We configured the physical servers (HCI and compute nodes) that host application VMs as follows:
- Enabled the following BIOS settings for the PowerEdge servers:
- Memory: Default options
- Processor: Default options
- System Profile: Performance (the non-default option)
- Configured the virtual disk on which to install the operating system (ESXi 7.0) as mentioned in the deployment workflow.
- Installed and configured ESXi and other PowerFlex software components as mentioned in the deployment workflow.
- Configured, monitored, and maintained the ESXi host, virtual networking, and the VM by using the VMware vSphere web client and VCenter Server Appliance (VCSA). We deployed VCSA as a VM on the PowerFlex controller nodes.
- Designed and configured PowerFlex networking components. This step includes multiple tasks such as creating and configuring VLANs, trunking, port channels, the management network, and the storage data path. These tasks enable communications such as ESX and VM management. We performed the design and configuration steps as shown in Deploy Dell EMC PowerFlex v3.5.x.