- 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
VxRail cluster types
The primary building block for VxRail is the individual node. A collection of nodes are then used to form a VxRail cluster and placed under a single point of management.
The VxRail nodes can be customized to provide all the physical compute, network, and storage resources for the cluster. This is accomplished by using the local disk drives on each node to form a VMware vSAN data store as the primary storage resource for application workloads. Nodes can be customized without local disk drives to use external data center resources for primary storage.
One type of VxRail cluster is one where the VxRail nodes provide all the physical compute and storage resources to support application workload. For this type of cluster, the primary storage resource is VMware vSAN. The slots in the nodes are filled with disk drives that meet the performance and capacity requirements for the application workload. The slots are formed into a local VMware vSAN data store during cluster initialization.
This cluster type is designed to handle most customer application workloads and covers the most common use cases:
- With a local VMware vSAN data store, operational flexibility addresses scalability and high availability requirements.
- This cluster type is simple to deploy and operate. The initialization process performs all the work to pool the node resources for ease of consumption.
- This cluster type is not dependent on external resources for storage, so all resources can be administered under a single point of management.
- More compute and storage resources can be expanded to the cluster through automated node and disk drive addition.
- External storage resources can be configured on the cluster as secondary storage capacity.
This cluster type may not be a good fit for the following use cases:
- This cluster type may be cost-prohibitive for smaller business requirements. Light workloads, such as those in a remote office, may be a better fit for a two-node cluster or a satellite node.
- This cluster type is in a single site. It offers support for continuous operations from a failure of components within the cluster, but does not offer zero-downtime protection from a failure of a single data center or site. A stretched VxRail cluster is a better solution for high availability requirements.
Expansion of a cluster through node addition may lead to stranded assets.. Excess compute and storage resources cannot be shared outside of the cluster. For workloads that require a precise balance of compute and storage resources, a dynamic cluster may be a better fit.
VxRail supports VMware vSAN Original Storage Architecture (OSA) and VMware vSAN Express Storage Architecture (ESA).
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