D-PVM-DS-01 Dell PowerMax Design Practice Questions
Prepare for D-PVM-DS-01 with more than an answer.
- Level
- Skills Certification
Domains covered on the exam 7
- PowerMax Family Features15%
- PowerMax Design Resources and Environment15%
- PowerMax Upgrades and Migrations17%
- PowerMax Local and Remote Replication19%
- Unisphere for PowerMax12%
- Solutions Enabler Implementation7%
- PowerMax File15%
- 1
A PowerMax 2500 is being upgraded with additional drive capacity and new directors to increase performance. Which classification of configuration change does this represent?
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Correct answer: C
This scenario describes adding physical components (drives and directors) to an existing system. This is classified as a hardware upgrade. These upgrades are typically performed non-disruptively to enhance the capacity and/or performance capabilities of the array.
- 2
Which of the following statements accurately compares the PowerMax 2500 and PowerMax 8500 models?
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Correct answer: B
A key differentiator is their architecture. The PowerMax 2500 is a scale-up system, where performance and capacity are increased by adding resources to a single node pair. The PowerMax 8500 is a multi-node, scale-out architecture, allowing for the addition of multiple node pairs (up to 8) to increase performance and capacity linearly.
- 3
A financial firm requires an active/active data center solution for its tier-1 trading application to ensure continuous availability and zero RPO over a distance of 60 km. The solution must provide a single, consistent copy of data accessible from both sites simultaneously and automate failover in the event of a full site outage. Which SRDF mode is designed specifically for this requirement?
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Correct answer: C
SRDF/Metro is the only SRDF mode that provides a true active/active solution. It presents the R1 and R2 devices to hosts at both sites as a single virtual device, allowing for simultaneous read/write access. It ensures zero RPO and can be configured with a witness to automate failover, meeting all the requirements for continuous availability.
- 4
Case Study:
A large e-commerce company is experiencing performance issues with its primary order database, which runs on a PowerMax 8500. The CIO has requested a detailed workload analysis to plan for a hardware upgrade. The storage team needs to use Unisphere for PowerMax to determine the peak IOPS, average latency, and required storage capacity for the next 12 months based on a 20% annual growth rate. The analysis must exclude non-critical, temporary data generated by nightly batch jobs to avoid skewing the results.
Which Unisphere for PowerMax features must the team use to generate an accurate forecast for this specific requirement?
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Correct answer: C
This scenario requires a combination of specific Unisphere features. The Workload Planner is the primary tool for analyzing historical performance data. The Data Exclusion feature is critical for filtering out the nightly batch jobs to ensure the analysis is based on the true production workload. The Headroom feature is then used within the planner to apply the 20% growth rate and forecast future capacity and performance needs accurately.
- 5
What is the fill-in-the-blank value in the following SYMCLI command used to create a new TimeFinder SnapVX snapshot of a device group named 'ORA_DG' with a time-to-live of 2 days?
symsnapvx -g ORA_DG establish -name DailyBackup_2300 -____ 2Show answer details
Correct answer: B
The
-ttl(time-to-live) parameter is used with thesymsnapvx establishcommand to specify the duration, in days, for which the snapshot will be retained before it is automatically terminated. Setting-ttl 2ensures the snapshot is kept for 2 days. - 6
A manufacturing company is upgrading its PowerMax 2500 by adding a new drive enclosure. The lead engineer is concerned about ensuring the new hardware is correctly integrated and the system remains stable. What is the most critical rule to follow during a PowerMax hardware upgrade?
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Correct answer: C
The most critical rule for any PowerMax upgrade, whether hardware or software, is to run a thorough system health check before starting. This ensures that the array is in a stable, healthy state with no underlying issues that could be exacerbated by the upgrade process, minimizing the risk of unplanned downtime or data loss.
- 7
A solutions designer is creating a disaster recovery plan involving three data centers (A, B, C) using PowerMax arrays. The goal is to have Site B act as a bunker, receiving synchronous replication from Site A. From the bunker site (B), asynchronous replication must be sent to the remote site (C). What does this SRDF topology represent?
graph TD subgraph Site A (Primary) P1[Production] end subgraph Site B (Bunker) R1[Sync Copy] end subgraph Site C (Remote DR) R2[Async Copy] end P1 -- SRDF/S --> R1 R1 -- SRDF/A --> R2Show answer details
Correct answer: C
The diagram and description illustrate a Cascaded SRDF configuration. In this topology, the primary site (A) replicates to an intermediate site (B), and that intermediate site, in turn, replicates to a final remote site (C). This is often used for 'bunker' site designs where a synchronous copy is kept relatively close and an asynchronous copy is sent to a distant location from the bunker.
- 8
A solutions architect is designing a PowerMax 8500 solution for a financial institution. During the PowerSizer analysis, the output summary indicates a 90% backend director utilization for a proposed workload. However, upon reviewing the manufacturing bin file, the architect notices that the configuration includes fewer backend slices than recommended by the PowerSizer tool for that utilization level. What is the most critical risk associated with this discrepancy?
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Correct answer: D
The manufacturing bin file represents the actual hardware that will be shipped. If it has fewer backend slices than what PowerSizer determined was necessary to handle the workload (resulting in 90% utilization), the backend directors will be under-provisioned. This will lead to contention and bottlenecks, causing high latencies and an inability to meet performance SLAs, which is the primary risk of such a discrepancy.
- 9
A healthcare organization is planning to migrate its electronic health record (EHR) database from a VMAX3 array to a new PowerMax 2500. The migration must occur with zero downtime for the application hosts. Additionally, they need to migrate a separate, less critical application from a third-party array to the same PowerMax 2500 during the same maintenance window, with minimal disruption. Which combination of migration technologies should be used?
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Correct answer: B
Non-Disruptive Migration (NDM) is the correct choice for the VMAX3-to-PowerMax migration as it is designed for seamless, zero-downtime migrations between Dell arrays. For the third-party array, Open-Minimally Disruptive Migration (O-MDM) is the appropriate technology, as it is designed to migrate data from non-Dell storage systems to PowerMax with minimal disruption.
- 10
A global logistics company requires a three-site disaster recovery solution for its critical order processing application running on PowerMax. Site A is the primary production site. Site B is a synchronous disaster recovery site located 75 km away. Site C is an asynchronous disaster recovery site located 2000 km away. The requirement is to maintain zero data loss failover capability to Site B, while also protecting against a regional disaster by having a copy at Site C. Which SRDF topology meets all these requirements?
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Correct answer: C
SRDF/Star is the correct topology. It allows the primary site (A) to replicate synchronously to a nearby site (B) for zero data loss (RPO=0) and concurrently replicate asynchronously to a distant site (C). This meets the requirement for both local high availability/DR and long-distance regional disaster protection from the primary site. Cascaded SRDF would introduce a dependency on Site B being available to replicate to Site C.
