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Node limit for Hyperscale X Nodes

  • 21 February 2024
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Hello All,

I am planning for the expansion of one of our Hyperscale X clusters on Dell Reference Architecture. I have 2 questions that I would love some input on. 

 

-Node Limit

One of my contacts told me that there is a 12-node limit on storage pools (HCX clusters). Then after the 12th node is deployed, we should plan to make a new storage pool. I found that odd because my last contact told me that there was no limit on the number of nodes. The only limit I have heard of is the 5PB capacity that CommVault has tested internally.


The no limit is documented here:

Storage Pool Expansion and Capacity Planning For HyperScale X Appliance (commvault.com)
 

The only mention of a 12 node limit I could find online is that we can only deploy 12 nodes at a time in the initial configuration. Then an announcement of the 12 node conriguration in the community forums.

12 node limit doc:

Planning for Deployments Larger than 12 Nodes in the HyperScale Cluster (commvault.com)

 

Theoretically, I can deploy 24x N12 reference architecture nodes in our environment, correct? I will only be able to set up 12 at the initial set up, correct?

 

 

-Mixing Reference Architecture Generations

We previously purchased N12 Dell 740XD reference architecture nodes in one of the older datacenters. That datacenter is being retired soon; would it be possible to ship them to our new datacenter and add them to our new cluster that has N12 models that are Dell 760’s?

 

Design Specifications for HyperScale X Reference Architecture (commvault.com)

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Best answer by Albert Williams 22 February 2024, 05:31

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Hello @Kyle32043 

Thanks for the great question!
As the Books Online Article you linked states, there is no node limit but an expansion like this should be reviewed by your accounts and sale team. 

 



In short there should not be a problem but also confirm if the appropriate teams as advised by the doco before moving forward with this expansion.

Kind regards
Albert Williams

 

Userlevel 2
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We have been running with hyperscale x for a while now.

Alltough the documentation or other sources not tells of a upper limit for how many nodes you can have in a cluster, that’s not entierly true what the sales team tells you that you just can add a new node.

Our first deployment of hyperscale x contained of at the end 19 nodes, it was a complete nightmare as the backups constandly was hitting a few of the nodes resulting in them being full and the whole cluster went in a bad state. The reason was that the data was not spread across all the nodes fast and efficient enough. 

 

We had a big support ticket with commvault on this and we were informed there that it was not reccomennede to have more than 6 nodes pr cluster and have them in even numbers, like 4 or 6 and not 5 nodes pr cluster due to how hedwig store the data witch is 6 containers where 4 is active and 2 is in spare. 

The developers was not able to solve the root cause issue with the big 19node cluster and after a while we decided to scratch everything and start all over again with 6 nodes pr cluster. We did not have the time anyomre waiting for dev investigate this.


 

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