Use Cases

• Determination of use cases planned for VCF on VxRail integrated platform
• Determination of application availability requirements for VCF on VxRail integrated platform

Workload Planning

• Captured performance metrics from applications targeted for VCF on VxRail integrated platform
• Completed sizing exercise with Dell-EMC VCF on VxRail sizing tool
• Converted sizing report into top-level architecture for VCF on VxRail integrated platform

Data Center Requirements

Rack Space

• Calculated data center rack space and power requirements for VCF on VxRail integrated platform

Data Center Infrastructure

• Ethernet switch ports compatible with VxRail node ports
• Sufficient open ports for VxRail nodes
• Jumbo frames enabled on data center network
• Ethernet switches supporting VCF on VxRail integrated platform support Unicast and Multicast
• Ethernet switches supporting VCF on VxRail integrated platform support Border Gateway Protocol
• Ethernet switches supporting VCF on VxRail integrated platform support hardware-based VTEP

Data Center Services

• Domain Name Services (DNS) deployed in data center planned for VCF on VxRail integrated platform
• Network Time Protocol (NTP) services deployed in data center planned for VCF on VxRail integrated platform
• Active Directory (A-D) configured in data center planned for VCF on VxRail integrated platform (required for certain use cases)
• Dynamic Host Configuration protocol (DHCP) services configured in data center planned for VCF on VxRail integrated platform
• SFTP server for backups for NSX-T and SDDC Manager instances configured in data center planned for VCF on VxRail integrated platform
• Certificate generation utility (required for certain use cases)

Licensing

Licenses

• vCenter Server Standard
• ESXi Enterprise Plus (Management and VI Workload Domains)
• ESXi Enterprise Plus for Kubernetes (VI Workload Domains for Kubernetes)
• vSAN Advanced or higher
• NSX-T Data Center
• vRealize Suite (minimum 2019)
• SDDC Manager

Credentials

• Login credentials for Dell-Technologies support site
• Login credentials for VMware support site

VCF on VxRail Configuration Settings

Reserve VLANs

• One external management VLAN for VxRail Manager, vCenter Server, ESXi, SDDC Manager and other components deployed in management workload domain requiring external access
• One internal management VLAN with IPV6 multicast for VxRail node auto-discovery and device management. The default is 3939.
• One VLAN with IPv4 unicast for vSAN traffic
• One VLAN for vSphere vMotion
• One VLAN for NSX-T Host Overlay network
• One VLAN for the first NSX-T Edge Uplink (if AVN is a requirement)
• One VLAN for the second NSX-T Edge Uplink (if AVN is a requirement)
• One VLAN for the NSX-T Edge Overlay network (if AVN is a requirement)
• One VLAN for IDRAC management of the VxRail nodes
• If you are enabling witness traffic separation, reserve one VLAN for the VxRail witness traffic separation network.

Reserve IP Addresses

• Determine default gateway and subnet mask.
• Reserve four or more contiguous IP addresses for VxRail nodes for each VxRail cluster
• Reserve one IP address for vCenter Server
• Reserve one IP address for VxRail Manager.
• Decide whether you want to use the default TCP-IP stack for vMotion, or a separate IP addressing scheme for the dedicated vMotion TCP-IP stack.
• Reserve three or more contiguous IP addresses and a subnet mask for vSphere vMotion.
• Select the gateway for either the default TCP-IP stack, or the dedicated vMotion TCP-IP stack.
• Reserve three or more contiguous IP addresses and a subnet mask for vSAN
• Reserve IP address for SDDC Manager
• Reserve IP addresses for NSX-T Management VIP and appliance nodes
• Reserve IP addresses for the first NSX-T Edge Uplink (if AVN is a requirement)
• Reserve IP addresses for the second NSX-T Edge Uplink (if AVN is a requirement)
• Reserve IP addresses for the NSX-T Edge Overlay network (if AVN is a requirement)
• If witness is required for stretched cluster, reserve one IP address for the management network and one IP address for the vSAN network

Reserve Hostnames

• Determine parent and child DNS domains
• Decide on your VxRail host naming scheme. The naming scheme will be applied to all VxRail hosts.
• Reserve hostname for vCenter Server
• Reserve hostname for VxRail Manager
• Reserve hostname for SDDC Manger
• Reserve hostnames for NSX-T Management VIP and appliance nodes

Passwords

• Determine password structure following VMware password policy
• Select passwords for VxRail management components
• Select passwords for NSX-T Data Center
• Select passwords for SDDC Manager

Prepare Data Center Services

Prepare DNS

• Configure forward and reverse DNS records for VxRail Manager
• Configure forward and reverse DNS records for vCenter Server
• Configure forward and reverse DNS records for all VxRail nodes
• Configure forward and reverse DNS records for SDDC Manager
• Configure forward and reverse DNS records for NSX-T Management Cluster

Prepare DHCP

• Configure IP address scope for NSX-T host overlay network

Prepare Active Directory

• If a use case for Cloud Foundation on VxRail include vRealize products to support a future VI workload domain, Active Directory needs to be deployed in the data center to support this requirement.

Prepare Leaf Switches

• Configure at least 1600 MTU (9000 preferred)
• Configure the required VLANs on the top-of-rack switches
• Configure Layer 3 settings on VxRail external management network VLAN
• Configure Layer 3 settings on NSX-T host overlay network
• Configure Layer 3 settings on NSX-T edge overlay network (if AVN is a requirement)
• Configure the switch ports to be directly connected to the VxRail nodes as Layer 2 trunk ports
• Configure unicast on the vSAN network
• Configure multicast on the VxRail internal management network
• Configure MLD snooping and MLD querier on the VxRail internal management network
• Configure Spanning Tree on the switch ports supporting VxRail nodes as edge ports, or in ‘portfast’ mode
• Configure inter-switch links on switches below the Layer 2/3 boundary

Prepare Routing Services

• Configure Border Gateway Protocol at the Layer 2/3 network boundary
• Configure BGP peering with NSX-T Tier-0 Gateway (if AVN is a requirement)