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Dell PowerProtect DD Deploy 2023 study materials
Dell PowerProtect DD Deploy 2023 study resources

Dell PowerProtect DD Deploy 2023: Storage, Licensing, and Capacity Management

Dell PowerProtect DD Deploy 2023 · Work through your exam, one topic at a time.

All guide sections

Storage, Licensing, and Capacity Management

What this domain covers

This domain tests capacity vocabulary, the licensing model, file system operations (MTrees, quotas, snapshots, cleaning), and whether you can forecast growth instead of discovering it through a full file system.

Capacity vocabulary

  • Raw is the physical disk before RAID; usable is what the file system can present after RAID and spares.
  • Pre-comp bytes are what arrives at the appliance; post-comp bytes are what lands on disk after dedupe and compression.
  • Reduction ratio = pre-comp / post-comp, and it already reflects dedupe and compression combined; dedupe ratio alone is a smaller number.
  • Cloud Tier keeps its metadata on the active tier, so active-tier headroom is still consumed even after data ages out.

Licensing

  • Capacity is licensed per TB of usable active-tier capacity; the licensed quantity must cover what you configure, or the system raises alerts and can restrict writes.
  • Option licences include DD Boost, DD Encryption, Retention Lock Governance/Compliance, Cloud Tier, and DDMC; replication between DD systems is included at no extra licence, which is a favourite exam distinction. Some bundles already include DD Boost - check the bundle before quoting.
  • Cloud Tier capacity is licensed separately from active-tier capacity.
  • Add keys with license add and audit with license show.

File system operations

  • filesys show space is the primary capacity view; filesys status shows enabled, running, read-only or disabled state.
  • Cleaning (filesys clean start, scheduled weekly by default) reclaims space that dedupe and deletions have freed. It is incremental, throttled by load, and takes hours; run it off-peak.
  • MTrees segment data and support quotas, snapshots and retention lock. Snapshots are copy-on-write and near-free until the referenced data changes.
  • Capacity expansion is two steps: register the shelf (storage add tier active enclosure <n>) and then extend the file system with filesys expand.

Worked example

A site backs up 200 TB logical per week, keeps 8 weeks on the active tier at 18:1, and tiers anything older to the cloud. Active logical = 1,600 TB, so physical = 1,600 / 18 = about 89 TB; add roughly 10% free space for cleaning and metadata, giving about 98 TB. The planner orders 96-120 TB of capacity licences at the available step, keeps the Cloud Tier licence separate, and reserves active-tier space for the cloud metadata rather than budgeting the active tier down to zero.

Traps that cost marks

  • Quoting dedupe ratio as the total reduction and under-ordering storage.
  • Licensing exactly today's consumption with no growth allowance.
  • Adding a shelf and expecting filesys show space to change without filesys expand.
  • Assuming cleaning instantly returns space to the file system size rather than gradually after a scheduled run.