VxBlock System 1000 components scale with Cisco UCS blade and rack servers, bandwidth and connectivity options, and storage capacity and performance.
Compute
The following table lists the minimum and maximum requirements for Cisco UCS third and fourth-generation components:
Cisco UCS domain | 1 | 7 with Cisco Nexus 9336-FX2 Switch | 7 |
Cisco UCS 5108 Blade Server Chassis | 2 | 10 per domain, up to 50 | 7 across domains, up to 77 |
Cisco UCS B-Series Servers or C-Series Rack Servers with M4 and M5 blade configurations | 3 | | |
Cisco UCS C-Series Rack Server for bare metal deployments | 1 | N/A | N/A |
Network
The following table lists the minimum and maximum hardware requirements:
Cisco Nexus 31108TC-V Switches | | |
Cisco Nexus 3232C or 9336C-FX Switches | N/A | 1 pair |
Cisco MDS 9148S or 9148T Multilayer Fabric Switches | 1 pair | N/A |
Cisco Nexus 9336C-FX2 Switch | 1 pair | 10 pairs |
Cisco MDS 9710 Multilayer Directors with 348 16 Gbps or 32 Gbps FC ports | N/A | 1 pair |
Storage
The following table lists the minimum and maximum hardware requirements for VMAX All-Flash storage arrays:
950F and 950FX | Engine | 1 | 8 |
Front-end ports | 16 | 192 |
Drive support | 17 | 1,920 |
250F and 250FX | Engine | 1 | 2 |
Front-end ports | 16 | 64 |
Drive support | 9 | 100 |
The following table lists the minimum and maximum storage requirements for PowerMax storage arrays:
8000 | Engine | 1 | 8 |
Front-end ports | 16 | 256 |
Drive support | 8 | 288 |
2000 | Engine | 1 | 2 |
Front-end ports | 16 | 64 |
Drive support | 5 | 96 |
The single-engine configuration of the PowerMax 8000 is limited to three IOMs per director.
The following table lists the minimum and maximum drives for Dell EMC Unity and Dell EMC Unity XT storage arrays:
Dell EMC Unity All-Flash | 350F | 10 | 150 |
450F | 10 | 250 |
550F | 10 | 500 |
650F | 10 | 1000 |
Dell EMC Unity XT All-Flash | 380F | 10 | 500 |
480F | 10 | 750 |
680F | 10 | 1000 |
880F | 10 | 1500 |
Dell EMC Unity Hybrid | 300 | 10 | 150 |
400 | 10 | 250 |
500 | 10 | 500 |
600 | 10 | 1000 |
Dell EMC Unity XT Hybrid | 380F | 10 | 500 |
480F | 10 | 750 |
680F | 10 | 1000 |
880F | 10 | 1500 |
The storage array count depends on the number of 16 Gbps FC ports available in a single Cisco MDS director per SAN fabric.
The following table lists hardware requirements for XtremIO storage arrays:
X2 | Drives per X-Brick | 18 | 72 |
Drives per cluster | 72 | 288 |
X2-S X-Brick | X-Brick | 7.2 TB raw | 28.8 TB raw Up to 4 X-Brick blocks per cluster |
FC ports (16 Gbps) | 4 | 16 |
Ethernet ports (10 Gbps) for management | 2 | 2 |
Active/active controllers | 2 | 8 |
X2-R X-Brick | X-Brick | 34.5 TB raw | 230 TB raw Up to 4 X-Brick blocks per cluster |
FC ports (16 Gbps) | 4 | 16 |
Ethernet ports (10 Gbps) for management | 2 | 2 |
Active/active controllers | 2 | 8 |
The following table lists minimum and maximum drive requirements for Isilon storage arrays:
F800, F810, and H600 | 0.06 m (2.5 in.) | 0.06 m (2.5 in.) |
H500, H5600, H400, A200, and A2000 | 0.11 m (4 in.) | 0.09 m (3.5 in.) |
Isilon uses 4 to 252 nodes with both 10 Gbps front-end and 40 Gbps front-end connectivity. The maximum Isilon configuration requires nine pairs of Cisco Nexus 9336C-FX2 Switches with the following minimums:
Note: The Cisco Nexus operating system 9.3 is required on the ToR switch to support more than 144 Isilon nodes.
AMPs
You can configure AMP Central with four to 16 servers to manage up to eight production VMware vCenter Servers. An integrated AMP Central supports up to four production VMware vCenter Servers, while the AMP Central stand-alone configuration supports up to eight production VMware vCenter Servers. AMP Central has a dedicated VMware vCenter Server for the local management workload and dedicated VMware vCenter Servers for the production workload. You must size AMP Central servers and Dell EMC Unity or Unity XT storage to support VMware vCenter Servers and data protection requirements. AMP Central supports core, optional, and ECO management workloads.
AMP-3S manages a single VxBlock System with two to six Cisco UCS M4 servers or four to 16 Cisco UCS M5 servers. Three servers are required to build a AMP-3S M4 cluster with VMware vSphere HA and DRS cluster. The AMP-3S M4 cluster is based on the core and optional workloads. AMP-3S M5 supports the additional ECO management workload.
AMP-VX manages up to eight VxBlock Systems. AMP-VX contains a single instance of VxBlock Central, VxBlock Central Orchestration Services, and VMware vRealize Orchestrator. The number of VxBlock Systems that VxBlock Central Orchestration consumes does not impact the number of VxBlock Central instances. Up to five servers can be deployed in a single workflow.
The combined components offer balanced CPU, I/O bandwidth, and storage capacity relative to the compute and storage arrays in the VxBlock 1000. All components have N+N or N+1 redundancy.
The following table lists the maximum number of servers with seven domains for FIs:
Cisco UCS 6332-16UP Fabric interconnects | 400 | 140 | 1120 |
Cisco UCS 6454 Fabric interconnects | 616 | 308 | 1120 |
