I'm assuming you are discussing a Block LUN for a host rather than a NAS Filesystem (the NS480 supports both) since you referred to the FLARE code and comparison to DMX/VMAX.  If you want a NAS filesystem, then the below DOES NOT apply....  For Block LUNs, the short answer is that there is no limit..  You can create a RAID Group using the 9 drives (6+2 + HS for example) and then create a big LUN in that RAID Group that consumes the entire space.  (approximately 11TB usable).   If you want to go larger you could use MetaLUNs to expand across multiple RAID Groups.  best practice would be to use identical RAID Group and LUN configurations and to use MetaLUN striping instead of concatenation.  Not entirely sure what you mean by "as good as DMX/VMAX" but MetaLUNs definitely work great on CX.  Just be sure not to stripe LUNs that are on the same physical disks (ie: same RAID Group).  From a pure performance perspective, (MetaLUN or not), extremely Large LUNs are not the best.  Each LUN is assigned a single IO queue at the host which has a specific queue depth (depends on RAID Group type/size) and as you grow the LUN and add data, that queue length does NOT grow.  So, if performance requirements grow while the dataset size grows, you may end up with poor performance over time.  If performance matters, you'd be better off finding a way to use multiple LUNs at the host layer either through host striping, or DFS, etc.
Friends, we have a CX480 (NS480) with 9, 2 TB SATA drives in a DAE. We are trying to create a large LUN for storing images. Is there a limitation on lun size as to how much we can create from a single Raidgroup? Current FLARE code is at 30. Would creating a large meta be ok? Are metas on CX are as good as on DMX/VMAX? please advise.   Thanks, RP
whats the maximum lun size?