Demonstrate your ability to operate and configure Dell Metro Node storage virtualisation solutions — covering system health checks, advanced storage provisioning, distributed devices, data migration, and role-based user authentication.
Become a proficient Dell Metro Node administrator — mastering system health checks, advanced storage provisioning, distributed devices, data migration workflows, and user authentication management.
Module 01
Metro Node System Health
›System health check with Unisphere — reviewing cluster dashboard, director status, frontend/backend port health, and cache statistics
›System health check with VPlexcli — executing health-check commands, interpreting CLI output, and identifying degraded components from command-line
›System health check with Ansible — running health playbooks, parsing structured output, and automating recurring health verification across multi-cluster deployments
›Health metrics interpretation — cache hit ratio, I/O latency per director, replication lag, inter-cluster link (ISL) utilisation, and fan-out ratio analysis
›Alert management — identifying critical alerts vs warnings in Unisphere event log, configuring SNMP traps, and escalation runbook procedures
Module 02
Provision Storage
›Advanced provisioning with Unisphere — creating virtual volumes from storage views, mapping initiators, and configuring host-accessible LUNs across single and dual-cluster environments
›Volume encapsulation with VPlexcli — claiming back-end LUNs, creating extents, verifying extent maps, and encapsulating third-party storage volumes
›EZ provisioning with VPlexcli — using the ez-prov wizard workflow to create extent, device, virtual volume, and storage view in a single guided operation
›EZ provisioning with Unisphere — guided provisioning wizard, selecting back-end arrays, capacity allocation, and host mapping validation
›Storage view management — creating, modifying, and deleting storage views; verifying host access using FC initiator lists and connectivity checks
Module 03
Distributed Devices
›Distributed device features and functionality — understanding cross-cluster mirroring, active-active read/write access from both sites, and cache coherency
›Distributed device options — synchronous mirror (zero RPO), and how distributed devices enable workload mobility across Metro Node clusters without application interruption
›Steps to create distributed devices using VPlexcli — building the local device, creating the distributed device object, and mapping components across clusters
›Distributed device health monitoring — checking mirror leg status, resync progress, and handling split-brain scenarios using VPlexcli commands
›Volume expansion for distributed devices — process for expanding underlying extents, growing device capacity, and verifying expansion using Unisphere and VPlexcli
Module 04
Data Migration
›Migration types — extent mobility (re-striping data within a storage pool), device mobility (moving between storage arrays), and batch migration (bulk migration scripting)
›Extent mobility jobs using Unisphere — creating mobility jobs, setting concurrency limits, monitoring progress, and verifying data integrity post-migration
›Device mobility jobs using Unisphere — initiating device moves between back-end arrays, tracking job status, handling failures, and post-migration validation steps
›Mobility job operations using VPlexcli — listing active jobs, suspending/resuming jobs, forcing job completion, and cancelling failed migration tasks
›Batch migration with VPlexcli — scripting bulk extent/device mobility using VPlexcli batch commands, progress monitoring, and final cutover coordination
Module 05
User Authentication
›Role-based access control (RBAC) — creating Metro Node management users, assigning predefined roles (Admin, Operator, Monitor, SecurityAdmin), and custom role creation
›User account management — user provisioning in Unisphere, password policies, account lockout settings, and LDAP/AD integration for centralised identity management
›Role-based shell capabilities — understanding which VPlexcli commands are available per role, read-only vs read-write access boundaries, and audit logging per user session
›Cluster health commands and VPlexcli output interpretation — health-check command syntax, parsing multi-director output, and identifying anomalies in cluster status reports
›CLI performance monitoring — configuring VPlexcli performance monitors, understanding statistics types (cache, FE I/O, BE I/O, ISL), and setting performance alert thresholds
Complete Metro Node operations curriculum — from daily system health monitoring through provisioning, distributed devices, data migration, and role-based access administration.
›Unisphere health check workflow — logging in, navigating to Cluster Health dashboard, reviewing Director status tiles, frontend/backend port states, and cache performance gauges
›VPlexcli health check commands — health-check --cluster-name, show health, show director, and interpreting multi-engine CLI output for degraded or faulted states
›Ansible health automation — running pre-built Dell Metro Node Ansible playbooks, parsing structured health JSON, and scheduling recurring health checks via cron/AWX
›Event log management — filtering Unisphere alerts by severity (Critical/Warning/Info), configuring email and SNMP alert delivery, and building an alert triage procedure
›Health check acceptance criteria — defining green/amber/red thresholds for cache hit ratio, frontend I/O latency, ISL utilisation, and replication synchronisation lag
›Advanced Unisphere provisioning — creating extents from claimed LUNs, building local devices from extents, creating virtual volumes, and setting up storage views with initiator groups
›Volume encapsulation with VPlexcli — using the encapsulate command to claim third-party FC LUNs, wrapping them as extents, and verifying encapsulation completeness before host access
›EZ provisioning wizard in VPlexcli — step-by-step guided prov commands for new deployments including back-end selection, capacity input, virtual volume naming, and host mapping
›EZ provisioning in Unisphere — using the Guided Provisioning wizard UI, selecting array back-ends, specifying virtual volume capacity, and completing the provisioning flow with host assignment
›Storage view audit — listing all storage views, verifying initiator-to-volume mappings, identifying unneeded views, and safely removing obsolete storage views without host disruption
›Distributed device concept — cross-cluster object that mirrors a virtual volume between two Metro Node clusters, providing active-active block access from both sites simultaneously
›Distributed device options — Synchronous Mirror (both legs equal and up-to-date), and understanding the impact of ISL loss on distributed device behaviour and host I/O
›Creating distributed devices with VPlexcli — building local device at each cluster, using add-component --mirror to create the distributed device object, and verifying mirror leg equality
›Distributed device monitoring — using show distributed-device to check leg state, resync progress percentage, dirty region log (DRL) status, and triggered rebuild after ISL recovery
›Volume expansion procedure — expanding back-end LUNs, re-growing extents, issuing grow-device in VPlexcli, and verifying host OS sees expanded capacity without device recreation
›Migration method comparison — extent mobility (data moves within the same storage pool changing physical placement), device mobility (data moves between different back-end arrays), and batch migration (scripted bulk jobs)
›Creating extent mobility jobs in Unisphere — selecting source extent, target storage tier, specifying concurrency level, submitting the job, and monitoring real-time migration throughput
›Creating device mobility jobs in Unisphere — selecting source virtual volume and target array, reviewing estimated completion time, monitoring job phases, and final LUN cleanup on source array
›VPlexcli mobility operations — listing active mobility jobs with show mobility, pausing with suspend-job, resuming with resume-job, and forcing job completion when tolerably stalled
›RBAC user accounts — creating Metro Node management users in Unisphere, assigning roles (Admin: full control, Operator: limited change, Monitor: read-only, SecurityAdmin: user management only)
›LDAP/AD integration — configuring LDAP bind account in Unisphere, importing AD groups, mapping AD groups to Metro Node roles, and testing login with AD credentials
›Shell capability boundaries — understanding which VPlexcli commands are role-restricted, verifying shell access level, and auditing executed commands via VPlexcli session history
›Cluster health commands in VPlexcli — health-check, show cluster, show director, show port, show cache — syntax patterns, output structure, and common error resolution
›CLI performance monitors — configuring collect-stats for frontend I/O, backend I/O, ISL, and cache; selecting statistic sampling intervals; and interpreting exported CSV performance data
›Metro Node product architecture — VS2 (2-engine single-cluster) vs VS6 (6-engine scalable), director board layout, cross-engine communication, management network architecture, and REST API endpoints
Become a proficient Metro Node storage virtualisation administrator with the D-MN-OE-23 Dell Proven Professional certification and manage active-active storage solutions with confidence.