Unless you configure an external distributed virtual switch in your external vCenter for the VxRail cluster, the VxRail initial build process configures one or two virtual-distributed switches on the selected vCenter instance using best practices for VxRail.
For each VxRail network port group, VxRail initialization applies the following standard settings.
Setting | Value |
Port Binding | Static |
Port Allocation | Elastic |
Number of ports | 8 |
Network Resource Pool | (default) |
Override port policies | Only ”Block ports” allowed |
VLAN Type | VLAN |
Promiscuous mode | Reject |
MAC address changes | Reject |
Forged transmits | Reject |
Ingress traffic shaping | Disabled |
Egress traffic shaping | Disabled |
NetFlow | Disabled |
Block All Ports | No |
VxRail initialization configures a teaming and failover policy for the port groups on the virtual-distributed switches. Overriding the default load-balancing policy is supported on VxRail.
Setting | Value |
Load balancing (active-passive) | Route based on originating virtual port |
Load balancing (active-active) | Route based on physical NIC load |
Network failure detection | Link status only |
Notify switches | Yes |
Failback | Yes |
VxRail will enable network I-O control on the virtual-distributed switches, and configure custom Network I-O Control (NIOC) settings for the following network traffic types. The settings depend on whether the VxRail cluster was deployed with either 2 Ethernet ports per node reserved for the VxRail cluster, or if 4 Ethernet ports were reserved for the VxRail cluster:
Traffic Type | NIOC Shares | |
4 Ports | 2 Ports | |
Management Traffic | 40 | 20 |
vMotion Traffic | 50 | 50 |
vSAN Traffic | 100 | 100 |
Virtual Machine Traffic | 60 | 30 |
The reservation value is set to zero for all network traffic types, with no limits set on bandwidth.
VxRail supports customizing the assignment of uplinks to VxRail networks, and also supports setting either an active/active or active/standby failover policy for the VxRail network port groups. The following tables contain the default active/standby settings that are applied for the four predefined network traffic types that are required for initialization: Management, VxRail Management, vCenter Server Network, vMotion, and vSAN.
Traffic Type | Uplink1 VMNIC0 | Uplink2 VMNIC1 | Uplink3 VMNIC2 | Uplink4 VMNIC3 |
Management | Standby | Active | Unused | Unused |
vSphere vMotion | Unused | Unused | Standby | Active |
vSAN | Unused | Unused | Active | Standby |
vCenter Server Network | Active | Standby | Unused | Unused |
VxRail Management | Standby | Active | Unused | Unused |
2x10GbE or 2x25GbE Traffic Configuration
Traffic Type | Uplink1 VMNIC0 | Uplink2 VMNIC1 | Uplink3 No VMNIC | Uplink4 No VMNIC |
Management | Active | Standby | Unused | Unused |
vSphere vMotion | Active | Standby | Unused | Unused |
vSAN | Standby | Active | Unused | Unused |
vCenter Server Network | Active | Standby | Unused | Unused |
VxRail Management | Active | Standby | Unused | Unused |
4x25GbE Traffic Configuration
Traffic Type | Uplink1 VMNIC0 | Uplink2 VMNIC1 | Uplink3 VMNIC2 | Uplink4 VMNIC3 |
Management | Active | Unused | Standby | Unused |
vSphere vMotion | Unused | Standby | Unused | Active |
vSAN | Unused | Active | Unused | Standby |
vCenter Server Network | Standby | Unused | Active | Unused |
VxRail Management | Active | Unused | Standby | Unused |