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SmartFabric Services with Multisite vSAN Stretched Cluster Deployment Guide
Notes, cautions, and warnings Introduction Hardware Used in this Guide Topology Deployment Planning
Minimum requirements
Unsupported features
Networks and IP addresses
BGP ASNs and router IDs
DNS server records
SFS default fabric settings
SFS switch configuration Configure DCI switches Configure Fabric Interconnects Configure Networks Add ESXi hosts to topology Configure a jump host Deploy the DNS server and the vCenter Server ESXi services and witness host configuration Deploy the vSAN Stretched Cluster Migrate the vCenter Server and the DNS server Add User VMs Deploy OMNI Validated Components Technical Resources CLI Command Output

Minimum requirements

Home > Networking Solutions > Converged and Hyperconverged Solutions > vSAN Networking Solutions > Guides > SmartFabric Services with Multisite vSAN Stretched Cluster Deployment Guide > Minimum requirements

Minimum requirements

  • Minimum requirements for an SFS with multisite vSAN stretched cluster deployment include the following:

    • ESXi hosts in the vSAN cluster must meet the hardware requirements and quantities specified in the VMware vSAN Planning and Deployment Guide.
    • All ESXi hosts used must be at version 7.0 Update 2 or later and running the same ESXi version. This includes the vSAN cluster hosts, the witness host, and the services host.
    • The witness host needs one flash drive available for the vSAN cache tier and one or more additional drives available for the vSAN capacity tier.
    • The ESXi services host is used to host the OMNI VM. It requires two 10 or 25 GbE NICs for connections to the leaf switches and one 1 GbE BASE-T NIC to connect to the OOB management network. This host is also used as the initial vCenter server and DNS/NTP server location in this deployment. Allow 80 GB of storage space for the OMNI VM, additional storage space for the DNS/NTP server VM, and storage space for the vCenter Server per the figure below.
    Figure 15. Resources required for different vCenter deployment sizes
    • Dell Technologies recommends ESXi host NICs connected to the SmartFabric support LLDP.
    • Four Dell PowerSwitch systems listed on the Networking Solutions Support Matrix. Two must be deployed as leaf switches at Site 1, and two deployed as leaf switches in Site 2. Each leaf switch in the pair must be the same model due to VLT requirements.
    • One or more external switches used as data center interconnects. The DCI switches used must support industry Layer 2 and Layer 3 standards including BGP, MTU settings of 9216 bytes, and support port speeds compatible with the switches they are connected to. These switches must also meet the stretched cluster latency requirements covered in the vSAN Planning and Deployment Guide
    • Dell PowerSwitch systems in the SmartFabric must be running SmartFabric OS10.5.3.2 or a later version specified on the Networking Solutions Support Matrix.
    • OMNI must be at version 3.0 or later.
    • One 1 GbE BASE-T, also referred to as 1000BASE-T, switch for OOB management connections. Dell Technologies recommends using one PowerSwitch N3248TE-ON or one PowerSwitch S3048-ON per rack.
    • One DNS server with host records added for this deployment. The DNS host records used in this deployment are shown in Table 4. For fault tolerance, the DNS server can be migrated to a VM in the stretched cluster, as shown in this guide, or a DNS server can be at each site.
    • One NTP server accessible on the production network. In this deployment example, the DNS server VM is also configured as the NTP server.