Starting with VxRail version 7.0.130, you have flexibility in how you want to assign uplinks to the VxRail networks. You can deploy VxRail using the predefined uplink assignment templates, or you can select which uplinks on each node you want to assign to a given VxRail network.

If the VxRail cluster is deployed using one of the fixed network profiles, then the uplink assignments to each VxRail network are predefined based on whether two ports or four ports are selected to support the VxRail cluster. In a 2-port configuration, the VxRail networks share the two uplinks. For a 4-port configuration, the management networks are assigned two uplinks and the vMotion and vSAN networks are assigned the other two uplinks.

Figure 21.          Default network profiles for a 2-port and a 4-port VxRail network

The fixed network profiles only select NDC-based ports for VxRail networking purposes. If you plan to use NDC-based and PCIe-based ports to enable NIC redundancy and eliminate the NDC as a single point of failure, you can customize which ports on the VxRail nodes you want to use for each VxRail network. For example, you can select one port from the NDC and one port from a PCIe adapter card, and assign both of those to support the VxRail management networks, and then select another port on the NDC, and another port on the PCIe adapter card, and assign those to the non-management VxRail networks. 

Figure 22.          Custom uplink assignment across NDC-based and PCIe-based ports

If you expect the applications to be running on the VxRail cluster to be I-O intensive and require high bandwidth, you can choose to place the vMotion network on the same pair of ports as reserved for the VxRail management networks, and isolate the vSAN network on a pair of Ethernet ports.

Figure 23.          Custom uplink assignment with vSAN network isolated on two Ethernet ports

The decision that you make on customizing the uplink assignments can have an impact on the top-of-rack switch configuration. For instance, with the predefined network profile using two ports, you need to configure the VLAN for each VxRail network on each of the switch ports connected to a VxRail node. If instead you choose to isolate the vSAN network, then you only need to configure the VLAN for the vSAN network on those specific switch ports.