The Ethernet network not only provides connectivity to the VMs and services, it also provides the backplane for the nodes in a hyperconverged infrastructure to aggregate and share system resources. Therefore, network bandwidth is critical to system scale and performance. Today, most data centers are built with 10Gb Ethernet connectivity, with 25GbE quickly becoming the new norm, but 1GbE still exists in some environments including smaller edge locations. To support these environments, Dell also offers 1GbE VxRail models for smaller, less-demanding workloads. The following are considerations for using the 1GbE connectivity option:

1GbE is only supported for hybrid storage configurations, as it does not provide the bandwidth necessary for the ultra-high performance required by an all-flash system.

The maximum supported node count is eight nodes per cluster, because vSAN traffic increases with the number of nodes.

Only nodes with single-socket CPUs are supported.

A minimum of four ports are required per node. This increases the total number of switch ports required.