Question 54 - D-XTR-DS-A-24 discussion

When creating XtremIO volumes for a host, operating systems like Microsoft Windows and RHEL (Red Hat Enterprise Linux) will benefit from changing the default logical block size to better match applications that consist of 4 KB I/Os. This is because these operating systems are commonly used with applications that have a 4 KB I/O size, and aligning the logical block size with the application I/O size can improve performance by reducing the need for read-modify-write cycles.

For instance, in Windows environments, the NTFS file system often uses a default cluster size of 4 KB, which aligns well with a 4 KB logical block size. Similarly, for RHEL, the Ext4 file system can be configured with a 4 KB block size, which is a common setting for many Linux-based applications12.

Discussions on Dell Technologies community forums indicate that changing the logical block size can prevent issues with unaligned I/O and is part of a larger configuration strategy for optimizing storage performance3.

The Reference Architecture Guide for Dell EMC XtremIO documents mention using a block size of 64 KB for database data and log file drives after the installation of the operating system in the VMs, for Windows and RHEL operating systems respectively12. This suggests that the block size is an important consideration for performance tuning in these environments.