing the lock to other operations to access the array. nMaxLockCount is valid only if sSerializePSAPIOperations is set to Y, y, or true. If nMaxLockCount value is set to 0, then Dell EqualLogic Snap Engine overrides this value and serializes 5 snapshots for each operation (delete, revert, reconcile).