Converged Infrastructure D-PWF-OE-00 Syllabus Exam Questions Answers

6 Nodes: To utilize the Fault Set feature (which provides higher availability than standard SDS grouping, typically for rack awareness), PowerFlex requires a minimum configuration.

The Math:

A Protection Domain requires a minimum of 3 Fault Sets to support the 2-copy mirroring (Primary, Secondary, and a third location for rebuilding if a set fails).

Dell PowerFlex engineering requirements state that each Fault Set must contain at least 2 SDS nodes to ensure local redundancy and performance balance within the set.

$3 \text{ Fault Sets} \times 2 \text{ Nodes} = 6 \text{ Nodes}$ minimum.

Group disks with similar performance characteristics (Option C): The primary architectural purpose of a Storage Pool is to aggregate physical drives that share the same performance profile (e.g., "All SAS SSDs" or "All NVMe").

Performance Uniformity: PowerFlex stripes data across all disks in a pool. If you were to mix slow HDDs and fast SSDs in the same pool, the performance of the entire pool would be dragged down by the slower drives (the "straggler" effect). Therefore, pools are used to segregate media to guarantee consistent IOPS and latency for the volumes created within them.

Securing access to the management interface is a critical step in the "Day 0" or "Day 1" configuration.

Integrate PowerFlex with LDAP (Option A): For enterprise environments, managing local users on every system is inefficient and insecure. PowerFlex supports integration with Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP) servers (like Active Directory). This allows administrators to centralize user management and map Active Directory groups to PowerFlex roles (e.g., Admin, Monitor).

Configure password policies (Option C): For local user accounts (which are necessary for emergency access if LDAP is down), PowerFlex allows the definition of strict password policies. This includes setting requirements for password complexity (length, special characters), expiration intervals, and history (preventing reuse of old passwords).

Incorrect Options: VLANs (B) are network constructs, not user account settings. While MFA (D) is highly recommended, it is typically enforced at the Identity Provider (IdP) level (like Keycloak within PowerFlex Manager) rather than being a simple checkbox "step" inside the core SDS configuration.

In PowerFlex terminology, the Storage Data Server (SDS) acts as the "Target" for I/O operations.

Organize drives for storage pools (Option B): The SDS takes ownership of the local physical drives (NVMe/SSD/HDD) installed in the server. It aggregates these drives and contributes them to the Storage Pool. It handles the reading and writing of data blocks to this physical media.

Incorrect Options: Metadata is managed by the MDM (A). Access to external resources (C) is not the function of the SDS (which provides internal storage). Deduplication (D) is a specific feature, not the primary function of the component.