Dell PowerFlex 4.5.x Administration Guide

Add a new interface

Use the Add New Interface feature to create a network interface to match to a network card on a node when deploying a template.

PowerFlex Manager supports a network layout for hyperconverged, compute-only, and storage-only deployments. This network layout allows you to use trunk ports and port channels for data networks, instead of access ports. In this type of configuration, both data networks are on both NICs, teamed or bonded together in the operating system. For a hyperconverged or compute-only deployment, the first port on both interfaces is for trunk traffic, whereas the second port is for data 1 and data 2. For a storage-only deployment, the first port is for trunk traffic and data 1, whereas the second port is for data 2. PowerFlex Manager still supports the legacy network layout, but the sample templates use the new configuration.

1. On the node component page, under Network Settings, click Add New Interface.

2. Enter the following information for the new interface:

   • Port Layout—Select the NIC type from the list.

     For a VMware ESXi deployment with a Mellanox card, you must select the two port, 25-gigabit NIC type.

   The second interface ports 1 and 2 are automatically replicated to the first interface. This replication applies to sample templates as well. If you manually create a template from scratch and choose the networks for the interfaces, the second interface's port 1 and 2 are not automatically replicated to the first interface.

3. Enter the network VLANs for each port.

   1. Click Choose Networks for a port.
   2. To add one or more networks to the port, select Add Networks to this Port, then click the check box for each network you want to add from the Available Networks list. Alternatively, click the check box in the upper left corner next to the Name label to select all the available networks.

      If you want to filter the list by network type, select a Network Type, then enter a name or VLAN ID to search.

      Click >> to move the selected items to the Selected Networks list on the right.

   3. To mirror network settings from another port for which you have already chosen the network VLANs, select Mirror this Port with Another Port. Then, select the other interface and port from which you want to mirror this port.
   4. Click Save.

4. To view the list of nodes that match the network configuration parameters, click Validate Settings.

   The list of nodes is filtered according to the target boot device and NIC type settings specified.

   When you enable PowerFlex settings for the node, the Validate Settings page filters the list of nodes according to the supported storage types (NVMe, All flash, and HDD). Within the section for each storage type, the nodes are also sorted by health, with the healthy (green) nodes displayed first and the critical (red) nodes displayed last.