Data Sheet

DELL EMC POWERPATH FAMILY: POWERPATH

AND POWERPATH/VE MULTIPATHING
Optimize data paths in your physical and virtual environments

Essentials Dell EMC PowerPath is host-based software that provides automated

data path management and load-balancing capabilities for
• Standardize data path
heterogeneous server, network, and storage deployed in physical and
management across physical
virtual environments. It enables you to meet your aggressive service
and virtual environments, and levels with the highest application availability and performance, and
grow without purchasing more with all the advantages of the industry's leading information storage
infrastructure systems. The Dell EMC PowerPath family includes PowerPath
Multipathing for physical environments, as well as Linux, AIX, and
• Automate multipathing policies Solaris virtual environments, and PowerPath/VE Multipathing for
and load balancing to provide VMware vSphere and Microsoft Hyper-V virtual environments.
predictable and consistent
application availability and Multipathing Business Challenges
performance across physical With constrained IT budgets and the rush to virtualization for better
and virtual environments resource utilization, many IT organizations are challenged to ensure
application availability and performance while maximizing server,
storage, and data path utilization. Multiple vendor arrays, operating
• Improve service-level systems, and virtual platforms-as well as ever-increasing virtual
agreements by eliminating machine sprawl-compound the problem. Somehow you are expected
application impact from I/O to provide predictable and consistent application availability and
failures performance across this diverse collection of platforms. What you need
is flexible, automated, operational processes and tools to standardize
management of your data paths to meet your service-level agreements
and scale-out your mission-critical applications.
Standardized Path Management
Dell EMC PowerPath is used by many customers and is the leading
path-management solution worldwide. Deploy PowerPath into existing
infrastructure, and instead of using multiple-point solutions, standardize
on a single offering across your evolving physical and virtual
environments with support for heterogeneous servers, operating
systems, and storage, including qualified non-Dell EMC arrays.
Leverage PowerPath application-transparent failover to insulate core
business operations from any disruption caused by a faulty data path.
Automatically optimize physical and logical I/O paths by using
sophisticated load-balancing algorithms to ensure consistent and
predictable application availability and performance. PowerPath
supports dynamic reconfiguration of the storage environment and gets
the most out of existing resources. In addition, Dell EMC E-Lab tested
interoperability assures PowerPath multipathing support for many
combinations of servers, operating systems, and storage.

Dell EMC PowerPath Family

© 2017 Dell Inc. or its subsidiaries.
 Automate Path Failover and Recovery for High Availability
PowerPath automated path failover and recovery eliminates the
possibility of disrupting an application due to the failure of an adapter,
cable, or user error. In the event of a path failover, all outstanding and
subsequent I/O requests are automatically directed to alternative paths.
From mission-critical to lower priority applications, your business
remains online. PowerPath intelligent and dynamic path testing
periodically probes inactive paths to check for path failures. When a
failed path is found and the fault condition is resolved, the path is
PowerPath-Supported operating automatically restored to service without user intervention and without
Systems disrupting applications. Since it is automatic, no complex mapping is
required, unlike most other vendors' MPIO solutions.
• AIX
• HP-UX Optimize Load Balancing
• Linux
• Solaris PowerPath uniquely uses multiple I/O data paths to share the workload
• Microsoft Windows and automate load balancing to ensure that data paths are used
efficiently. Performance is enhanced by intelligently optimizing data
access across all available paths.
PowerPath/VE-Supported operating
PowerPath's workload-balancing capabilities ensure that no one path
Systems
becomes overloaded while others have underutilized bandwidth,
• Microsoft Hyper-V causing an I/O bottleneck. When one or more paths become busier
• VMware vSphere than others, PowerPath shifts the I/O traffic-while keeping track of load
characteristics-from the busy paths to the others, further enhancing
throughput over the already efficient multipathing capabilities.
PowerPath and PowerPath/VE
Supported Dell EMC Storage Arrays PowerPath Features

• EMC Celerra®
• EMC CLARiiON®
Features Benefits
• EMC Symmetrix® DMX™
• EMC Symmetrix VMAX™ Standardized path Unifies management across heterogeneous physical
management and virtual environments
• EMC Symmetrix VMAXe™
• Dell EMC VMAX3™
• Dell EMC VMAX All Flash™ Adjusts I/O paths constantly to leverage all available
• EMC VNXe™ Optimized load balancing data paths for best performance-and to monitor and
• EMC VNX™ rebalance the dynamic environment
• Dell EMC Unity
• DELL SC Series
Automated I/O path failover Keeps the environment and applications running in
• Dell EMC VPLEX™ and recovery the event of a failure

Deploy PowerPath in the Virtual Data Center

PowerPath and PowerPath/VE enable you to standardize on a single

multipathing solution across your entire environment. The base
technology in PowerPath Multipathing for physical environments is
leveraged to enhance control and ensure application availability and
performance in virtual environments.

PowerPath and PowerPath/VE help effectively manage virtual

environments with increasingly high consolidation ratios and to scale-
out mission-critical applications. With hyperconsolidation, you may have
hundreds or thousands of independent virtual machines running,
including I/O-intensive applications which can disrupt I/O from other
applications.

Dell EMC PowerPath Family

© 2017 Dell Inc. or its subsidiaries.
 Manually configuring load-balancing policies to ensure that all virtual
machines receive the required I/O response time is very difficult. This
situation is further complicated when tools such as VMware vMotion®,
Data Resource Scheduler, and High-Availability are introduced, since
these tools invalidate any assumptions about which I/O streams will be
sharing which data paths.

PowerPath and PowerPath/VE automatically manage all of this

complexity by constantly adjusting the I/O path usage to the changes in
I/O loads coming from the virtual machines. Simply assign all devices to
all paths and PowerPath and PowerPath/VE will automatically optimize
the overall I/O performance for you. For VMware deployments,
PowerPath/VE is integrated with VMware vCenter™ Server and Update
Manager as well as vSphere auto- deploy and stateless licensing
capabilities to further simplify path management in a virtual
environment.

For those who want data path optimization in a fully integrated IT

package, PowerPath/VE is a key component in VCE Vblock™
infrastructure solutions-scalable platforms from EMC, Cisco, and
VMware for building solutions for virtual environments and cloud
deployments. For Vblock customers, this means you can automate I/O
load balancing to manage the complexity of virtual machines and the
complications caused by virtual machine sprawl, as well as I/O-
intensive applications in hyper-consolidated environments.

PowerPath Monitoring and Data Migration

PowerPath also offers data path monitoring across supported operating

systems in physical and virtual environments and convenient data
migration capabilities. PowerPath Migration Enabler leverages
PowerPath and EMC data mobility technologies to perform data
migrations without application downtime.

Dell EMC Services for PowerPath

Dell EMC offers QuickStart implementation services for single-host and

four-host implementations in addition to custom PowerPath services to
expand its features and functionality. 0ur expert PowerPath
implementation services leverage our extensive storage deployment
best practices and proven methodology to accelerate business results
without straining your resources.

Dell EMC Services professionals have the required technical expertise,

skills, and resources needed to deliver the full PowerPath functionality
in your environment. The Dell EMC Global Delivery Model ensures
rapid, flawless service delivery to every customer in every engagement,
regardless of location.

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