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Dell Validated Design for Manufacturing Edge - Design Guide with Cognex
Introduction Architecture System Design
Overview
VxRail cluster
Deployment models
Sizing considerations
Service level management
High Availability and Disaster Recovery
Latencies and throughput
IT and OT personas and requirements
Networking
VxRail network planning considerations
Security
Cognex system design
Accelerated Time to Value High Availability and Disaster Recovery Application Consolidation Cybersecurity Gateways Streaming Data Platform ISV Interoperability Sizing and Scaling Guidance Bill of Materials Additional Information References

VxRail cluster

Home > Edge > Manufacturing Edge > Guides > Dell Validated Design for Manufacturing Edge - Design Guide with Cognex > VxRail cluster

VxRail cluster

  • This section provides a high-level overview of a Dell VxRail cluster. A VxRail system based on PowerEdge servers uses a modular, distributed system architecture that can be configured with as few as two nodes and can scale up to 64 nodes. The VxRail software layers use VMware technology for server virtualization and software-defined storage. VxRail nodes are configured as ESXi hosts, and VMs and services communicate using the virtual switches for logical networking. The following components make up a VxRail configuration:

    • Compute—Dell PowerEdge servers
    • Storage—VMware vSAN
    • Hypervisor—VMware vSphere
    • VxRail Manager—Plug-in for VMware vCenter
    Note: The E660F VxRail model used in this solution is capable of hosting two NVIDIA T4 16 GB, 70 W GPU cards.

    VxRail systems are optimized for VMware vSAN software. vSAN is integrated into the kernel of vSphere and provides the software-defined storage layer. A vSphere cluster is a collection of ESXi hosts configured to share resources. vSAN creates distributed shared storage by aggregating locally attached disks from the hosts that form the vSphere cluster. The following figure shows the vSAN high-level architecture:

    Figure 13. Developing a hyperconverged storage strategy
    Developing a hyperconverged storage strategy

    (Source: Developing a Hyper-Converged Storage Strategy)

    Note: For more information about vSAN, see the VMware vSAN product page.

    vSphere is VMware’s server virtualization product, and it consists of the following main components:

    • VMware ESXi—hypervisor
    • vCenter Server—server management software that provides a centralized platform for controlling vSphere environments
    • VMware vSphere Client—allows access to connect remotely to vCenter or directly to an ESXi host
    Note: There are other components of vSphere, but they are out of the scope of this document. For more detailed information, see VMware vSphere Documentation.

    VxRail Manager is a plug-in for VMware vCenter that provides the software stack for managing compute, storage, and networking in a VxRail environment. It is an extension of VMware vCenter, providing information, upgrade automation, adding or removing of nodes, and drive replacement. It includes the following functionalities:

    • VxRail Dashboard
      • System health
      • Support
      • Community activity
      • Knowledge base content
    • VxRail monitoring
      • Appliances (physical view)
      • Last configuration data sent
    • VxRail configuration
      • System updates
      • Adding or removing VxRail nodes
      • Node configuration
      • Health monitoring
      • Support
      • Networking
      • Troubleshooting

    For detailed VxRail information, see the Dell VxRail System Tech Book.