Dell VxRail Network Planning Guide

Configure your network to support RoCE

Information is provided to deploy a VxRail cluster with vSAN using RDMA over Converged Ethernet (RoCE)-compliant Ethernet adapters.

If the VxRail nodes to deploy are configured with Ethernet adapters that support RoCE, configure the switches and supporting network to enable a lossless network for the VMware vSAN traffic.

Converting a cluster to enable RoCE on the VMware vSAN data store is performed after the VxRail initial build. Consult the technical reference guides from your switch vendor for the specific steps to configure on the physical network. The basic steps to ensure a lossless network are as follows:

• VMware vSAN with RDMA supports NIC failover, but does not support LAG or NIC teaming based on IP address hash.
• Enable Data Center Bridging on the switches supporting the VxRail cluster.
• Control traffic flow on the switches using PFC. Set the RoCE network to a higher priority as outlined in your vendor documentation.
• Configure RoCE on VMware vSAN on a priority-enabled VLAN.
• If the VMware vSAN traffic is on a routed L3 network, preserve the lossless network settings when routed across network devices using the DSCP QoS setting.