Dell Technologies SmartFabric OS10 is a versatile network operating system (NOS) that meets the network requirements for the ACP Azure cluster. This NOS is designed to support various architectures and environments, providing a robust and flexible solution for your networking needs.
This document provides an overview of the ACP Azure Network with switch configuration examples included as attachments.
The key network features of SmartFabric OS10 supporting the innovative ACP Azure cluster include:
- IPv6 Multicast Listener Discovery (MLD) Protocol—A protocol that allows IPv6 hosts to report their multicast group memberships to neighboring peers. Enablement of MLD query and snooping is required for Azure node discovery.
- VLANs—Virtual LANs that allow logical segmentation of network devices and traffic. VLANs can be used for specific network traffic types such as storage, compute VMs, discovery, or management.
- Single VLT Switch-pair—A Virtual Link Trunking (VLT) configuration creates a single logical switch from two physical switches, providing high availability, increased bandwidth, and load balancing.
- Node interface features—The interface and link types that connect the nodes in the ACP Azure cluster to the network SmartFabric OS10 switches. Features include MTU size, Link Speed, VLAN trunking, DCBx for storage and cluster traffic.
- Lossless network protocols—A network that supports Data Center Bridging (DCB), Quality of Service (QoS), Enhanced Transmission Select (ETS), and Priority Flow Control (PFC) to ensure no packet loss and low latency for critical applications.
- Link Layer Discovery Protocol (LLDP)—LLDP is a one-way protocol that enables network devices on a local area network (LAN) to discover and advertise its capabilities to adjacent LAN devices. LLDP devices advertise its capabilities in the form of LLDP data units (LLDPDUs).
The table below provides an overview of features required in the Dell NOS and Azure network environment. For more information, see the Azure Stack HCI network requirements webpage.
Protocols | Short name | Standards | Management | Storage | Compute |
Data Center Bridging | DCB | IEEE 802.1 | ✓ | ||
Priority Flow Control | PFC | IEEE 802.1Qbb | ✓ | ||
Enhanced Transmission Selection | ETS | IEEE802.1Qaz | ✓ | ||
Virtual Local Area Network | VLAN | IEEE 802.1Q | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
Link Layer Discovery Protocol | LLDP | IEEE802.1AB | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
Dynamic Host Relay Agent | DHCP Relay | RFC 2131 (DHCP) | ✓ | ||
Switch Maximum Transmission Unit | MTU | IEEE 802.3 | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
Node/Switch Port Speeds | Ethernet | 25 Gbps | 25 Gbps | 25 Gbps | |
RDMA over Converged Ethernet | RoCE | Uses ETS and PFC | |||
RDMA iWARP | iWARP | Uses ETS |