Home > Networking Solutions > Converged and Hyperconverged Solutions > VxRail Networking Solutions > Guides > VMware Cloud Foundation on VxRail Multirack Deployment Using BGP EVPN - Part 2 of 2 > External services
In this section, the following are discussed, along with the guidelines on placement:
In this document, the Active Directory (AD) servers provide DNS services. Other DNS records that are used in this document follow the VMware Validated Design examples. The examples can be found in the VMware Validated Design documentation section, Prerequisites for the NSX-T Deployment.
Table 3. Hostnames and IP addresses for the external services
Component group |
Hostname |
DNS zone |
IP address |
Description |
AD/DNS |
dc01rpl |
rainpole.local |
172.16.11.4 |
Windows 2016 host containing AD and DNS server for rainpole.local |
dc01sfo |
sfo01.rainpole.local |
172.16.11.5 |
AD and DNS server in a child domain |
Synchronized systems over NTP are essential for the validity of vCenter Single Sign-On and other certificates. Consistent system clocks are essential for the proper operation of the components in the SDDC because, in some instances, they rely on vCenter Single Sign-on. Using NTP also makes it easier to correlate log files from multiple sources during troubleshooting, auditing, or inspection of log files to detect attacks.
Table 4 shows the DNS Canonical Name (CNAME) record that maps the two time sources to one DNS name.
Table 4. NTP server FQDN and IP configuration
NTP server FQDN |
Mapped IP address |
ntp.sfo01.rainpole.local |
172.16.11.5 172.16.11.4 |
0.ntp.sfo01.rainpole.local |
172.16.11.5 |
1.ntp.sfo01.rainpole.local |
172.16.11.4 |
DHCP is required for each VMkernel port of the ESXi hosts with an IPv4 address. A Microsoft Windows Server 2016 virtual machine that is associated with external services on subnet 10.10.14.0/24 is used in this deployment. DHCP relay (ip helper-address) is used on the leaf switches to route DHCP requests on behalf of the NSX VTEPs to the DHCP server. Table 5 outlines the DHCP values that are used in this document.
The VMware Validated Design outlines the example usage of VLAN 1644 and the IP subnet of 172.16.44.0/24. In this paper, this has been modified to accommodate multiple subnets. VLAN ID 2500 is used, and the corresponding IP subnets are reserved in the underlay network for these subnets. The third octet increases by 1 to represent the rack ID. For example, rack 1 is 172.25.101.0/24.
Note: This scheme can be expanded to include multiple available zones, a topic that is not covered in this workload domain deployment.
Table 5 shows the IP address ranges used in this document. The DHCP servers in either availability zone are assumed to be configured correctly and are outside of the scope of this document.
Table 5. DHCP scope values
ID |
DHCP server IP address |
Start IP address |
End IP address |
Gateway |
Subnet mask |
Rack 1 |
10.10.14.5 |
172.25.101.1 |
172.25.101.199 |
172.25.101.253 |
/24 |
Rack 2 |
10.10.14.5 |
172.25.102.1 |
172.25.102.199 |
172.25.102.253 |
/24 |