Hyperconverged Infrastructure demands enterprise-class network architectures that are resilient and highly performant. The networking fabric must provide a better and more efficient way of transferring data across compute nodes in the data center. This is to cater to the demands for more bandwidth, more processing power, faster access to critical applications, and lossless data transfers.

Designing the lanes for Azure Stack HCI network traffic is an inherent requirement for the complete hybrid solution. Having the right network design to interconnect the HCI cluster nodes and provide access to workloads is imperative to maximize the benefits of the complete solution.

The network traffic can be categorized as follows during the design considerations:

• Compute traffic: Traffic to and from virtual machines
• Storage traffic: Traffic for Storage Spaces Direct (S2D) using Server Message Block (SMB)
• Management traffic: Traffic meant for cluster management, such as Active Directory, Remote desktop, Windows Admin Center and PowerShell

Dell Integrated System for Microsoft Azure Stack HCI includes a broad array of validated AX node configurations to meet the demands of any workload. Each component in these nodes is deliberately chosen and installed with the optimal firmware and driver revisions from the curated Dell HCI solution catalog. This is especially important when selecting the ideal network adapter that will address the I/O requirements of an application. The AX nodes are designed to work with Mellanox and QLogic network adapters. Our integrated system goes a step further by including Dell PowerSwitch network switches that have been validated to optimize the Azure Stack HCI experience. Azure Stack HCI can be deployed using one of two network topologies: Scalable or Switchless Storage. The following figure shows the network integration options available based on the Dell Integrated System for Microsoft Azure Stack HCI.