Dell Products Inc.

Joseph A Perry

Vasudevan Subramanian

Dazhi Dong

Cluster management logic in a storage appliance of a storage cluster receives messages that are automatically transmitted periodically by unconfigured storage appliances. The unconfigured storage appliances do not belong to the storage cluster, and the messages contain properties of the unconfigured storage appliances. The messages may be multicast DNS (Domain Name Service) messages. The cluster management logic determines a level of compatibility of each one of the unconfigured storage appliances with regard to the storage cluster, based on the received properties. Determining the level of compatibility of each unconfigured storage appliance with the storage cluster may include assigning one of multiple compatibility level categories to each unconfigured storage appliance. The compatibility level categories may be or include a) incompatible, ii) compatible with warning, and/or c) compatible, and may be displayed in a graphical user interface that is used to add unconfigured storage appliances to the storage cluster.

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Sutton, MA, United States of America

Joseph A Perry