Dell Technologies node expansion focuses on increasing the capacity of an existing solution that is powered by a Dell Integrated System (hybrid or all-flash scale unit). Node expansion offers flexibility to existing customers to increase their capacity in homogenous increments of either a single node, multiple single nodes, a set of four nodes, or multiple sets of four nodes. Each new scale unit node must be homogenous with the nodes present in the existing stack, which means that it has the same CPU type, memory, disk number, and disk size. Customers can expand their capacity up to 16 scale unit nodes.

Node expansion for the solution is an automated process. Full details are available in the Dell Integrated System for Microsoft Azure Stack Hub Customer Node Expansion Guide.

The following figure shows the workflow of customer delivery and deployment of node expansion for the Dell Integrated System.

The following figure shows the high-level workflow for adding an SU node to an Azure Stack Hub SU.

Node expansion requires a working Dell Integrated System to which new scale unit node or nodes are added. After they order new nodes, customers must ensure that the following prerequisites are met before installation:

• If new nodes are added to a customer rack, the rack (including the PDU) must be able to accommodate the new nodes.
• The existing Dell Technologies nodes must be up-to-date with the most recent versions of the Microsoft Azure Stack Hub and Dell patches and updates.
• The existing Dell Technologies server must be in a healthy state.
• The existing Dell Technologies server credentials and input parameters are required for the node expansion.

The Dell Technologies Support team can help customers with any queries.

Customers must modify their existing Dell Integrated System switch-ports configuration (ToRs and BMC) when adding new scale unit nodes as part of the Dell Technologies node expansion.

The following table lists the deployment services available to customers for a node expansion.