Dell VxRail Network Planning Guide
Appendix C: VxRail cluster setup checklist
Follow the checklist to set up the cluster.
- VxRail cluster: Plan for additional nodes beyond the initial three (or four)-node cluster. You can have up to 64 nodes in a VxRail cluster.
- VxRail ports: Determine how many ports to configure per VxRail node, what port type, and what network speed.
- Network switches: Ensure that your switches support VxRail requirements and provides the connectivity option that you chose for your VxRail nodes. Verify cable requirements.
- Data center: Verify that the required external applications for VxRail are accessible over the network and correctly configured.
- Topology: If you are deploying VxRail over more than one rack, be sure that network connectivity is set up between the racks. Determine the L2/L3 boundary in the planned network topology.
- Workstation/laptop: Any operating system with a browser to access the VxRail Manager. The latest versions of Firefox, Chrome, and Internet Explorer 10+ are all supported.
- Out-of-band Management (optional): One available port that supports 1 Gb for each VxRail node.
| Component | Description |
|---|---|
| Reserve VLANs | One external management VLA |
| One internal management VLAN with multicast for autodiscovery and device management. The default is 3939. | |
| One VLAN with unicast enabled for VMware vSAN traffic | |
| One VLAN for VMware vSphere vMotion | |
| One or more VLANs for your VM Guest Networks | |
| One VLAN for VMware vCenter Server Network (if applicable) | |
| If you are enabling witness traffic separation, reserve one VLAN for the VxRail witness traffic separation network. | |
| System | Select the timezone. |
| Select the top-level domain. | |
| Hostname or IPv4 and/or IPv6 addresses of the NTP servers on your network (recommended) | |
| IPv4 and/or IPv6 addresses of the DNS servers on your network (if external DNS) | |
| Forward and reverse DNS records for VxRail management components (if external DNS). | |
| Management | Decide on your VxRail host naming scheme. The naming scheme applies to all VxRail management components. |
| Reserve IPv4 and/or IPv6 addresses for VMware ESXi hosts. | |
| Reserve IPv4 and/or IPv6 address for VxRail Manager. | |
| Determine default IPv4/IPv6 gateway and subnet mask, or prefix. | |
| Select passwords for VxRail management components. | |
| VMware vCenter Server | Determine whether to use a VMware vCenter Server that is customer-supplied or a VMware vCenter provided by VxRail. |
| VxRail vCenter Server: Reserve IP addresses for VMware vCenter Server (if supplied by VxRail). | |
| Customer-managed VMware vCenter Server: Determine hostname and IP address for vCenter, administration user, and name of VMware vSphere data center. Create a VxRail management user in VMware vCenter. Select a unique VxRail cluster name. (Optional) Create a VxRail nonadmin user. | |
| VMware VDS | Preconfigure a customer-managed VMware VDS or have VxRail deploy a VMware VDS in your VMware vCenter instance. |
| Customer-managed VMware VDS: Configure target port groups for required VxRail networks. | |
| VMware vSphere vMotion | Decide whether you want to use the default TCP-IP stack for VMware vMotion, or a separate IP addressing scheme for the dedicated VMware vMotion TCP-IP stack. |
| Reserve IPv4 and/or IPv6 addresses and a subnet mask and/or prefix for VMware vSphere vMotion. | |
| Select the gateway for either the default TCP-IP stack, or the dedicated VMware vMotion TCP-IP stack. | |
| VMware vSAN | Reserve IPv4 and/or IPv6 addresses and a subnet mask for vSAN and/or prefix, if using vSAN for primary storage. |
| Logging | To use an existing syslog server: Get the hostname or IP address of your third-party syslog server. |
| Witness Site | If a witness is required, reserve one IP address for the management network and one IP address for the vSAN network. |
| Workstation | Configure your workstation/laptop to reach the VxRail initial IP address. |
| Ensure you know how to configure the laptop to reach the VxRail Manager IP address after configuration. | |
| Set up Switches | Configure your selected external management VLAN (default is untagged/native). |
| Configure your internal management VLAN. | |
| Confirm unicast is enabled for device discovery. | |
| Configure your selected VLANs for VMware vSAN, VMware vSphere vMotion, VMware vCenter Server Network and VM Guest Networks. | |
| If applicable, configure your witness traffic separation VLAN. | |
| In dual-switch environments, configure the interswitch links to carry traffic between switches. | |
| Configure uplinks or point-to-points links to carry networks requiring external connectivity upstream. | |
| Configure one port as an access port for laptop/workstation to connect to VxRail Manager for initial configuration. | |
| Confirm configuration and network access. | |
| Workstation/Laptop | Configure your workstation/laptop to reach the VxRail Manager initial IP address. |
| Configure the laptop to reach the VxRail Manager IP address after permanent IP address assignment. |
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