Introduction
Fixed IP addresses must be assigned to the components and applications that need to connect to the IT management network. Each row in the ‘IT Management Network IP Address Reservation’ table in Appendix A: VxRail with SmartFabric network configuration tables.
Each leaf and spine switch that will be a member of the SmartFabric network must be assigned a fixed IP address for out-of-band management. When a SmartFabric network is formed, one switch is selected as the control switch. In the event of an outage of that control switch, another switch in the fabric is assigned control status. Connectivity to that control switch using a browser is required to enter the initial settings on the fabric before building the VxRail cluster.
The underlying server hardware for VxRail nodes are Dell EMC PowerEdge servers. All PowerEdge servers include a management interface called the ‘integrated Dell Remote Access Controller’ (iDRAC) for access to the server hardware and firmware. A fixed IP address must be assigned for iDRAC network port for connectivity to the IT management network.
It is best practice to deploy an FTP/SFTP server in the data center and enable connectivity to the IT management network. The server is used for uploading software images and licenses to the Dell EMC switches, and software updates to the OMNI plug-in.
The OMNI plug-in is a free download from the Dell EMC networking support site. It must be deployed on a vCenter instance in the data center with access to the SmartFabric management network either through the IPV4 out-of-band management network or IPV6 internal discovery network. If the plug-in is deployed on the embedded vCenter instance where the VxRail cluster is deployed, the IPV6 internal discovery network can be used for this purpose.
To enable access to the OMNI plug-in from a vClient, the plug-in must be able to register with the vCenter instance using its assigned hostname or IPV4 address. A single OMNI plug-in can manage multiple SmartFabric network instances, provided it can connect to the control switch in each SmartFabric instance through the out-of-band management network.
