VxRail clusters are dependent on interconnectivity with the physical network for overall management and virtual machine traffic. VxRail depends on a properly configured SmartFabric-based network to gain access to required applications and services, and to enable end-user access.

The following image displays the networks that are created when implementing a VxRail cluster on a SmartFabric-based network. From the VxRail cluster, only the external management network and guest networks created for guest virtual machines require access to the upstream production network, which in this example is at the leaf layer.

Figure 18.          Leaf and Spine uplinks for VxRail networks with out-of-band management network

The VxRail external management network must be able to connect to the required data center services at the time of initial build and for continued operations, including DNS and NTP. The traffic for the other VxRail required networks is configured by default to stay within the confines of the VxRail cluster.

A VxRail cluster can be deployed to either an embedded vCenter instance that is included with the product, or to a customer-supplied external vCenter. VxRail Manager is a vCenter plug-in, so it requires access to the vCenter instance.