
Containing The Future With Dell EMC VxRail
Thu, 04 Nov 2021 15:21:05 -0000
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Containing The Future With Dell EMC VxRail: Modern HCI Infrastructure for Running Container Orchestration Platforms
The world of containers is here, and it is driving business forward. Developers and infrastructure operators are designing, deploying, and integrating next-generation cloud native applications using a combination of containers and virtual machines (VMs), and taking advantage of the benefits that each delivers.
This evolution empowers customers to use their existing virtualization knowledge and extend it to containerized applications. Rather than develop siloed infrastructures that cater to individual workload types during this transition, many organizations are looking for a unified infrastructure platform that supports running both VMs and containers. This is where VxRail comes in.
The VxRail infrastructure is designed to run both VMs and containers. Regardless of the container orchestration platform, VxRail provides a scalable and life cycle-managed environment for consistently running containers across single or multicluster solutions. The simplicity of running container orchestration platforms on VxRail frees up organizations to focus on the business value and benefits that the solution delivers.
In recent years, a steady stream of performing validations and creating reference architectures for running containers on VxRail highlights the following:
- More customers are running container frameworks alongside—or even within—their virtualization frameworks, making for a smoother shift into the adoption of containers.
- Organizations are seeing VxRail as an ideal foundational infrastructure platform for quickly adopting containers and supporting their container orchestration runtime ecosystems of choice.
VxRail Hyperconverged Infrastructure (HCI) capabilities
VxRail Hyperconverged Infrastructure (HCI)-integrated systems help accelerate data center modernization, deploy hybrid clouds, and implement developer-ready application platforms based on Kubernetes (K8s). These tasks are possible as VxRail supports running the most demanding workloads and applications, whether VM-based or containerized while simplifying operations for IT infrastructure teams.
VxRail is the only fully integrated, preconfigured, and tested HCI system optimized for VMware. It delivers a seamless, automated operational experience with 100 percent native integration between VxRail Manager and vCenter. Intelligent life cycle management automates non-disruptive upgrades, updates, and node addition or retirement while keeping the VxRail infrastructure in a continuously validated state to ensure that workloads are always available.
These features make VxRail ideal for running container orchestration platforms, specifically those platforms that require vSphere for operation. As a result, VxRail provides customers with the flexibility to choose container orchestration platforms that are right for them. It enables them to run the container orchestration platform on a common HCI infrastructure platform that may be used with other traditional workloads.
Validating VxRail across container platform options
Dell Technologies helps customers accelerate their multicloud adoption and ensure that they have choices to select the best container orchestration platform. This flexibility has been confirmed through the development of a series of validation or reference architectures across several of the most widely adopted container orchestration platform distributions.
With VxRail, these containerized solutions deliver the same benefits on-premises or in the cloud. The following figure highlights some of these distribution options where validation work has been performed.

Let’s look at specific examples of running VxRail with some of today’s most commonly adopted orchestration platforms.
VMware Cloud Foundation with Tanzu on VxRail
VMware Tanzu enables businesses to build, run, and manage modern applications on any cloud and continuously deliver value to their customers. With VMware Tanzu, organizations can simplify multicloud operations and free up developers to move faster with easy access to the right resources. It also enables development and operations teams to work together to deliver transformative business results.

These capabilities start with the Tanzu Kubernetes Grid (TKG) runtime. With TKG, VMware uses the leading open-source technologies in the Kubernetes ecosystem to build a full Kubernetes runtime platform capable of running mission-critical customer applications.
TKG has the following open-source technologies, which VMware supports, built into its runtime platform for easy enterprise adoption:
- Cluster API for cluster life cycle management
- Harbor for container registry
- Contour for ingress
- Fluentbit for logging
- Grafana and Prometheus for monitoring
- Antrea and Calico for container networking
- Velero for backup and recovery
- Sonobuoy for conformance testing
With VMware Tanzu, businesses also have the flexibility for implementing the TKG runtime. They can do any of the following:
- Run TKG on any infrastructure, including vSphere, VMware Cloud on AWS, or native public clouds like AWS
- Run TKG in vSphere by using the TKG Service, which is bundled as a part of vSphere 7 with Tanzu and VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) with Tanzu
- Run TKG as a service with Tanzu Mission Control (TMC)
Having touched on these TKG runtime implementation options, let’s look at the method used in our validated reference architecture: validating VMware Cloud Foundation with Tanzu on VxRail using the TKG Service. Why did we choose this method out of the three available methods? Because it delivers the type of easy deployment and operation that customers are looking for! VMware Cloud Foundation on VxRail delivers a simple and direct path to the hybrid cloud and Kubernetes at cloud-scale with one complete, automated platform.
The Reference Architecture document provides general design and deployment guidelines for running modern applications such as Confluent Kafka and Elasticsearch on VMware Cloud Foundation with Tanzu on VxRail. Find the Running Modern Applications with VMware Cloud Foundation with Tanzu on Dell EMC VxRail document here.
Amazon EKS Anywhere on VxRail
Amazon EKS Anywhere is a deployment option that enables customers to create and operate Kubernetes clusters on-premises using VMware vSphere, while allowing for connectivity and portability to AWS public cloud environments. It also provides operational consistency and tooling with AWS EKS.
Dell Technologies and Amazon recently validated Dell EMC VxRail running Amazon EKS Anywhere, in addition to the use of Dell EMC VxRail dynamic node clusters and Dell EMC PowerStore to provide the back-end storage for Amazon EKS Anywhere. (Dynamic nodes are not limited to this solution as they are features of VxRail and not specific to Amazon EKS Anywhere.)

VxRail is a strong platform choice for EKS Anywhere, which requires vSphere for production environments. EKS Anywhere running on VxRail delivers a seamless, automated operational experience for VxRail infrastructure across cloud-native and traditional workloads.
VxRail intelligent life cycle management automates non-disruptive upgrades and updates to keep its infrastructure in a continuously validated state, ensuring running workloads and optimized clusters. This automation greatly reduces risk so that customers can stay current with the multiple releases of Kubernetes and the EKS platform, which are updated using EKS Anywhere. VxRail and EKS Anywhere make it easy to standardize both IT and developer operations on-premises and in the Amazon public cloud.
EKS Anywhere is built on open-source software, using VMware vSphere to create and operate Kubernetes on-premises with automated deployment, scaling, and management of containerized applications. EKS Anywhere provides an installable software package for creating and operating on-premises Kubernetes clusters based on Amazon EKS Distro—the same Kubernetes distribution used by Amazon EKS for clusters on AWS.
By simplifying the creation and operation of on-premises Kubernetes clusters and automating cluster management, EKS Anywhere can reduce support costs and avoid the maintenance of redundant open-source and third-party tools. Using the EKS console also means viewing all Kubernetes clusters (including EKS Anywhere clusters) running through the EKS Connector (public preview).
Amazon EKS Anywhere is available by free download from AWS here. For more details, see the Running Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Service Anywhere on Dell EMC VxRail Solutions Brief here.
Red Hat OpenShift with VMware Cloud Foundation on VxRail
Red Hat OpenShift ships with Red Hat Enterprise Linux CoreOS for the Kubernetes control plane nodes. It supports both Red Hat Enterprise Linux CoreOS and Red Hat Enterprise Linux for worker nodes.
OpenShift supports the Open Container Initiative (OCI), an open governance structure for container formats and runtimes, including hundreds of fixes for defects, security, and performance issues for

upstream Kubernetes in each release. It is tested with dozens of technologies as a tightly integrated platform supported over a nine-year life cycle. OpenShift includes software-defined networking, validates additional common networking solutions, and validates numerous storage and third-party plug-ins for its releases.
VMware Cloud Foundation on VxRail delivers flexible, consistent, secure infrastructure and operations across private and public clouds. It is well suited to meet the demands of modern applications running on Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform in a virtualized environment and makes it easy to manage the life cycle of the hybrid cloud environment. A unified management plane is also available for all applications, including OpenShift.
VMware Cloud Foundation uses leading virtualization technologies, including vSphere, NSX-T, and vSAN. VxRail Manager and VMware Cloud Foundation Manager provide the life cycle management, and vSAN provides reliable, high-performance, and flexible storage to OpenShift. NSX-T provides the secure, high-performance virtual networking infrastructure to OpenShift, and vSphere DRS and vSphere HA deliver efficient resource usage and high availability. All of these technologies combined to create a consolidated solution of running OpenShift Container Platform with VMware Cloud Foundation on VxRail.
The Running Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform on VMware Cloud Foundation Reference Architecture document, which demonstrates the architecture of running OpenShift Container Platform with VMware Cloud Foundation on VxRail, can be found here. This document shows the configuration details, hardware resources, and software resources used in the solution validation, along with various configuration options and best practices.
Conclusion
Dell Technologies and VMware continue to see containers as a high-value technology foundation for the future of enterprise solutions. While this blog post is heavily focused on containerization, keep in mind the significant and lasting role that virtualization continues to have in modern data centers. The importance of virtualization is especially true as not every workload is suited for containerization, meaning that containers complement virtualization while setting the foundation for building on the flexibility of containerized systems and platforms on VxRail.
Additional resources
- VxRail Info Hub, which includes multiple white papers about applications running with Tanzu on VCF with VxRail
- Running Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Service Anywhere on Dell EMC VxRail – Solutions Brief
- Running Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform on VMware Cloud Foundation – Reference Architecture document
Author information
Vic Dery, Senior Principal Technical Marketing Engineer
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Microsoft SQL Server Big Data Clusters on Tanzu Kubernetes Grid on Dell EMC VxRail
Thu, 19 Aug 2021 15:25:13 -0000
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A recently created reference architecture, running Microsoft SQL Server Big Data Clusters (BDC) on Tanzu Kubernetes Grid (TKG) on Dell EMC VxRail, demonstrates a fast and simple way to get started with big data workloads running on Kubernetes. It also shows how the containerized workloads ran using VxRail.
SQL BDC on TKG on VxRail enables simplified servicing for cloud native workloads, and is designed to scale with business needs. Administrators can implement the policies for namespaces and manage access and quota allocation for application-focused management. All of this helps build a developer ready infrastructure with enterprise-grade Kubernetes with advanced governance, reliability, and security.
This reference architecture also validated SQL BDC with Spark SQL TPC-DS benchmark optimized parameters. The test results showed that Tanzu Kubernetes Grid on VxRail provides linear scalability (for complex TPC-DS-like decision support workloads that use different query types) with predictable query response time and high throughput.
In the business value section for using SQL BDC and TKG on VxRail, based on the five measurements below. It's covered in more detail within the reference architecture.
- Simplified installation of Kubernetes
- Automated multi-cluster operations
- Integrated platform services
- Open source alignment
- Production Ready
Cross-functional teams from Dell EMC VxRail, VMware, and Microsoft have reviewed the reference architecture for content and supportability. This can provide comfort for those wanting to run on Tanzu. Some notes from Microsoft Release notes from Cumulative Update 12 (CU12) of BDC):
SQL Server Big Data Clusters is supported as a workload. Microsoft provides support for the software components on the containers installed and configured by SQL Server Big Data Clusters only. Kubernetes itself, and other containers that may influence SQL Server Big Data Clusters behavior, are not supported by the (Microsoft) support team. For Kubernetes support please contact your certified Kubernetes distribution provider.
Note: This reference architecture provides general design and deployment guidelines of running Microsoft SQL Server Big Data Clusters on VMware Tanzu™ Kubernetes Grid™ on Dell EMC VxRail. The reference architecture also applies to any compatible hardware platforms running VMware Tanzu Kubernetes Grid on vSAN™.
To wrap up, VxRail provides SQL BDC on Tanzu as a scalable and secure platform to deliver key business outcomes. This reference architecture highlights one of the first known support solutions built on Tanzu Kubernetes Grid to manage Kubernetes. The paper covers the spectrum on the build, testing, and expected performance on VxRail.
Resources:
- Running Microsoft SQL Server Big Data Clusters on VMware Tanzu Kubernetes Grid
- SQL Server Big Data Clusters platform release notes - SQL Server Big Data Clusters | Microsoft Docs It's reformulated release notes, now simpler and focused on tested configurations and documenting known issues.
- SQL Server Big Data Clusters CU12 release notes - SQL Server Big Data Clusters | Microsoft Docs For every release starting with CU12, we will provide a dedicated article containing many details about what's new, fixes, and most importantly, an extensive list of what's under the hood.
- SQL Server Big Data Clusters cumulative updates history - SQL Server Big Data Clusters | Microsoft Docs In this article, we will keep track of all previous update details.
Author: Vic Dery – Linkedin

Infrastructure as Code with VxRail Made Easier with Ansible Modules for Dell VxRail
Tue, 15 Nov 2022 16:27:36 -0000
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Many customers are looking at Infrastructure as Code (IaC) as a better way to automate their IT environment, which is especially relevant for those adopting DevOps. However, not many customers are aware of the capability of accelerating IaC implementation with VxRail, which we have offered for some time already—Ansible Modules for Dell VxRail.
What is it? It's the Ansible collection of modules, developed and maintained by Dell, that uses the VxRail API to automate VxRail operations from Ansible.
By the way, if you're new to the VxRail API, first watch the introductory whiteboard video available on YouTube.
Ansible Modules for Dell VxRail are well-suited for IaC use cases. They are written in such a way that all requests are idempotent and hence fault-tolerant. This means that the result of a successfully performed request is independent of the number of times it is run.
Besides that, instead of just providing a wrapper for individual API functions, we automated holistic workflows (for instance, cluster deployment, cluster expansion, LCM upgrade, and so on), so customers don't have to figure out how to monitor the operation of the asynchronous VxRail API functions. These modules provide rich functionality and are maintained by Dell; this means we're introducing new functionality over time. They are already mature—we recently released version 1.4.
Finally, we are also reducing the risk for customers willing to adopt the Ansible modules in their environment, thanks to the community support model, which allows you to interact with the global community of experts. From the implementation point of view, the architecture and end-user experience are similar to the modules we provide for Dell storage systems.
Getting Started
Ansible Modules for Dell VxRail are available publicly from the standard code repositories: Ansible Galaxy and GitHub. You don't need a Dell Support account to download and start using them.
Requirements
The requirements for the specific version are documented in the "Prerequisites" section of the description/README file.
In general, you need a Linux-based server with the supported Ansible and Python versions. Before installing the modules, you have to install a corresponding, lightweight Python SDK library named "VxRail Ansible Utility," which is responsible for the low-level communication with the VxRail API. You must also meet the minimum version requirements for the VxRail HCI System Software on the VxRail cluster.
This is a summary of requirements for the latest available version (1.4.0) at the time of writing this blog:
Ansible Modules for Dell VxRail | VxRail HCI System Software version | Python version | Python library (VxRail Ansible Utility) version | Ansible version |
1.4.0 | 7.0.400 | 3.7.x | 1.4.0 | 2.9 and 2.10 |
Installation
You can install the SDK library by using git and pip commands. For example:
git clone https://github.com/dell/ansible-vxrail-utility.git cd ansible-vxrail-utility/ pip install .
Then you can install the collection of modules with this command:
ansible-galaxy collection install dellemc.vxrail:1.4.0
Testing
After the successful installation, we're ready to test the modules and communication between the Ansible automation server and VxRail API.
I recommend performing that check with a simple module (and corresponding API function) such as dellemc_vxrail_getsysteminfo, using GET /system to retrieve VxRail System Information.
Let's have a look at this example (you can find the source code on GitHub):
Note that this playbook is run on a local Ansible server (localhost), which communicates with the VxRail API running on the VxRail Manager appliance using the SDK library. In the vars section, , we need to provide, at a minimum, the authentication to VxRail Manager for calling the corresponding API function. We could move these variable definitions to a separate file and include the file in the playbook with vars_files. We could also store sensitive information, such as passwords, in an encrypted file using the Ansible vault feature. However, for the simplicity of this example, we are not using this option.
After running this playbook, we should see output similar to the following example (in this case, this is the output from the older version of the module):
Cluster expansion example
Now let's have a look at a bit more sophisticated, yet still easy-to-understand, example. A typical operation that many VxRail customers face at some point is cluster expansion. Let's see how to perform this operation with Ansible (the source code is available on GitHub):
In this case, I've exported the definitions of the sensitive variables, such as vcpasswd, mgt_passwd, and root_passwd, into a separate, encrypted Ansible vault file, sensitive-vars.yml, to follow the best practice of not storing them in the clear text directly in playbooks.
As you can expect, besides the authentication, we need now to provide more parameters—configuration of the newly added host—defined in the vars section. We select the new host from the pool of available hosts, using the PSNT identifier (host_psnt variable).
This is an example of an operation performed by an asynchronous API function. Cluster expansion is not something that is completed immediately but takes minutes. Therefore, the progress of the expansion is monitored in a loop until it finishes or the number of retries is passed. If you communicated with the VxRail API directly by using the URI module from your playbook, you would have to take care of such monitoring logic on your own; here, you can use the example we provide.
You can watch the operation of the cluster expansion Ansible playbook with my commentary in this demo:
Getting help
The primary source of information about the Ansible Modules for Dell VxRail is the documentation available on GitHub. There you'll find all the necessary details on all currently available modules, a quick description, supported endpoints (VxRail API functions used), required and optional parameters, return values, and location of the log file (modules have built-in logging feature to simplify troubleshooting— logs are written in the /tmp directory on the Ansible automation server). The GitHub documentation also contains multiple samples showing how to use the modules, which you can easily clone and adjust as needed to the specifics of your VxRail environment.
There's also built-in documentation for the modules, accessible with the ansible-doc command.
Finally, the Dell Automation Community is a public discussion forum where you can post your questions and ask for help as needed.
Conclusion
I hope you now understand the Ansible Modules for Dell VxRail and how to get started. Let me quickly recap the value proposition for our customers. The modules are well-suited for IaC use cases, thanks to automating holistic workflows and idempotency. They are maintained by Dell and supported by the Dell Automation Community, which reduces risk. These modules are much easier to use than the alternative of accessing the VxRail API on your own. We provide many examples that can be adjusted to the specifics of the customer’s environment.
Resources
To learn more, see these resources:
- On-demand recording of the recent Tech Exchange Live session: "Infrastructure as Code with VxRail," where I dive a bit deeper into the Ansible Modules for VxRail, and my colleague Steffen from VMware discusses the basics of Terraform integration with VxRail.
- Ansible Modules for Dell VxRail on GitHub, which is the central code repository for the modules. It also contains complete product documentation and examples.
- Try the new VxRail API Hands-on-Lab available in the Dell Technologies Demo Center, which we introduced at Dell Technologies World earlier this year. Module 3: Cluster Expansion or Scaling Out allows you to get hands-on experience with the modules without the need to have access to a VxRail system. Your Dell account team can help you access the lab.
The following links provide additional information:
- YouTube video: Ansible Modules for Dell VxRail
- Dell Automation Community
- YouTube video: Level up your HCI automation with VxRail API
- Blog: VxRail API—Updated List of Useful Public Resources
Author: Karol Boguniewicz, Senior Principal Engineering Technologist, VxRail Technical Marketing
Twitter: @cl0udguide