11/1/21, 12:47 PM DELL EMC VxRail Study Notes (Part 2) | InfraPCS

InfraPCS
Something about IT Infrastructure and Life

DELL EMC VxRail Study Notes (Part 2)

This post is my personal study technical note DELL EMC VxRail Hyperconverged Solution drafted during my per-
sonal knowledge update.  This post is not intended to cover all the part of the solution and some note is based
on my own understanding of the solution. My intention to draft this note is to outline the key solution elements
for quick readers.

The note is based on VxRail version 4.7. Some figures in this post are referenced from DELL EMC VxRail public
documents.

The note is the second part of the whole note. The first post is per the below link:

DELL EMC VxRail Study Notes (Part 1)

Storage efficiency
Deduplication and Compression

Inline when data is de-staged from the cache to the capacity drives, no host IO latency incur.
4K block
Deduplication algorithm is applied at the disk-group level
Privacy & Cookies: This site uses cookies. By continuing to use this website, you agree to their use.
A out
To find single copy
more, of eachhow
including unique 4K block
to control persee
cookies, diskhere:
Cookie
group Policy
LZ4 compression is applied after the blocks are deduplicated and before being written to SSD.
Close and accept

https://ranchh.wordpress.com/2019/02/21/dell-emc-vxrail-study-notes-part-2/ 1/7
11/1/21, 12:47 PM DELL EMC VxRail Study Notes (Part 2) | InfraPCS

Erasure coding

Only All-flash VxRail uses erasure coding (performance overhead when rebuilding).
FTT=1: single-parity data protection (RAID-5), min 4 nodes.
FTT=2: double-parity data protection (RAID-6), min 6 nodes.
Defined in storage policy and applied to the required VM.

Data Resiliency
Disk Level

Depends on the FTT level. (FTT is defined in storage policy and applied to VM)
Tolerate multi-disks failure on the same node.
Multi-disks failure on multi nodes may result data lost.

Node Level

Depends on the FTT level.

Fault Domain

Privacy & Cookies: This site uses cookies. By continuing to use this website, you agree to their use.
Fault domains is a way to configure tolerance for RACK and SITE failures
To find out more, including how to control cookies, see here:
Cookie Policy

Close and accept

https://ranchh.wordpress.com/2019/02/21/dell-emc-vxrail-study-notes-part-2/ 2/7
11/1/21, 12:47 PM DELL EMC VxRail Study Notes (Part 2) | InfraPCS

Stretched Cluster

Single cluster across two sites, one copy of data at each site.
Since vSAN 6.6, supports Stretched Clusters with Local Protection.
PFTT = RAID1 (Primary Site)
SFTT = RAID1/5/6 (Secondary Site)
5ms latency between sites.
Whiteness server is required.
Min: 3+3+1 (7 nodes); Max: 15+15+1 (31 nodes).
Support both hybrid and all-flash VxRail
Both layer-2 (Data) and Layer-3 (Witness) network required.
Witness is marked failure after 5 consecutive failures.

Network
General Rules

All-flash system requires two 10/25GbE ports per node.

Hybrid system requires either two 10/25GbE ports or four 1GbE ports per node.
Privacy & Cookies: This site uses cookies. By continuing to use this website, you agree to their use.
For
To find outsingle
more,node appliance,
including 10GbE cookies,
how to control ports will
seeauto-negotiate down to 1GbE for 1Gb solution.
here:
Cookie Policy
For single node appliance, additional PCIe NIC can be configured for customer network.
VLAN and vSphere Network I/O Control (NIOC) are attached to each default port groups. Close and accept
Limitation to use 1Gb uplink:
https://ranchh.wordpress.com/2019/02/21/dell-emc-vxrail-study-notes-part-2/ 3/7
11/1/21, 12:47 PM DELL EMC VxRail Study Notes (Part 2) | InfraPCS

Minimum 4 1GbE NICs.

Only support Hybrid-storage configuration
Maximum supported node count is eight
Only node with single socket is supported

The network requirement is 1 Vmware Distributed vSwitch with multiple default port groups. vSAN relies on
VDS for its storage-virtualization capabilities, and the VxRail Appliance uses VDS for appliance traffic.

RAILDistrib

Management Network (Split to External and Internal Management from 4.7)

Privacy & Cookies: This site uses cookies. By continuing to use this website, you agree to their use.
VSAN
To find Network
out more, including how to control cookies, see here:
Cookie Policy
vMotion
Virtual Machine Close and accept

https://ranchh.wordpress.com/2019/02/21/dell-emc-vxrail-study-notes-part-2/ 4/7
11/1/21, 12:47 PM DELL EMC VxRail Study Notes (Part 2) | InfraPCS

The port groups will be balanced across the uplink vmnics.

Deployment
Deployment General Rules

VxRail Appliance is built in factory to a default operating environment

Site specifications must be configured at time of deployment. Must include IP address range, VLANs, up-
links, etc
ToR switch must be configured to set for both IPV4 and IPV6
VxRail Appliance requires a network layer 2 connections for connectivity
Routing between networks or VLANs occurs at the aggregation layer

Initial configuration through VxRail Manager

Browse to the VxRail Manager initial IP address and choose “Get Started”
1. Provide Management IP interfaces/vCenter details
2. Provide vMotion IP interfaces details
3. Provide vSAN IP interfaces details
Privacy & Cookies: This site uses cookies. By continuing to use this website, you agree to their use.
4. Provide VM Networks IP interfaces details
To find out more, including how to control cookies, see here:
Cookie Policy
5. Provide hostname and IP for Log Insight
Could be saved to Jason file for future deployment. Close and accept
Post Health Check through HEALTH status tab of VxRail Appliance using vCenter

https://ranchh.wordpress.com/2019/02/21/dell-emc-vxrail-study-notes-part-2/ 5/7
11/1/21, 12:47 PM DELL EMC VxRail Study Notes (Part 2) | InfraPCS

Management Notes
VxRail Manager

Run as a virtual appliance in VxRail.

Provide VxRail Deployment, Configuration and Node Monitoring.
Display storage, CPU and memory utilization at cluster/appliance/node level.
Provide cluster expansion and auto detect new appliance.
Used to replace failed disk drives
Leverages VMware vRealize Log Insight to monitor system events and provide ongoing holistic
notifications
A vCenter Server can manage multiple VxRail Appliances.
VMware part is managed through vCenter.

Privacy & Cookies: This site uses cookies. By continuing to use this website, you agree to their use.
To find out more, including how to control cookies, see here:
Cookie Policy

Close and accept

https://ranchh.wordpress.com/2019/02/21/dell-emc-vxrail-study-notes-part-2/ 6/7
11/1/21, 12:47 PM DELL EMC VxRail Study Notes (Part 2) | InfraPCS

Proactive rebalance

Proactive rebalance addresses two typical use cases:

Adding a new node to an existing Virtual SAN cluster or bringing a node out of decommission state
Leverage the new nodes even if the fullness of existing disks are below 80%
Performed through CLI (RVC command): proactive_rebalance –start ~/computers/cluster’

This entry was posted in Hyperconverged Solution, Uncategorized, VxRail and tagged DELL, EMC,
Hyperconverged, Notes, Study, VxRail on February 21, 2019 [https://ranchh.wordpress.com/2019/02/21/dell-
emc-vxrail-study-notes-part-2/] .

Privacy & Cookies: This site uses cookies. By continuing to use this website, you agree to their use.
To find out more, including how to control cookies, see here:
Cookie Policy

Close and accept

https://ranchh.wordpress.com/2019/02/21/dell-emc-vxrail-study-notes-part-2/ 7/7