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During initialization of the PowerStore X model appliance, the system creates a ESXi cluster that contains the PowerStore X model ESXi nodes. This ESXi cluster is created under a new or existing datacenter in the vCenter.
External ESXi hosts can also be added to the PowerStore X model ESXi cluster with an approved Request for Product Qualification (RPQ). The RPQ is needed due to considerations for networking and CPU model compatibility with vSphere Enhanced vMotion Compatibility (EVC).
Adding an external ESXi host into the cluster enables the ability to use external compute for VM load balancing and high availability. It is not necessary to have the external ESXi host in the same cluster to enable vMotion and Storage vMotion between PowerStore X model internal and external ESXi hosts.
When you upgrade to PowerStoreOS 2.1.1 from previous versions of PowerStore, the PowerStore X internal ESXi cluster’s vSphere Distributed Virtual Switch (DVS) is automatically upgraded to DVS 7. This upgrade of the DVS fails if there are any external ESXi hosts in the PowerStore X internal ESXi cluster not running vSphere 7 or later.
If the DVS upgrade fails, an alert notifies the user to upgrade the external ESXi hosts to vSphere version 7 or later and manually complete the DVS upgrade. The PowerStoreOS NDU can complete successfully even if the DVS upgrade fails, and a failed DVS upgrade is nondisruptive to the cluster. For more information about NDU, see the Dell PowerStore Software Upgrade Guide.