Dell VxRail Network Planning Guide

1 Dell VxRail Network Planning Guide Physical and Logical Network Considerations and Planning March 2022 Abstract This is a Planning and preparation Guide for VxRail Appliances. It can be used to better understand the networking requirements for VxRail implementation. This document does not replace the implementation services with VxRail Appliances requirements and should not be used to implement networking for VxRail Appliances. Copyright 2 Dell VxRail Network Planning Guide The information in this publication is provided as is.

2 Dell Inc. makes no representations or warranties of any kind with respect to the information in this publication, and specifically disclaims implied warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose. Use, copying, and distribution of any software described in this publication requires an applicable software license. Copyright 2022 Dell Inc. or its subsidiaries. All Rights Reserved. Dell Technologies, Dell, EMC, Dell EMC and other trademarks are trademarks of Dell Inc. or its subsidiaries. Intel, the Intel logo, the Intel Inside logo and Xeon are trademarks of Intel Corporation in the and/or other countries.

3 Other trademarks may be trademarks of their respective owners. Published in the USA 03/22 Planning Guide Dell Inc. believes the information in this document is accurate as of its publication date. The information is subject to change without notice. Contents 3 Dell VxRail Network Planning Guide Contents Chapter 1 Introduction 7 Revision history .. 8 Intended use and audience .. 9 Introduction to VxRail .. 9 Chapter 2 Planning Your Data Center Network for VxRail 11 Introduction .. 12 VxRail hardware and the physical Network infrastructure.

4 12 VxRail clusters, appliances, and nodes .. 13 Network switch .. 14 VxRail relationship with the Ethernet switch .. 14 VxRail node discovery and the Ethernet switch .. 14 Basic switch requirements .. 15 Switch performance considerations .. 15 Storage Network considerations .. 16 Network redundancy and performance considerations .. 16 Data center Network .. 17 Data center services .. 17 Routing services .. 18 VxRail networking port options .. 19 VxRail Ethernet adapter options .. 20 VxRail Fibre Channel adapter options .. 21 VxRail RoCE adapter options.

5 22 VxRail node connectivity options .. 22 VxRail networking rules and restrictions .. 23 Topology and connections .. 24 Chapter 3 VxRail Cluster Types 26 Introduction .. 27 Cluster with vSAN storage .. 27 Dynamic cluster .. 28 Fibre Channel Storage Option .. 29 Remote vSAN Datastore Option .. 29 PowerFlex storage option .. 30 iSCSI and NFS Options .. 32 vSAN stretched cluster .. 32 Contents 4 Dell VxRail Network Planning Guide 2-node cluster .. 33 Satellite nodes .. 35 Chapter 4 VxRail Feature-Driven Decision Points 37 Introduction.

6 38 Software-defined data center .. 38 Dell SmartFabric Network mode .. 39 vSphere with Kubernetes on VxRail .. 41 Chapter 5 VxRail Hardware and Switch Selection Decision Points 43 Step-by-step networking decision points .. 44 Chapter 6 Prepare data center for VxRail Implementation 46 Introduction .. 47 Prepare data center routing services .. 47 Prepare for multi-rack VxRail cluster .. 48 Prepare for vSAN HCI mesh topology .. 50 Prepare external FC storage for dynamic clusters .. 52 Prepare for VxRail custom uplink assignments.

7 53 Prepare data center Network MTU .. 55 Prepare for link aggregation of VxRail networks .. 55 Verify the switches support link aggregation .. 57 Verify support for multi-chassis link aggregation .. 57 Identify switch ports to be configured for link aggregation .. 57 Plan link aggregation on switch port pairs .. 58 Prepare certificate authority server for VxRail .. 59 Prepare VxRail remote support connectivity .. 59 Chapter 7 Planning the VxRail Cluster Implementation 61 Introduction .. 62 Decide on VxRail single point of management.

8 62 Decide on VxRail Network traffic segmentation .. 63 Decide on teaming and failover policies for VxRail networks .. 65 Plan the VxRail logical Network .. 66 IP address considerations for VxRail networks .. 67 Virtual LAN considerations for VxRail networks .. 69 Plan Network settings for VxRail management components .. 72 Plan Network settings for vCenter Server management Network .. 74 Identify IP addresses for VxRail management components .. 74 Select hostnames for VxRail management components .. 75 Select top-level domain.

9 76 Select VxRail Manager hostname .. 76 Contents 5 Dell VxRail Network Planning Guide Select ESXi hostnames .. 76 Select VxRail vCenter Server hostname .. 77 Identify external applications and settings for VxRail .. 77 Set time zone and NTP server .. 77 Set DNS for VxRail management components .. 78 Prepare customer-supplied vCenter server .. 78 Prepare customer-supplied virtual-distributed switch .. 80 Prepare link aggregation on customer-supplied virtual-distributed switch .. 82 Reserve IP addresses for VxRail vMotion Network .

10 83 Reserve IP addresses for VxRail vSAN Network .. 84 Decide on VxRail logging solution .. 85 Assign passwords for VxRail management .. 86 Prepare for Dell SmartFabric Services enablement .. 87 Chapter 8 Planning for VxRail Satellite Nodes 89 Introduction .. 89 Plan networking to support VxRail satellite node management .. 90 Assign Network settings to VxRail satellite nodes .. 91 Assign passwords for VxRail satellite nodes .. 91 Chapter 9 Configure the Network for VxRail 93 Introduction .. 94 Setting up the Network switch for VxRail connectivity.