E20-526 EMC XtremIO Solutions and Design Specialist Exam for Technology Architects Free Practice Exam Questions (2025 Updated)

All XtremIO's enterprise features (including Inline Data Reduction, snapshots, XDP, HA, etc.) have been developed as part of the scale-out architecture. All data and metadata are evenly distributed across the entire cluster. I/Os are admitted to the array via all the host ports, utilizing SAN zones and multi-pathing.

References: Introduction to the EMC XtremIO STORAGE ARRAY (April 2015), page 39

The XtremIO's RESTful API allows HTTPS-based interface for automation, orchestration, query and provisioning of the system. With the API, third party applications can be used to control and fully administer the array.

Normally you would access the API using some form of programming/scripting language, such as Python or Perl. However for the purposes of learning or testing concepts there are a number of tools that work better, such as HTTPRrequester and curl.

* Curl is a command-line tool that exists in all Linux distributions, and is available for most other Unix OSes as well as Windows.

To use curl to access XtremIO you’ll need to pass it a few options, such as the username/password to access the array (any valid account on the XtremIO XMS will work), the URL of the API, and potentially a few options such as -k to tell curl not to validate the SSL certificate (presuming you don’t have a valid certificate installed), and -s (silent) to stop curl displaying it’s progress as it downloads the response.

* HTTPRequester is a browser extension that is available for both Chrome and Firefox.

As with for curl, you’ll need to provide a username/password, which is done by clicking on the “Authentication…” box, which adds two boxes below the URL for the username and the password.

References:https://blog.docbert.org/using-the-xtremio-rest-api-part-1/

The XMS must access all management ports on the X-Brick Storage Controllers, and must be accessible by any GUI/CLI client host machine.

References: Introduction to the EMC XtremIO STORAGE ARRAY (April 2015), page 48

The EMC RecoverPoint family provides cost-effective, local continuous data protection (CDP), continuous remote replication (CRR), and continuous local and remote replication (CLR) that allows for any-point-in-time data recovery and a new "snap and replicate" mechanism for local and remote replication (XRP).

Splitter-based replication, using VPLEX

RecoverPoint splitter-based replication provides synchronous replication, continuous replication with fine recovery granularity (journal based), and replication for active-active datacenters.

References: Introduction to the EMC XtremIO STORAGE ARRAY (April 2015), page 52

The system operation is controlled via a stand-alone dedicated Linux-based server, called the XtremIO Management Server (XMS). A single XMS can manage multiple clusters. Multiple cluster management is supported from version 4.0 and up. System version 4.0 supports up to eight clusters managed by an XMS in a given site.

References: Introduction to the EMC XtremIO STORAGE ARRAY (April 2015), page 48

The EMC VPLEX family is the next-generation solution for data mobility and access within, across and between data centers.

VPLEX supports two configurations, local and metro. In the case of VPLEX Metro with the optional VPLEX Witness and Cross-Connected configuration, applications continue to operate in the surviving site with no interruption or downtime. Storage resources virtualized by VPLEX cooperate through the stack, with the ability to dynamically move applications and data across geographies and service providers.

The queue depth is per‐LUN, and not per‐initiator. Here there are 64 LUNs, each visible through 4 paths, which would indicate that 256 is a good choice for the queue depth setting.

Note: As a general advice, for optimal operation with XtremIO storage, consider the following: Set the queue depth to 256.

References:https://www.emc.com/collateral/white-paper/h14583-wp-best-practice-sql-server-xtremio.pdf

The block size for both Oracle Cluster Registry (OCR) and Cluster Synchronization Services (CSS) voting files are 512 bytes. I/O operations to these file objects are therefore sized as a multiple of 512 bytes.

This is of no consequence since the best practice with XtremIO is to create volumes with 512e formatting.

References:https://www.emc.com/collateral/white-papers/h13497-oracle-best-practices-xtremio-wp.pdf , page 22

XtremIO with VPLEX provides for both synchronous and asynchronous replication.

Note: The engine of RecoverPoint is the RecoverPoint Appliance (RPA).

Noting the inefficiencies in VMware’s NMP driver, EMC developed a set of drivers specifically designed to overcome these limitations and improve the performance and reliability of the data passing between an array and a server. EMC developed the PowerPath family of products optimized specifically for Linux, Microsoft Windows, and UNIX Operating Systems as well as PowerPath/VE for VMware vSphere and Microsoft Hyper-V hypervisors.

PowerPath is installed on hosts to provide path failover, load balancing and performance optimization VPLEX engines (or directly to the XtremIO array if VPLEX is not used).

Note: VMware, with the cooperation of its storage partners, developed a Native Multipathing Plug-in (NMP). VMware NMP was designed to distribute the load over all the available paths and provide failover protection in the case of path, port or HBA failure, but it has not been fully optimized to work with the controllers in a storage systems. VMware’s NMP Round Robin policy does not have the intelligence that PowerPath has as PowerPath uses testing and diagnostics to continually monitor an environment to determine the optimal path for queuing requests and will adapt to current conditions.

References:https://www.emc.com/collateral/analyst-reports/emc-taneja-group-powerpath-tb.pdf

It is related to TRIM/UNMAP, which is enabled per default in Server 2012(R2).

References:https://serverfault.com/questions/679211/quick-format-of-lun-in-server-2012r2-hosted-on-a-thin-provisioned-san-vol-take

EMC estimates that 150 IOPS per desktop is required in a boot storm. As per table the recommended number of VDIs then is 243,831/ 150, which equals 1625.

References:https://www.emc.com/collateral/white-papers/h14279-wp-vmware-horizon-xtremio-design-considerations.pdf , page 32

EMC ViPR Controller is a software-defined storage platform that abstracts, pools and automates a data center's underlying physical storage infrastructure. It provides data center administrators with a single control plane for heterogeneous storage systems.

ViPR enables software-defined data centers by providing features including:

* Comprehensive and customizable platform reporting capabilities that include capacity metering, chargeback, and performance monitoring through the included ViPR SolutionPack

References: Introduction to the EMC XtremIO STORAGE ARRAY (April 2015), page 60

Large block I/O by nature incurs higher latency.

References: Introduction to the EMC XtremIO STORAGE ARRAY (April 2015), page 6

Disk service time T(s) = 32 ms (service time for one I/O).

Response time T(r) is calculated as: T(s) / (1 – Utilization), which here calculates to 32 ms/ (1-0.75) = 128 ms.

References:https://community.emc.com/thread/145100?tstart=0

The first step is to re-install the XMS image, in the event it is a physical XMS then you may install an image via a USB flash drive or for a virtual XMS simply deploy the provided VMware OVA image.

The following step is to upload the XMS software to the images directory of the XMS and login with install mode ……..

Once logged into the XMS console with xinstall then perform the following sequence of steps:

1. Configuration

5. Perform XMS installation only

11. Run XMS Recovery

Options to choose when running the “XMS Recovery”:

References:https://davidring.ie/2015/02/20/emc-xtremio-redeploying-xms-xtremio-management-server/

Configuring vSphere Native Multipathing.

For best performance, it is recommended to do the following:

Set the native round robin path selection policy on XtremIO volumes presented to the ESX host.

References: https://itzikr.wordpress.com/2015/12/16/host-configuration-for-vmware-vsphere-on-emc-xtremio/