- Notes, cautions, and warnings
- Revision history
- Introduction
- VxRail network planning overview
- Plan the VxRail network
- VxRail cluster types
- VxRail hardware and switch selection decision points
- Prepare the data center to implement VxRail
- Decide on an IP address scheme
- Prepare external network connectivity for VxRail
- Prepare service connectivity for VxRail
- Prepare for VMware vSphere+ subscription licensing
- Prepare data center routing services
- Prepare for multirack VxRail cluster
- Prepare for VMware vSAN HCI mesh topology
- Prepare external FC storage for dynamic clusters
- Prepare for VxRail custom uplink assignments
- Prepare data center network MTU
- Prepare for LAG of VxRail networks
- Plan LAG on switch port pairs
- Prepare certificate authority server for VxRail
- Identify isolation IP addresses for VMware vSphere High Availability
- Plan the VxRail cluster implementation
- Decide on VxRail single point of management
- Decide on VxRail network traffic segmentation
- Decide on teaming and failover policies for VxRail networks
- Plan the VxRail logical network
- Plan network settings for VxRail management components
- Plan network settings for VMware vCenter Server management network
- Identify IP addresses for VxRail management components
- Select hostnames for VxRail management components
- Identify external applications and settings for VxRail
- Prepare the customer-managed VMware vCenter Server
- Prepare a customer-managed VMware VDS
- Reserve IP addresses for VxRail-managed VMware vSphere vMotion network
- Reserve IPv4/IPv6 addresses for VxRail vSAN network
- Decide on VxRail logging solution
- Assign passwords for VxRail management
- Plan VMware vSAN witness networking
- Plan networking for VxRail Satellite Nodes
- Configure the Network for VxRail
- Prepare to build the VxRail cluster
- VxRail network considerations after implementation
- Appendix A: VxRail Network Configuration Table
- Appendix B: VxRail Passwords
- Appendix C: VxRail cluster setup checklist
- Appendix D: VxRail Open Ports Requirements
- Appendix E: VMware VDS port group default settings
- Appendix F: Physical Network Switch Examples
- Pre-defined network profile: 2x10gb or 2x25gb from a single NDC/OCP
- Predefined network profile: 4x10gb or 4x25gb NDC/OCP
- Predefined network profile: 2 x 10/25 GB NDC/OCP and 2 x 10/25 GB PCIe
- Custom option: Any NDC/OCP ports paired with PCIe ports
- Custom option: Two NDC/OCP ports paired with PCIe ports other than the first slot
- Custom option: PCIe ports only
- Custom option: Six ports
- Custom option: Eight ports
- Custom option: Eight ports connected to four Ethernet switches
Dell VxRail Network Planning Guide
Decide on VxRail single point of management
VxRail virtual infrastructure is defined and managed as a VMware vSphere cluster under a single instance of VMware vCenter Server.
Select whether to use one of the following:
- VxRail-managed VMware vCenter Server, which is deployed in the cluster during the initialization process.
- Customer-managed VMware vCenter Server, which is external to the cluster.
Select customer-managed or VxRail-managed VMware vCenter Server
Consider the following requirements for selecting the VxRail vCenter Server:
- A VMware vCenter Server Standard license is included with VxRail cluster with vSAN and does not require a separate license. This license cannot be transferred to another VMware vCenter Server instance.
- VxRail Lifecycle Management supports the upgrade of the VxRail-managed VMware vCenter Server. VxRail does not support upgrading a customer-managed VMware vCenter Server using VxRail Lifecycle Management.
- DNS services are required for VxRail. With the VxRail-managed VMware vCenter Server, you can use the internal DNS supported within the VxRail cluster, or leveraging external DNS in your data center. The internal DNS option only supports naming services on which the VxRail cluster it is deployed. This option cannot support naming services outside of that cluster.
For a customer-managed VMware vCenter Server, consider the following requirements:
- The VMware vCenter Server Standard license included with VxRail cannot be transferred to a VMware vCenter Server instance outside of the VxRail cluster.
- Multiple VxRail clusters can be configured on a single customer-managed VMware vCenter Server, limiting the points of management.
- External DNS must be configured to support the VxRail cluster.
- Ensuring version compatibility of the customer-managed VMware vCenter Server with VxRail is the responsibility of the customer.
- You can configure the VMware VDS to support the VxRail cluster, or have VxRail deploy a VMware VDS and perform the configuration. This provides better control and manageability of the virtual networking in your data center, and consolidates the number of VMware VDS in your VMware vCenter Server instance.
- To deploy one or more dynamic VxRail clusters where the primary storage resource is going to be a remote VMware vSAN datastore, a customer-managed VMware vCenter Server is preferable. All clusters participating in sharing and receiving VMware vSAN datastore resources must reside in a common VMware vCenter Server instance.
The option to use the internal DNS or to deploy the VxRail cluster against a preconfigured VMware VDS requires VxRail 7.0.010 or later. For more details on the planning steps for a customer-managed VMware vCenter Server, see the Dell VxRail vCenter Server Planning Guide.
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