WHAT IS FAST Cache and FAST VP
Marcus Reynolds
Updated on April 14, 2026
First of all, FAST Cache you set up on Storage System level, so everything provisioned on the Storage Array can take an advantage, both RAID LUNs and pool LUNs. FAST VP is created in a Storage Pool, and can be used only for LUNs within that Storage Pool. … Constantly promotes frequently accessed HDD data to FAST Cache.
What is fast cache?
The FAST Cache is a large capacity secondary cache that uses SAS Flash drives to improve system performance by extending the storage system’s existing caching capacity. You can configure individual pools to use the FAST Cache. When you do this, all storage resources created in those pools will use the FAST Cache.
WHAT IS FAST VP in unity?
FAST VP accelerates the performance of a specific storage pool by automatically moving data within that pool to the appropriate drive technology, based on data access patterns. FAST VP is only applicable to hybrid pools within a Dell EMC Unity hybrid system.
WHAT IS FAST VP?
About FAST VP Fully Automated Storage Tiering for Virtual Pools (FAST VP) enables the system to retain the most frequently accessed or important data on fast, high-performance disks and move the less frequently accessed and less important data to lower-performance, cost-effective disks.What is fast in EMC storage?
Dell EMC Unity Fully Automated Storage Tiering for Virtual Pools (FAST VP) monitors the data access patterns within Pools on the system, and dynamically matches the performance requirements of the data with drives that provide that level of performance.
What is a benefit of using FAST VP on an Dell EMC unity XT array?
Unity XT Hybrid arrays provide 5-9’s availability while taking advantage of FAST Cache (SSD Read Cache) with the ability to dynamically shrink or expand it online for improved performance and FAST VP for policy-based auto-tiering across multiple performance/capacity tiers for improved efficiency.
What is the granularity of FAST VP when relocating data in the pool?
FAST VP operates at a granularity of 1 GB, referred to as a “slice.” The goal of FAST VP technology is to leverage storage tiers to lower customers’ TCO and to increase performance by keeping hotter slices of data on performance tiers and colder slices of data on high-capacity tiers.
What is a characteristic of fast VP?
What is a characteristic of FAST VP? User can enable or disable FAST VP at the LUN level. FAST VP optimizes data placement by moving 1GB slices between disk tiers. Once enabled, FAST VP data relocation runs in background runs in background at all times. User can set the FAST VP data relocation rate.How can skew affect the design of a Dell EMC Unity system?
How can skew affect the design of a Dell EMC Unity system? Skew can help to optimize performance. … A customer wants to migrate a Dell EMC Unity x00/x50F file system to a new Dell EMC PowerStore cluster.
What is an advantage of Dell EMC unity XT snapshots?The Dell EMC Unity snapshots feature incorporates data reduction and advanced deduplication. Snapshots also benefit from the space savings that are achieved on the source storage resource. When you take a snapshot of a data-reduction-enabled storage resource, the data on the source can be compressed or deduplicated.
Article first time published onWhat is an advantage of Dell EMC unity s dynamic pools?
Dynamic pools allow for flexible deployment models, and reduced rebuild times and flash wear compared to Traditional pools. A dynamic pool is created when creating a pool in Unisphere in Dell EMC Unity OE version 4.2 and later.
What is an advantage of Dell EMC unity XT's dynamic pools?
What is an advantage of Dell EMC Unity’s dynamic pools? In most circumstances, administrators can expand a pool by adding one or more drives at a time and they can rebuild faulted drives faster.
What is the maximum size UFS64 can scale up to?
You still will be able to create thick provisioned or thin provisioned4 UFS64 File Systems, however the maximum configurable size of a file system is 64TB.
What block size is subject to the Dell EMC Unity data reduction algorithm?
software. Advanced Deduplication: A dynamic deduplication algorithm which reduces storage consumption by eliminating duplicate 8KB blocks of data within a storage resource.
What is thin clone?
Thin clones are writable copies of a snapshot, volume, volume group, or file system that can be accessed by a host. Unlike a full clone, a thin clone is a space efficient copy that shares data blocks with its parent object and not a full backup of the original resource.
Which operation can be performed from the fast VP Settings section in the Unisphere Settings window?
Which operation can be performed from the FAST VP settings section in the Unisphere Settings window? FAST VP accelerates performance of a specific storage pool by automatically moving data within that pool to the appropriate drive technology, based on data access patterns. FAST VP is only applicable to hybrid pools.
What is the maximum number of SAS ports available on a Dell EMC unity XT 680?
Dell EMC Unity XT 680 Hybrid Flash SpecificationsMemory (per SP)64GB96GBMax Raw Capacity2.4PB4.0PBCAN/Mezz Ports8/16Gb FC, 10GbE Opt, 1GbE BaseT25GbE Opt, 10GbE BaseTIO Modules10 GbE Base T, 16Gb FC, 25GbE Opt, 10Gbe Opt10GbE BaseT, 16Gb FC, 25GbE Opt, 10GbE Opt, SAS BE
What technology is used by Dell EMC unity snapshots?
The technology used for snapshots of both block and file resources in Dell EMC Unity is called redirect on write (ROW). With redirect on write, new writes to snapped storage resources or their snapshots are redirected to a new location in the same pool, and pointers are updated to point to the new location.
What is Dell Power store?
The Dell EMC PowerStore system is the primary midrange storage system offering from Dell Technologies alongside additional midrange offerings including Unity XT, XtremIO, and SC systems. … PowerStore is an all-solid state storage technology system supporting both flash and SCM Optane devices.
What is the maximum pool LUN size supported on a unity array?
AttributeUnity 350FUnity 650FMax number of pools20100Max LUN Size256TB256TBMax File System Size256TB256TBMax LUNs per array1,0006,000
What is a characteristic of dynamic pools?
Dynamic pools implement advanced RAID technology. In dynamic pools, a RAID group is spread across drive extents in multiple drives. The required spare space is also spread across drive extents in multiple drives. When a drive fails, the extents on the failed drive are rebuilt to spare space extents within the pool.
What is EMC VNX storage?
Dell EMC VNX is a family of enterprise-grade unified file and block storage systems. The Dell EMC VNX family of storage systems combines data storage scalability and flexibility with industry-leading simplicity and efficiency, reducing the total costs of ownership and operation of the storage system.
What is Dell SC Series?
Flexible tiered storage architecture that offers transformational performance. Powered by Intel® Xeon® processors, Dell EMC SC Series All-Flash and Hybrid storage solutions are intelligent and receptive. Discover the power of Dell EMC’s most affordable midrange flash arrays.
What Dell EMC Unity feature would provide a customer with disaster recovery for their virtual machines?
Unity Cloud Edition uniquely provides native file services over NFS and SMB and enables Cloud Synch Disaster Recovery between on premises- deployed Unity XT physical systems and VMware cloud-based Unity XT virtual appliances.
What is a characteristic of automatic UFS64 file system extension?
What is a characteristic of Automatic UFS64 File System extension? Array I/O service to clients is disrupted during auto-extension. Allocated space remains unchanged after extend operation. Auto-extension can exceed the file system visible size. File system cannot auto-extend past the provisioned size.
Which feature supported in the Dell EMC Unity Platform provides switch level redundancy?
Link Aggregation: Allows for combining multiple physical network connections into a single logical connection to provide increased throughput and adds redundancy.
What is data reduction ratio?
Space reduction ratios are typically depicted as “ratio:1” or “ratio X.” For example, 10:1 or 10 X. The ratio may also be viewed as the data capacity of a system divided by its usable storage capacity. For example, if 100 GB of data consumes 10 GB of storage capacity, the space reduction ratio is 10:1.
How is the Dell EMC Unity data reduction ratio calculated?
How is the Dell EMC Unity Data Reduction Ratio calculated? A. Divide the predate-reduction size of all storage resources and their snapshots by the postdata-reduction size of all storage resources and their snapshots.
What is data reduction in unity?
In Dell EMC Unity OE version 4.3 and later, the Data Reduction feature replaces Compression. The Data Reduction algorithm includes deduplication, compression, and zero-block detection. … Data reduction and Compression are supported on All Flash Pools created on Dell EMC Unity Hybrid Flash systems, or All Flash systems.