Multiple VLANs are designed to isolate traffic across AZ1 and AZ2. All networking is performed at layer 2. No layer 3 routing is required on the network for AZ1 hosts to reach AZ2 hosts.

The following figure shows the network topology:

Figure 6.              Network topology

L2 network overview

The management domain network configuration is recorded in the vcf-vxrail-deployment-parameter.xlsx spreadsheet. This configuration is used for deploying the management domain on AZ1 using the VMware CloudBuilder utility.

• The port group names vCenter Server Network, vSphere vMotion, and vSAN are VxRail default names. These names are not editable in the VCF deployment parameter spreadsheet.
• The port group name VXLAN (VTEP) is the default name for NSX-v deployments in VCF 3.9.1. Where “n/a” is displayed for CIDR and gateway, these values are not relevant for the VCF deployment. For vMotion and vSAN, CIDR is set during the VxRail cluster deployment. The VXLAN (VTEP) CIDR is set by DHCP.

The following table shows the management domain network configuration details:

Table 5.              Management domain networks

L2 port setting

Ports for all hosts are configured in the management cluster, as shown in the following figure:

Figure 7.              Switch port interface setting

VLAN setting on AZ1 and AZ2

The default gateways for the management network and NSX-v uplink networks are configured on the network core. HSRP is used for redundancy, as shown in the following figure:

Figure 8.              VLAN interface setting

• The VxRail ToR switches are connected to the lab core switches. The lab network is entirely layer 2, so all default gateways are configured on the core switches. No default gateways are configured on the VxRail ToR switches because both management and workload domain clusters are stretched using layer 2.
• All VLANs are stretched from AZ1 to AZ2 and subnets. The default gateways are the same.

vSAN Witness

Two vSAN witness appliances are deployed to the stand-alone ESXi host, one each for the management and workload domain clusters. Layer 2 VLANs are stretched to the “third site” to facilitate the layer 2 stretch deployment methodology. vSAN witness appliances are deployed onto the management VLAN with an additional interface on the vSAN VLAN.