The formula VM count Capacity per VM is a standard sizing calculation used to determine the total logical capacity required by a specific workload, in this case, a set of virtual machines. In Dell PowerStore terminology, this logical capacity is provisioned from the Usable Capacity. Usable Capacity represents the total space available for data storage after system overhead and RAID protection are accounted for, but before any data reduction technologies (like compression and deduplication) are applied. Therefore, the result of this calculation is the amount of usable capacity that must be allocated for the VMs.

B. Raw Capacity: This is the total, unformatted physical capacity of all drives in the system. It does not account for RAID overhead or system space and is not what is allocated to hosts.

C. Effective Capacity: This refers to the total amount of host data that can be stored after applying data reduction. The calculation represents the data size before reduction is considered.

1. Dell Technologies White Paper: Dell PowerStore: Introduction to the Platform

Page 11, "Capacity" section: Defines the capacity terms. It states, "Usable capacity is the total capacity available for data storage after system overhead and data protection (RAID) are configured. This is the capacity available to the user before data reduction." This directly supports that the pre-reduction workload size (VM count Capacity per VM) corresponds to the Usable Capacity metric.

2. Dell Technologies White Paper: Dell PowerStore: Data Efficiencies

Page 5, "Terminology" section: Differentiates between Logical Size, Usable Capacity, and Physical Capacity. It clarifies that "Logical size is the amount of data that the host has written to a storage resource before data reduction." The calculation in the question determines this total logical size, which is provisioned from the system's Usable Capacity.