Satellite nodes: Because sometimes even a 2-node cluster is too much
Tue, 01 Mar 2022 15:03:31 -0000
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Wait a minute, where's me cluster? Oh no.
You may have noticed a different approach from Dell EMC VxRail in Daniel Chiu’s blog A Taste of VxRail Deployment Flexibility. In short, we are extending the value of VxRail into new adjacencies, into new places, and new use cases. With the release of VxRail dynamic nodes in September, these benefits became a new reality in the landscape of VxRail deployment flexibility:
- Using VxRail for compute clusters with vSAN HCI Mesh
- Using storage arrays with VxRail dynamic nodes in VMware Cloud Foundation on VxRail
- Extending the benefits of VxRail HCI System Software to traditional 3-tier architectures using Dell EMC for primary storage
The newest adjacency in 7.0.320 is the VxRail satellite node, as sometimes even a 2-node cluster may be too much.
A VxRail satellite node is ideal for those workloads where the SLA and compute demands do not justify even the smallest of 2-node clusters – in the past you might have even recycled a desktop to meet these requirements. Think retail and ROBO with their many distributed sites, or 5G with its “shared nothing” architecture. But in today’s IT environment, out of sight cannot mean out of mind. Workloads are everywhere and anywhere. The datacenter and the public cloud are just two of the many locations where workloads exist, and compute is needed. These infrastructure needs are well understood, and in the case of public cloud – out of scope. The challenge for IT is managing and maintaining the growing and varied infrastructure demands of workloads outside of the data center, like the edge, in its many different forms. The demands of the edge vary greatly. But even with infrastructure needs met with a single server, IT is still on the hook for managing and maintaining it.
While satellite nodes are a single node extension of VxRail, they are managed and life cycled by the VxRail Manager from a VxRail with vSAN cluster. Targeted at existing VxRail customers, these single nodes should not be thought of as lightweights. We’re leveraging the existing VxRail E660, E660F, and V670F with all their varied hardware options, and have added support for the PERC H755 adapter for local RAID protected storage. This provides options as lightweight as a E660 with an eight core Intel Xeon Gen 3 Scalable processor and spinning disks, all the way up to a V670F with dual 40 core Intel Xeon Gen 3 Scalable processors, accelerated by a pair of NVIDIA Ampere A100 80GB Data Center GPUs, and over 150 TB of flash storage. Because edge workloads come in all sizes from small to HUUUUGE!!!
Back when I started in IT, a story about a Missing Novell server discovered after four years sealed behind a wall was making the rounds. While it was later claimed to be false, it was a story that resonated with many season IT professionals and continues to do so today. Regardless as to where a workload is running, the onus is on IT not only to protect that workload, but also to protect the network, all the other workloads on the network, and anything that might connect to that workload. This is done in layers, with firewalls, DMZ, VPN, and so on. But it is also done by keeping hypervisors updated, and BIOS and firmware up to date.
For six years, VxRail HCI System Software has been helping virtualization administrators keep their VxRail with vSAN cluster up to date, regardless as to where they are in the world -- be it at a remote monitoring station, running a grocery store, or in the dark sealed up behind a wall. VxRail satellite nodes and VxRail dynamic nodes extend the VxRail operating model into new adjacencies. We are enabling you our customers to manage and life cycle these ever growing and diverse workloads with the click of a button.
Also, in the release of VxRail 7.0.320 are two notable stand-outs. The first is validation of Dell EMC PowerFlex scale-out SDS as an option for use with VxRail dynamic nodes. The second is increased resilience for vSAN 2-node clusters (also applies to stretched clusters) which are often used at the edge. Both John Nicholson and Teodora Hristov of VMware do a great job of explaining the nuts and bolts of this useful addition. But I want to reiterate that for 2-node deployments, this increased resilience will require that each node have three disk groups.
Don’t let the fact that a workload is too small, or too remote, or not suited to HCI, be the reason for your company to be at risk by running out-of-date firmware and BIOS. There is more flexibility than ever with VxRail, much more, and the value of VxRail’s automation and HCI System Software can now be extended to the granularity of a single node deployment.
Author: David Glynn, Sr. Principal Engineer, VxRail Tech Marketing
Twitter: @d_glynn