There are four types of networks on a PowerScale cluster as described in Figure 2
Figure 2. PowerScale Rear view
- Internal, also called Backend, for PowerScale nodes to communicate with each other using a high-speed, low latency Ethernet or Infiniband network. The internal network is separated from the external network.
- External, also called Frontend, allows users to connect to the PowerScale cluster through the external network with Ethernet. The PowerScale cluster supports standard network communication protocols, including NFS, SMB, HDFS, HTTP, and FTP. The recommended configuration is one subnet with two pools. Each pool will contain half of the IP range for 100gige-1 ports and the other pool is for 100gige-2 ports. In total, thirty-two 100 GbE ports are used in the PowerScale cluster.
- Management, for administration tasks, will use management port #1 of each PowerScale node.
- Integrated Dell Remote Access Controller (iDRAC) is designed for secure local and remote server management and helps IT administrators deploy, update and monitor PowerScale servers anywhere, anytime.
Note: Both Management and iDrac networks are connected to the Out-Of-Band (OOB) Management network through the SN2201 switches model. For more details please refer to NVIDIA’s web site.