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E2E Deployment and Operations Guide with Scalable Networking: Microsoft HCI Solutions from Dell Technologies
About using this guide Deployment Introduction Solution Overview Solution Deployment Scalable Architecture with Network ATC
Scalable Architecture with Network ATC
Fully converged network configuration
Non-converged network configuration
Storage on physical adapters
Create a cluster
Converged topology
Non-converged topology
Enabling Storage Spaces Direct
Updating the page file settings
Configuring a cluster witness
Best practices and recommendations
Update the hardware timeout for the Spaces port Antivirus exclusions
Enabling BitLocker
Recommended next steps
GPU Integration Day 1 operations Managing and monitoring clusters with Windows Admin Center Dell OpenManage Integration with Windows Admin Center Updates and maintenance Secure connect gateway References

Converged topology

Home > Integrated Products > Microsoft HCI Solutions from Dell Technologies > Guides 22H2 and earlier > E2E Deployment and Operations Guide with Scalable Networking: Microsoft HCI Solutions from Dell Technologies > Converged topology

Converged topology

  • In the fully converged network topology, management, compute, and storage (SMB) traffic pass using a single virtual switch. On the host operating system, a pair of RDMA capable NICs are used for storage, management, or compute.

    Converged switch

    In this example, SLOT 3 Port 1 and SLOT 3 Port 2 are being used to create a converged Intent.

    Verify that SLOT 3 Port 1 and SLOT 3 Port 2 are up across all the nodes.


    1. Modify the NIC variables to match the deployment requirements. 
      $mgmt_compute_stor_nics = @('SLOT 3 Port 1','SLOT 3 Port 2')
      $storage_vlans =@(203,204)
      $Mgmt_Vlan=202
    2. Create an override object for the DCB Quality of Service (QoS) configuration. 
      $QoSOverride = New-NetIntentQoSPolicyOverrides
      $QoSOverride.BandwidthPercentage_Cluster = 2
      $QoSOverride.PriorityValue8021Action_Cluster = 5
      QoS priority QoS flow control Purpose
      0-2,4,6,7 Disabled 0 - Best effort traffic
      3 Enabled RDMA
      5 Disabled Cluster network
    3. Create a jumbo packet override for converged topology. 
      $AdapterPropertyOverrides = New-NetIntentAdapterPropertyOverrides
      $AdapterPropertyOverrides.JumboPacket = 9014
    4. Choose the RDMA protocol to be used for deployment.
      Note: Modify the RDMA protocol based on the network cards. 

      #Intel E810 support iWARP and RoCEV2 while Mellanox support only RoCEV2. 
      iWARP = 1 RoCEv2 = 4

      $AdapterPropertyOverrides.NetworkDirectTechnology = 4
    5. Set storage overrides if you do not want Network ATC to assign SMB IPs automatically. 
      $StorageOverride = New-NetIntentStorageOverrides
      $StorageOverride.EnableAutomaticIPGeneration = $false
    6. Create a management, compute, and storage intent. 
      Add-NetIntent -Name Management_Compute_Storage -Management -Compute -Storage
      -AdapterName $mgmt_compute_stor_nics -ManagementVlan $Mgmt_Vlan -StorageVLANs
      $storage_vlans -QosPolicyOverrides $QoSOverride -AdapterPropertyOverrides
      $AdapterPropertyOverrides -StorageOverrides $Storageoverride
    7. Verify intent creation status. 
      Get-NetIntentStatus | select intentname,Host,ConfigurationStatus,ProvisioningStatus,retrycount,error,LastSuccess,LastUpdated,LastConfigApplied   |ft


    8. Add a GlobalOverrides. 
      $clusterOverride = New-NetIntentGlobalClusterOverrides
      $clusterOverride.EnableVirtualMachineMigrationPerformanceSelection  =  $false
      $clusterOverride.VirtualMachineMigrationPerformanceOption  =  "SMB"
      $clusterOverride.MaximumVirtualMachineMigrations = 2
      Set-NetIntent -GlobalClusterOverrides $clusterOverride
    9. Assign IP addresses for the storage network. 
      $stor_prefix='24'
      $stor1_ip_address = '192.168.11.11'
      $stor2_ip_address = '192.168.12.11'
      New-NetIPAddress -InterfaceAlias "vEthernet(RDMAnic1)" -IPAddress $stor1_ip_address
      -PrefixLength $stor_prefix -AddressFamily IPv4 -Verbose
      New-NetIPAddress -InterfaceAlias "vEthernet(RDMAnic2)" -IPAddress $stor2_ip_address
      -PrefixLength $stor_prefix -AddressFamily IPv4 -Verbose
      Note: Assigning IP address command must run on all the cluster nodes by incrementing the IP addresses.

    10. (Optional) If you want to configure proxy settings, see https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure-stack/hci/manage/manage-network-atc?tabs=22H2#proxy-configurations.
    11. Run the Test-Cluster cmdlet. 
      Test-Cluster -Node node01,Node02,Node03,Node04 -Include 'Storage Spaces Direct', 'Inventory', 'network','System Configuration'
      The Test-Cluster cmdlet generates an HTML report of all performed validations and includes a summary of the validations. Review this report, resolve all warnings and errors before creating a cluster.