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The scalable network architecture should be the option of choice when we want to build an environment that, although can start as small as previous network options, two nodes, is designed to enable cluster expansions in a fully automated way using Dell APEX Cloud Platform Foundation Software, to the maximum of 16 nodes.
Figure 25. Scalable network topology architecture, detailing all network traffic types
This architecture enables two ways of configuring the networking fabric:
Scalable Network topology supports one or more Azure Stack HCI clusters and allows support of the maximum number of cluster nodes without adding cabling complexity when adding nodes to the initial cluster.
At initial release, node scaling is done one at a time, up to the maximum cluster size of 16. This will be a Dell Services and Support led effort.
The ToR switches require DCB configuration to support SMB Direct traffic over iWARP (computer networking protocol that implements remote direct memory access for efficient data transfer over IP networks) or RDMA over Converged Ethernet (RoCEv2).
Switch ports with a minimum of 25GbE links are recommended for cluster node connectivity.
This topology requires more sophisticated ToR switches, higher bandwidth switch ports and more complex switch configurations.
To choose the best switches for your configuration, we can check Microsoft’s physical network requirements URL found here. However, we highly recommend using the Dell PowerSwitch network switches since we have fully validated them and provided sample switch configs on our InfoHub site.
We can leverage Network ATC for host networking configuration with all the described topologies (Switchless, Non-Converged, and Fully-Converged), obtaining the following benefits in all cases: