Unless you configure an external distributed virtual switch in your external vCenter for the VxRail cluster, the VxRail initial build process will configure a virtual distributed switch on the selected vCenter instance using best practices for VxRail.
For each VxRail network portgroup, the initial build process will apply 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 will configure a teaming and failover policy for the port groups on the virtual distributed switch with the following settings:
Setting |
Value |
Load Balancing |
Route based on originating virtual port |
Network failure detection |
Link status only |
Notify switches |
Yes |
Failback |
Yes |
VxRail will enable network I-O control on the distributed switch, and configure custom Network I-O Control (NIOC) settings for the following network traffic types. The settings are dependent 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 will configure an active/standby policy to the uplinks VxRail uses for the four pre-defined network traffic types that are required for operation: Management, vMotion, vSAN, and Virtual Machine.
4x10GbE Traffic Configuration
Traffic Type |
Uplink1 (10 GbE) VMNIC0 |
Uplink2 (10 GbE) VMNIC1 |
Uplink3 (10 GbE) VMNIC2 |
Uplink4 (10 GbE) VMNIC3 |
Management |
Standby |
Active |
Unused |
Unused |
vSphere vMotion |
Unused |
Unused |
Standby |
Active |
vSAN |
Unused |
Unused |
Active |
Standby |
Virtual Machine |
Active |
Standby |
Unused |
Unused |
2x10GbE or 2x25GbE Traffic Configuration
Traffic Type |
Uplink1 (10/25 GbE) VMNIC0 |
Uplink2 (10/25 GbE) VMNIC1 |
Uplink3 No VMNIC |
Uplink4 No VMNIC |
Management |
Active |
Standby |
Unused |
Unused |
vSphere vMotion |
Active |
Standby |
Unused |
Unused |
vSAN |
Standby |
Active |
Unused |
Unused |
Virtual Machine |
Active |
Standby |
Unused |
Unused |
4x1GbE Traffic Configuration
Traffic Type |
Uplink1 (1 GbE) VMNIC0 |
Uplink2 (1 GbE) VMNIC1 |
Uplink3 (1 GbE) VMNIC2 |
Uplink4 (1 GbE) VMNIC3 |
Management |
Active |
Standby |
Unused |
Unused |
vSphere vMotion |
Unused |
Unused |
Standby |
Active |
vSAN |
Unused |
Unused |
Active |
Standby |
Virtual Machine |
Standby |
Active |
Unused |
Unused |