Learn About the Latest VMware Cloud Foundation 5.1.1 on Dell VxRail 8.0.210 Release
Tue, 26 Mar 2024 18:47:52 -0000
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The latest VCF on VxRail release delivers GenAI-ready infrastructure, runs more demanding workloads, and is an excellent choice for supporting hardware tech refreshes and achieving higher consolidation ratios.
VMware Cloud Foundation 5.1.1 on VxRail 8.0.210 is a minor release from the perspective of versioning and new functionality but is significant in terms of support for the latest VxRail hardware platforms. This new release is based on the latest software bill of materials (BOM) featuring vSphere 8.0 U2b, vSAN 8.0 U2b, and NSX 4.1.2.3. Read on for more details…
VxRail hardware platform updates
16th generation VxRail VE-660 and VP-760 hardware platform support
Cloud Foundation on VxRail customers can now benefit from the latest, more scalable, and robust 16th generation hardware platforms. This includes a full spectrum of hybrid, all-flash, and all NVMe options that have been qualified to run VxRail 8.0.210 software. This is fantastic news as these new hardware options bring many technical innovations, which my colleagues discussed in detail in previous blogs.
These new hardware platforms are based on Intel® 4th Generation Xeon® Scalable processors, which increase VxRail core density per socket to 56 (112 max per node). They also come with built-in Intel® AMX accelerators (Advanced Matrix Extensions) that support AI and HPC workloads without the need for additional drivers or hardware.
VxRail on the 16th generation hardware supports deployments with either vSAN Original Storage Architecture (OSA) or vSAN Express Storage Architecture (ESA). The VP-760 and VE-660 can take advantage of vSAN ESA’s single-tier storage architecture, which enables RAID-5 resiliency and capacity with RAID-1 performance.
This table summarizes the configurations of the newly added platforms:
To learn more about the VE-660 and VP-760 platforms, please check Mike Athanasiou’s VxRail’s Latest Hardware Evolution blog. To learn more about Intel® AMX capability set, make sure to check out the VxRail and Intel® AMX, Bringing AI Everywhere blog, authored by Una O’Herlihy.
VCF on VxRail LCM updates
Support upgrades to VCF 5.1.1 from existing VCF 4.4.x and higher environments (N-3 upgrade support)
Customers who already upgraded to VCF 5.x are already familiar with the concept of the skip-level upgrade, which allows them to upgrade directly to the latest 5.x release without the need to perform upgrades to the interim versions. It significantly reduces the time required to perform the upgrade and enhances the overall upgrade experience. VCF 5.1.1 introduces so-called “N-3” upgrade support (as illustrated on the following diagram), which supports the skip-level upgrade for VCF 4.4.x. This means they can now perform a direct LCM upgrade operation from VCF 4.4.x, 4.5.x, 5.0.x, and 5.1.0 to VCF 5.1.1.
VCF licensing changes
Simplified licensing using a single solution license key
Starting with VCF 5.1.1, vCenter Server, ESXi, and TKG component licenses are now entered using a single “VCF Solution License” key. This helps to simplify the licensing by minimizing the number of individual component keys that require separate management. VMware NSX Networking, HCX, and VMware Aria Suite components are automatically entitled from the vCenter Server post-deployment. The single licensing key and existing keyed licenses will continue to work in parallel.
Removal of VCF+ cloud-connected subscriptions as a supported VCF licensing type
The other significant licensing change is the deprecation of VCF+ licensing, which the new subscription model has replaced.
Support for deploying or expanding VCF instances using Evaluation Mode
VMware Cloud Foundation 5.1.1 allows deploying a new VCF instance in evaluation mode without needing to enter license keys. An administrator has 60 days to enter licensing for the deployment, and SDDC Manager is fully functional at this time. The workflows for expanding a cluster, adding a new cluster, or creating a VI workload domain also provide an option to license later within a 60 day timeframe.
For more comprehensive information about changes in VCF licensing, please consult the VMware website.
Core VxRail enhancements
Support for remote vCenter plug-in
One of the notable enhancements in VxRail 8.0.210 is adopting the vSphere Client remote plugin architecture. It showcases adopting the latest vSphere architecture guidelines, as the local plug-ins are deprecated in vSphere 8.0 and won’t be supported in vSphere 9.0. The vSphere Client remote plug-in architecture allows plug-in functionality integration without running inside a vCenter Server. It’s a more robust architecture that separates vCenter Server from plug-ins and provides more security, flexibility, and scalability when choosing the programming frameworks and introducing new features. Starting with 8.0.210, a new VxRail Manager remote plug-in is deployed in the VxRail Manager Appliance.
LCM enhancements, including improved VxRail pre-checks and self-remediation of iDRAC issues.
VxRail 8.0.210 also comes with several small features based on Customer feedback that combine to improve the LCM experience's reliability. These include:
- VxRail Manager root disk space precheck prevents the upgrade errors related to lack of disk space (for rpm-based upgrades).
- Self-remediation of iDRAC issues during LCM upgrades provides a more reliable firmware upgrade experience. By clearing the iDRAC job queue and resetting the iDRAC, the process may recover from a firmware update failure.
Serviceability enhancements, including improved expansion pre-checks, external storage reporting, and improved troubleshooting capabilities.
Another group of features contributes to overall improved serviceability and visibility into the system:
- The UI now implements new errors and warnings for incompatible disks when the user tries to add an incompatible disk during the disk addition process (see the following figure)
- The improved hardware views report on storage capacity and utilization for dynamic nodes, improving the overall visibility for the external storage attached to dynamic nodes directly from the vSphere Client.
- VxRail cluster troubleshooting efficiency has improved thanks to better standardization of log format and event grooming for disk exhaustion.
- The improved node-add health checks reduce the risk of successfully adding a faulty or mismatched node to a VxRail cluster.
VMware Private AI Foundation with NVIDIA
With VCF 5.1.1, VMware introduces VMware Private AI Foundation with NVIDIA as Initial Access. Dell Technologies Engineering intends to validate this feature when it is generally available.
This solution aims to enable enterprise customers to adopt Generative AI capabilities more easily and securely by providing enterprises with a cost-effective, high-performance, and secure environment for delivering business value from Large Language Models (LLMs) using their private data.
Summary
The new VCF 5.1.1 on VxRail 8.0.210 release is an excellent option for customers looking for a hardware refresh, Gen AI-ready infrastructure to run more demanding workloads, or to achieve higher consolidation ratios. Additional enhancements introduced in the core VxRail functionality improve the overall LCM experience, serviceability, and visibility into the system.
Thank you for your time, and please check the additional resources if you like to learn more.
Resources
- VxRail’s Latest Hardware Evolution blog
- VxRail and Intel® AMX, Bringing AI Everywhere
- VxRail product page
- VxRail Infohub page
- VxRail Videos
- VMware Cloud Foundation on Dell VxRail Release Notes
- VCF on VxRail Interactive Demo
- VMware Product Lifecycle Matrix
Author: Karol Boguniewicz
Twitter: @cl0udguide
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VxRail’s Latest Hardware Evolution
Thu, 04 Jan 2024 17:22:21 -0000
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December is a time of celebration and anticipation, a month in which we may reflect on the events of the year and look ahead to what is yet to come. Charles Dickens’ “A Christmas Carol” – and its many stage and movie remakes – is one of those literary classics that helps showcase this season’s magic at its finest. It is even said that there is a special kind of magic—one full of excitement, innovation, and productivity—that finds a way to (hyper)converge the past, present, and future for data center administrators all around the world who have been good all year!
No, your wondering eyes do not deceive you. Appearing today are VxRail’s next generation platforms—the VE-660 and VP-760—in all-new, all-NVMe configurations! While Santa’s elves have spent the year building their backlog of toys and planning supply-chain delivery logistics that rival SLA standards of the world’s largest e-tailers, the VxRail team has been hard at work innovating our VxRail family portfolio to ensure that your workloads can run faster than ever before. So, let’s grab a glass of eggnog and invite the holiday spirits along for a tour of VxRail past, present, and future to better understand our latest portfolio addition.
Spirit of VxRail Past
When VxRail first launched almost 8 years ago in early 2016, we introduced the concept of hyperconverged infrastructure to the masses with one easily-managed platform that combined best-of-breed Dell PowerEdge servers with VMware technology. This new age of data center management brought better performance, extended capabilities, and time-saving advantages to data center admins everywhere. Over the years, we’ve sought to improve the offering by taking advantage of the latest hardware standards and technologies.
This was especially true earlier this summer when we launched the VE-660 and VP-760 VxRail platforms based on 16th Generation Dell PowerEdge servers. These next-gen successors to the VxRail E-Series and P-Series platforms not only contained the latest hardware innovations, but also represented a systemic change in the overall VxRail offering.
First, the mainline E- and P-series platforms were respectively re-christened as the VE-660 and VP-760. This was done primarily to invite easier comparison points to the underlying PowerEdge servers on which they’re based – the R660 and R760. Second, we tracked how the use of accelerators in the data center had evolved over the years and made the strategic decision to fold the capabilities of the V-Series platform into the P-Series by way of specific riser configurations. Now, customers have the ability to glean all the benefits of a high-performant 2U system with the choice of either storage-optimized (up to 28 total drive bays) or accelerator-optimized (up to 2x double wide or 6x single wide GPUs) chassis configurations—whichever best aligns to the specifics of their workload needs. And third, VxRail platforms dropped the storage type suffix from the model name. Hybrid and all-flash (and as of today, all-NVME–more on this later) storage variants are now offered as part of the riser configuration selection options of these baseline platforms, where applicable.
These changes are representative of how the breadth and depth of customer needs have grown tremendously over the years. By taking these steps to streamline the VxRail portfolio, we charted an evolutionary path forward that continues our commitment to offer greater customer choice and flexibility.
Spirit of VxRail Present
These themes of greater choice and flexibility are amplified by the architectural improvements underpinning these new VxRail platforms. Primary among them is the introduction of Intel® 4th Generation Xeon® Scalable processors. Intel’s latest generation of processors do more than bump VxRail core density per socket to 56 (112 max per node). They also come with built-in AMX accelerators (Advanced Matrix Extensions) that support AI and HPC workloads without the need for any additional drivers or hardware. For a deeper dive into the Intel® AMX capability set, the Spirit of VxRail Present invites you to read this blog: VxRail and Intel® AMX, Bringing AI Everywhere, authored by Una O’Herlihy.
Intel’s latest processors also usher in support for DDR5 memory and PCIe Gen 5, two other architectural pillars that underpin significant jumps in performance. The following table offers a high-level overview and comparison of these pillars and a useful at-a-glance primer for those considering a technology refresh from earlier generation VxRail:
Table 1. VxRail 14th Generation to 16th Generation comparison
VxRail VE-660 & VP-760 | VxRail E560, P570 & V570 | |
Intel Chipset | 4th Generation Xeon | 2nd Generation Xeon |
Cores | 8 - 56 | 4 - 28 |
TDP | 125W – 350W | 85W – 205W |
Max DRAM Memory | 4TB per socket | 1.5TB per socket |
Memory Channels | 8 (DDR5) | 6 (DDR4) |
Memory Bandwidth | Up to 4800 MT/s | Up to 2933 MT/s |
PCIe Generation | PCIe Gen 5 | PCIe Gen 3 |
PCIe Lanes | 80 | 48 |
PCIe Throughput | 32 GT/s | 8 GT/s |
As the operational needs of a business change day-by-day, finding the right balance between workload density and load balance can often feel like an infinite war for resources. The adoption of DDR5 memory across the latest generation of VxRail platforms offers additional flexibility in the way system resources can be divvied up by virtue of two key benefits: greater memory density and faster bandwidth. The VE-660 and VP-760 wield eight memory channels per processor, with the ability to slot up to two 4800MT/s DIMMs per channel for a maximum memory capacity of 8TB per node. Compared to a VxRail P570, the density and speed improvements are staggering: 33% more memory channels per processor, 2.6x increase in per system total memory, and up to a 64% increase in memory speed! With faster and greater density compute and memory available for workloads, each node in a VxRail cluster can handle more VMs, and if there is ever a case of task bottlenecking, there are plenty of resources still available for optimal load balancing.
When we consider the presence of PCIe Gen 5, we see an even greater increase in the overall performance envelope. PowerEdge’s Next-Generation Tech Note does a great job of contextualizing the capabilities of PCIe Gen 5. The main takeaway for VxRail, however, is that it increases the maximum bandwidth achievable from various peripheral components by roughly 25% when compared to PCIe Gen 4 and roughly 66% when compared to PCIe Gen 3. In particular, the jump in available PCIe lanes (48 lanes to a luxurious 80 lanes) and associated throughput (8 GT/s to 32 GT/s per lane) from Gen 3 to Gen 5 significantly reduces performance bottlenecks, resulting in faster storage transfer rates and more bandwidth for accelerators to process AI and ML workloads.
PCIe Gen 5 is also backwards compatible with previous generation peripherals, enabling a certain degree of flexibility with respect to VxRail’s component extensibility and longevity in the data center. Yesterday’s technologies can still be used, but the VE-660 and VP-760 can adapt to growing workload demands by taking full advantage of the latest peripherals as they are released. They are even equipped with an additional PCIe slot over their E- & P-Series predecessors, providing extra dimensions of configuration. These boons in flexibility ensure any investment into this generation of VxRail enjoys longer relevance as your infrastructure backbone.
Spirit of VxRail Future
Even with all these architectural improvements defining the VP-760 and VE-660, we knew we could find ways of improving the capability set. So, we made our list of desired features (and checked it twice!) and determined that the best way to augment these next-generation hardware enhancements would be with the introduction of all-NVMe storage options.
The Spirit of VxRail Past wishes to remind us that VxRail with all-NVMe storage is not new—NVMe first made its way to the VxRail lineup with the P580N and E560N almost four years ago and has been a mainstay facet of the VxRail with vSAN architecture ever since. However, what is most compelling about all-NVMe versions of the VE-660 and VP-760—what the Spirit of VxRail Future wishes to strongly communicate—is that NVMe opens the door to two very compelling benefits: additional flexibility of choice with respect to vSAN architecture and an associated increase in overall storage capacity with the addition of read intensive NVMe drives in sizes of up to 15.36TB.
The following figure outlines all of the generational advantages customers can benefit from when transitioning from existing 14th Generation VxRail environments to VP-760 all-NVMe platforms.
In addition, VxRail on 16th Generation hardware can now support deployments with either vSAN Original Storage Architecture (OSA) or vSAN Express Storage Architecture (ESA). David Glynn provided a great summary of the core value vSAN ESA brings to the table for VxRail in his blog written nearly a year ago. With today’s launch, the VP-760 and VE-660 can now take advantage of vSAN ESA’s single-tier storage architecture that enables RAID-5 resiliency and capacity with RAID-1 performance. Customers who choose to deploy with vSAN OSA can also see the benefit of these new read intensive NVMe drives, with a total storage per node of up to 122.88TB in the VE-660 and 322.56TB in the VP-760. For those who deploy with vSAN ESA, maximum achievable storage is 153.6TB on the VE-660 and up to 368.64TB on the VP-760.
The Spirit of VxRail Future has seen the value of all-NVMe and is content knowing that VxRail will continue to underpin VMware mission-critical workloads for years to come.
Resources
Author: Mike Athanasiou, Sr. Engineering Technologist
What’s New: VMware Cloud Foundation 4.5.1 on Dell VxRail 7.0.450 Release and More!
Mon, 29 Apr 2024 14:11:47 -0000
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This latest Cloud Foundation (VCF) on VxRail release includes updated versions of software BOM components, a bunch of new VxRail platform enhancements, and some good ol’ under-the-hood improvements that lay the groundwork for future features designed to deliver an even better customer experience. Read on for the highlights…
VCF on VxRail operations and serviceability enhancements
View Nvidia GPU hardware details in VxRail Manager vCenter plugin ‘Physical View’ and VxRail API
Leveraging the power of GPU acceleration with VCF on VxRail delivers a lot of value to organizations looking to harness the power of their data. VCF on VxRail makes operationalizing infrastructure with Nvidia GPUs easier with native GPU visualization and details using the VxRail Manager vCenter Plugin ‘Physical View’ and VxRail API. Administrators can quickly gain deeper-level hardware insights into the health and details of the Nvidia GPUs running on their VxRail nodes, to easily map the hardware layer to the virtual layer, and to help improve infrastructure management and serviceability operations.
Figure 1 shows what this looks like.
Figure 1. Nvidia GPU visualization and details – VxRail vCenter Plugin ‘Physical View’ UI
Support for the capturing, displaying, and proactive Dell dial home alerting for new VxRail iDRAC system events and alarms
Introduced in VxRail 7.0.450 and available in VCF 4.5.1 on VxRail 7.0.450 are enhancements to VxRail Manager intelligent system health monitoring of iDRAC critical and warning system events. With this new feature, new iDRAC warning and critical system events are captured, and through VxRail Manager integration with both iDRAC and vCenter, alarms are triggered and posted in vCenter.
Customers can view these events and alarms in the native vCenter UI and the VxRail Manager vCenter Plugin Physical View which contains KB article links in the event description to provide added details and guidance on remediation. These new events also trigger call home actions to inform Dell support about the incident.
These improvements are designed to improve the serviceability and support experience for customers of VCF on VxRail. Figures 2 and 3 show these events as they appear in the vCenter UI ‘All Issues’ view and the VxRail Manager vCenter Plugin Physical View UI, respectively.
Figure 2. New iDRAC events displayed in the vCenter UI ‘All Issues’ view
Figure 3. New iDRAC events displayed in the VxRail Manager vCenter Plugin UI ‘Physical View’
Support for the capturing, displaying, and proactive dial home alerting for new iDRAC NIC port down events and alarms
To further improve system serviceability and simplify operations, VxRail 7.0.450 introduces the capturing of new iDRAC system events related to host NIC port link status. These include NIC port down warning events, each of which is indicated by a NIC100 event code and a ‘NIC port is started/up’ info event.
A NIC100 event indicates either that a network cable is not connected, or that the network device is not working.
A NIC101 event indicates that the transition from a network link ‘down’ state to a network link ‘started’ or ‘up’ state has been detected on the corresponding NIC port.
VxRail Manager now creates new VxM events that track these NIC port states.
As a result, users can be alerted through an alarm in vCenter when a NIC port is down. VxRail Manager will also generate a dial-home event when a NIC port is down. When the condition is no longer present, VxRail Manager will automatically clear the alarm by generating a clear-alarm event.
Finally, to reduce the number of false positive events and prevent unnecessary alarm and dial home events, VxRail Manager implements an intelligent throttling mechanism to handle situations in which false positive alarms related to network maintenance activities could occur. This makes the alarms/events that are triggered more credible for an admin to act against.
Table 1 contains a summary of the details of these two events and the VxRail Manager serviceability behavior.
Table 1. iDRAC NIC port down and started event and behavior details
Let’s double click on this serviceability behavior in a bit more detail.
Figure 4 depicts the behavior process flow VxRail Manager takes when iDRAC discovers and triggers a NIC port down system event. Let’s walk through the details now:
1. The first thing that occurs is that iDRAC discovers that the NIC port state has gone down and triggers a NIC port down event.
2. Next, iDRAC will send that event to VxRail Manager.
3. At this stage VxRail Manager will validate how long the NIC port down event has been active and check whether a NIC port started (or up) event has been triggered within a 30-minute time frame since the original NIC port down event occurred. With this check, if there has not been a NIC port started event triggered, VxRail Manager will begin throttling NIC port down event communication in order to prevent duplicate alerts about the same event.
If during the 30-minute window, a NIC port started event has been detected, VxRail Manager will cease throttling and clear the event.
4. When the VxRail Manager event throttling state is active, VxRail Manager will log it in its event history.
5. VxRail Manager will then trigger a vCenter alarm and post the event to vCenter.
6. Finally, VxRail Manager will trigger a NIC port down dial home event communication to backend Dell Support Systems, if connected.
Figure 4. Processing VxRail NIC port down events, and VxRail Manager throttling logic
Figure 5 shows what this looks like in the vCenter UI.
Figure 5. VxRail NIC port down trigger alarm in vCenter UI
Figure 6 shows what this looks like in the VxRail Manager vCenter Plugin ‘Physical View’ UI.
Figure 6. VxRail Manager vCenter Plugin ‘Physical View’ UI view of a VxRail NIC port down event
VCF on VxRail storage updates
Support for new PowerMax 2500 and 8500 storage arrays with VxRail 14G and 15G dynamic nodes using VMFS on FC principal storage
Starting in VCF 4.5.1 on VxRail 7.0.450, support has been added for the latest next gen Dell PowerMax 2500 and 8500 storage systems as VMFS on FC principal storage when deployed with 14G and 15G VxRail dynamic node clusters in VI workload domains.
Figure 7 lists the Dell storage arrays that support VxRail dynamic node clusters using VMFS on FC principal storage for VCF on VxRail, along with the corresponding supported FC HBA makes and models.
Note: Compatible supported array firmware and software versions are published in the Dell E-Lab Support Matrix for reference.
Figure 7. Supported Dell storage arrays used as VMFS on FC principal storage
VCF on VxRail lifecycle management enhancements
VCF Async Patch Tool 1.0.1.1 update
This tool addresses both LCM and security areas. Although it is not officially a feature of any specific VCF on VxRail release, it does get released asynchronously (pun intended) and is designed for use in VCF and VCF on VxRail environments. Thus, it deserves a call out.
For some background, the VCF Async Patch Tool is a new CLI based tool that allows cloud admins to apply individual component out-of-band security patches to their VCF on VxRail environment, separately from an official VCF LCM update release. This enables organizations to address security vulnerabilities faster without having to wait for a full VCF release update. It also allows admins to install these patches themselves without needing to engage support resources to get them applied manually.
With this latest AP Tool 1.0.1.1 release, the AP Tool now supports the ability to use patch VxRail (which includes all of the components in a VxRail update bundle including VxRail Manager and ESXi software components, and VxRail HW firmware/drivers) within VCF on VxRail environments. This is a great addition to the tool’s initial support for patching vCenter and NSX Manager in its first release. VCF on VxRail customers now have a centralized and standardized process for applying security patches for core VCF and VxRail software and core VxRail HCI stack hardware components (such as server BIOS or pNIC firmware/driver for example), all in a simple and integrated manner that VCF on VxRail customers have come to expect from a jointly engineered integrated turnkey hybrid cloud platform.
Note: Hardware patching is made possible due to how VxRail implements HW updates with the core VxRail update bundle. All VxRail patches for VxRail Manager, ESXi, and HW components are delivered in a the VxRail update bundle and leveraged by the AP Tool to apply.
From an operational standpoint, when patches for the respective software and hardware components have been applied, and a new VCF on VxRail BOM update is available that includes the security fixes, admins can use the tool to download the latest VCF on VxRail LCM release bundles and upgrade their environment back to an official in-band VCF on VxRail release BOM. After that, admins can continue to use the native SDDC Manager LCM workflow process for applying additional VCF on VxRail upgrades. Figure 8 highlights this process at a high level.
Figure 8. Async Patch Tool overview
You can access VCF Async Patch Tool instructions and documentation from VMware’s website.
Summary
In this latest release, the new features and platform improvements help set the stage for even more innovation in the future. For more details about bug fixes in this release, see VMware Cloud Foundation on Dell VxRail Release Notes. For this and other Cloud Foundation on VxRail information, see the following additional resources.
Author: Jason Marques
Twitter: @vWhipperSnapper
Additional Resources
- VMware Cloud Foundation on Dell VxRail Release Notes
- VxRail page on DellTechnologies.com
- VxRail Info Hub
- VCF on VxRail Interactive Demo
- Videos