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Planning Guide—Dell EMC VxRail Network Planning
Planning the VxRail Cluster Implementation
Introduction Decide on VxRail single point of management Decide on VxRail network traffic segmentation Plan the VxRail logical network Plan network exclusions reserved for VxRail Manager Plan network settings for VxRail management components Identify IP addresses for VxRail management components Select hostnames for VxRail management components Identify external applications and settings for VxRail Prepare customer-supplied vCenter server Prepare customer-supplied virtual distributed switch Reserve IP addresses for VxRail vMotion network Reserve IP addresses for VxRail vSAN network Decide on VxRail logging solution Assign passwords for VxRail management Prepare for Dell EMC SmartFabric Services enablement

Prepare for Dell EMC SmartFabric Services enablement

  • Note: Skip this section if you do not plan to enable Dell EMC SmartFabric Services to pass control of switch configuration to VxRail.

    The planning and preparation tasks for the deployment and operations of a VxRail cluster on a network infrastructure enabled with SmartFabric Services differ from connecting a VxRail cluster to a standard data center network. The basic settings that are required for the initial buildout of the network infrastructure with SmartFabric Services are outlined in this section.

    Enabling the SmartFabric personality on a Dell Ethernet switch that is qualified for SmartFabric Services initiates a discovery process for other connected switches with the same SmartFabric personality for the purposes of forming a unified switch fabric. A switch fabric can start as small as two leaf switches in a single rack, then expand automatically by enabling the SmartFabric personality on connected spine switches, and connected leaf switches in expansion racks.

    Both the Dell Ethernet switches and VxRail nodes advertise themselves at the time of power-on on this same internal discovery network. The SmartFabric-enabled network also configures an ‘untagged’ virtual network on the switch fabric to enable client onboarding through a jump port for access to VxRail Manager to perform cluster implementation. During VxRail initial configuration through VxRail Manager, the required VxRail networks are automatically configured on the switch fabric.

    • Network connectivity to out-of-band management for each switch that is enabled with the SmartFabric personality is a requirement for VxRail. A reserved IP address is required for each switch.
    • A separate Ethernet switch outside of SmartFabric is required to support connectivity to switch management through the out-of-band network.
    • A reserved IP address for iDRAC connectivity to each VxRail node on this same separate management switch is recommended.

     

    Figure 36.          Logical networks for single-tier and two-tier SmartFabric deployments

    The Dell EMC Open Management Network Interface (OMNI) plug-in must be deployed on the vCenter instance to support automated switch management after the VxRail cluster is built. The Dell EMC OMNI vCenter plug-in is required for each Dell EMC switch fabric pair, and requires network properties to be set during the deployment process.

    Network Configuration Table Rows 71 and 72

    Reserve an IP address for out-of-band management of each switch in the SmartFabric-enabled network.

    Network Configuration Table Row 73

    Enter the IP address for Dell EMC OMNI vCenter plug-in.

    Network Configuration Table Row 74

    Enter the subnet mask for Dell EMC OMNI vCenter plug-in.

    Network Configuration Table Row 75

    Enter the gateway for Dell EMC OMNI vCenter plug-in.

    For complete details on the settings that are needed during the planning and preparation phase for a SmartFabric-enabled network, see the ‘Dell EMC VxRail™ with SmartFabric Network Services Planning and Preparation Guide’ on the Dell Technologies VxRail Technical Guides site.