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E2E Deployment and Operations Guide with Switchless Networking: Microsoft HCI Solutions from Dell Technologies
Deployment Introduction Solution Overview Solution Deployment Switchless Architecture with Network ATC
Switchless Architecture with Network ATC
Requirements for switchless storage network topologies
Setup IPs manually on SMB NICs
Creating a cluster
Creating network intents for switchless
Enabling Storage Spaces Direct
Configuring the host management network as a lower-priority network for live migration
Updating the page file settings
Configuring a cluster witness
Best practices and recommendations
Disable SMB Signing Update the hardware timeout for the Spaces port Enable jumbo frames
Enabling bit locker
Recommended next steps
Deployment services
References GPU Integration Day 1 operations Managing and monitoring clusters with Windows Admin Center Dell OpenManage Integration with Windows Admin Center Updates and maintenance References

Creating network intents for switchless

Creating network intents for switchless

  • The following steps will help configure network intents for management, compute, and storage.
    Note: Network ATC does not currently support auto-assigning of IPs for a switchless topology. Hence, for this scenario we will have to override the feature and assign SMB IPs manually.

    1. Modify NIC variables to match the deployment requirements. 
      $mgmt_compute_nics = @('Integrated NIC 1 Port 1-1','Integrated NIC 1 Port 2-1')
      $storage_nics = @('SLOT 3 Port 1','SLOT 3 Port 2','SLOT 4 Port 1','SLOT 4 Port 2','SLOT 6 Port 1','SLOT 6 Port 2')
      $storage_vlan =@(700)
      $Mgmt_Vlan=202
    2. Create an override object for the DCB Quality of Service (QoS) configuration. 
      $QoSOverride = New-NetIntentQoSPolicyOverrides
      $QoSOverride.BandwidthPercentage_Cluster = 2
      $QoSOverride.PriorityValue8021Action_Cluster = 5
      QoS priority QoS flow control Purpose
      0-2,4,6,7 Disabled 0 - Best effort traffic
      3 Enabled RDMA
      5 Disabled Cluster network
    3. Create a jumbo packet override for SMB and Management NIC. 
      $MgmtAdapterPropertyOverrides = New-NetIntentAdapterPropertyOverrides
      $MgmtAdapterPropertyOverrides.NetworkDirect = 0
      $MgmtAdapterPropertyOverrides.JumboPacket = 1514
      $StorAdapterPropertyOverrides = New-NetIntentAdapterPropertyOverrides
      $StorAdapterPropertyOverrides.JumboPacket = 9014
    4. Choose the RDMA protocol to be used for deployment. 
      #Intel E810 support iWARP and RoCEV2 while Mellanox support only RoCEV2. 
      -iWARP = 1 RoCEv2 = 4
      $StorAdapterPropertyOverrides.NetworkDirectTechnology = 1
      Note: Modify the RDMA protocol based on the network cards.

    5. Set storage overrides if you do not want Network ATC to assign SMB IPs automatically. 
      $StorageOverride = New-NetIntentStorageOverrides
      $StorageOverride.EnableAutomaticIPGeneration = $false
    6. Create a management and compute intent. 
      Add-NetIntent -Name Management_Compute -Management -Compute -AdapterName $mgmt_compute_nics -ManagementVlan $Mgmt_Vlan -AdapterPropertyOverrides
      $MgmtAdapterPropertyOverrides
    7. Verify intent creation status. 
      Get-NetIntentStatus | select intentname,Host,ConfigurationStatus,ProvisioningStatus,retrycount,error,LastSuccess,LastUpdated,LastConfigApplied |ft


    8. Create a storage intent. 
      Add-NetIntent -Name Storage -Storage -AdapterName $storage_nics -StorageVLANs $storage_vlan -QosPolicyOverrides $QoSOverride -AdapterPropertyOverrides $StorAdapterPropertyOverrides -StorageOverrides $Storageoverride
    9. Verify intent creation status. 
      Get-NetIntentStatus -Name Storage | select intentname,Host,ConfigurationStatus,ProvisioningStatus,retrycount,error,LastSuccess,LastUpdated,LastConfigApplied |ft


    10. Add a global overrides. 
      $clusterOverride = New-NetIntentGlobalClusterOverrides
      $clusterOverride.EnableVirtualMachineMigrationPerformanceSelection  =  $false
      $clusterOverride.VirtualMachineMigrationPerformanceOption  =  "SMB"
      $clusterOverride.MaximumVirtualMachineMigrations = 2
      Set-NetIntent -GlobalClusterOverrides $clusterOverride
    11. Run the Test-Cluster cmdlet. 
      Test-Cluster -Node node01,Node02,Node03,Node04 -Include 'Storage Spaces Direct', 'Inventory', 'network', 'System Configuration'
      The Test-Cluster cmdlet generates an HTML report of all performed validations and includes a summary of the validations. Review this report, resolve all warnings and errors before creating a cluster.