Dell poweredge VRTX - Introduction

1 Introduction
This document provides instructions on upgrading VRTX chassis to support shared storage expansion.
Shared storage expansion is a new feature of PowerEdge VRTX that allows customers to add additional
shared storage infrastructure to the chassis. This feature has one or two Shared PowerEdge RAID
Controller (PERC) 8 External cards installed in the VRTX chassis, connecting to Dell PowerVault MD1200 or
MD1220 direct attached storage enclosures.
The Shared PERC 8 External card enables PCIe Input Output (IO) virtualization, which allows multiple
systems to share the available hardware resources. The controller allows four server modules to access
attached JBOD (Just a Bunch Of Disks) storage. Each server module's operating system (OS) loads a
Virtual Function (VF) driver that allows the server module to communicate with the Shared PERC 8
firmware. Shared PERC 8 External card also supports fault tolerance between clustered controllers
providing multipath I/O and failover support.
4 Upgrading PowerEdge VRTX to Support Shared Storage Expansion