We built a four-node Windows Server HCI cluster using AX-740xd nodes and following the procedures in the Microsoft HCI Solutions from Dell Technologies Deployment Guide. This deployment guide applies only to infrastructure that is built with validated and certified AX nodes from Dell Technologies that are running Microsoft Windows Server 2019 Datacenter. The AX nodes are designed for a hyperconverged infrastructure. The nodes are based on Dell EMC PowerEdge servers, but they are populated with engineered configurations—components, firmware, and drivers that are optimized for software-defined infrastructures. 

In our lab setup, we configured a fully converged scalable network topology to run storage, management, and virtual machine (VM) traffic over the same network adapter interfaces. We provisioned five VMs on each node in the cluster so that live migration would be necessary when nodes were placed into maintenance mode. No applications or workloads were running within the VMs during the testing.

The following figure illustrates the lab environment. Ancillary services that are required for cluster operations, such as Active Directory, DNS, and file server witness, are not depicted.

Figure 1.              Windows Server HCI cluster configuration

The following tables describe the cluster configuration and node resources. The cluster included a hybrid storage subsystem with SSDs at the caching tier and spinning hard drives at the capacity tier.

Note: Other configurations might affect update performance.

Table 1.              Cluster configuration

Table 2.              Node resources