Dell EMC Ready Stack for VMware vSphere with Isilon and Unity XT Storage July 2020
H18118.1
Design Guide
Abstract This design guide describes the architecture, design, configuration, and sizing of a converged infrastructure for VMware vSphere using Dell EMC PowerEdge servers, Isilon and Unity XT storage, and PowerSwitch S-Series switches. This guide also includes general deployment guidelines and best practices.
Dell Technologies Solutions
Copyright
The information in this publication is provided as is. 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 © 2020 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 U.S. and/or other countries. Other trademarks may be trademarks of their respective owners. Published in the USA 07/20 Design Guide H18118.1. Dell Inc. believes the information in this document is accurate as of its publication date. The information is subject to change without notice.
2 Dell EMC Ready Stack for VMware vSphere with Isilon and Unity XT Storage Design Guide Contents
Contents
Chapter 1 Introduction 4 Solution overview ...... 5 Document purpose ...... 7 Audience ...... 7 We value your feedback ...... 7
Chapter 2 Ready Stack Architecture 8 Installation and configuration considerations ...... 9 Existing infrastructure requirements ...... 9 Ready Stack architecture overview ...... 10 Key components ...... 10
Chapter 3 Configurations and Specifications 19 Recommended platforms and components ...... 20 Design configuration ...... 21 Dell EMC Fabric Design Center ...... 22
Chapter 4 Ready Stack Design 24 Compute design ...... 25 Network design ...... 25 Storage design ...... 28 Management design ...... 32
Chapter 5 References 35 Dell EMC documentation...... 36 VMware documentation ...... 37
Appendix A Deployment Considerations 38 Introduction ...... 39 General deployment guidelines ...... 39 Planning for growth ...... 40 Compute ...... 40 Networking ...... 41 Storage ...... 42 Additional considerations ...... 43
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Chapter 1: Introduction
Chapter 1 Introduction
This chapter presents the following topics:
Solution overview ...... 5
Document purpose ...... 7
Audience ...... 7
We value your feedback ...... 7
4 Dell EMC Ready Stack for VMware vSphere with Isilon and Unity XT Storage Design Guide Chapter 1: Introduction
Solution overview
Due to more options and growing complexity, managing IT infrastructure in a data center is becoming increasingly difficult. Changing data center infrastructure that has evolved over time can significantly affect stability, performance, costs, and upgradability.
Dell EMC Ready Stack solutions are proven, tested, and optimized to help organizations meet long-term data center needs for a variety of mixed workloads. This Ready Stack solution provides the simplicity of a complete, yet flexible, validated converged infrastructure (CI) that is based on the following components: • Dell EMC Isilon storage • Dell EMC Unity XT storage • Dell EMC PowerEdge servers • Dell EMC PowerSwitch S-Series switches • VMware vSphere virtualization platform
This solution provides: • One trusted vendor for all CI stack components—compute, storage, networking, and data protection • Design and deployment guidance that incorporates validation, interoperability testing, and best practices • Design guidance that focuses on scale, flexibility, and high availability • A reference architecture that incorporates physical topology diagrams and general connectivity guidelines • Unified management and system monitoring through VMware vCenter
The challenge: Unstructured data is growing at a far faster rate than that of traditional transactional-based managing storage. Unstructured data either has no predefined data model or no predefined manner unstructured of organization, or both. Anything that cannot be expressed in a spreadsheet can be data thought of as unstructured data. Examples include videos, PDF files, social data, social media inputs, sensor inputs, and language data.
Unstructured data can come from various sources: mobile/web applications; social media; logistical, tracking, and supply chain capture points; and the Internet of Things, such as smart sensors and intelligent devices.
An organization's unstructured data might be scattered across numerous locations among various teams and suborganizations. Siloed data has limited usefulness because it cannot be used by all the departments and business units that could extract value from it. Adding Isilon storage to your traditional storage environment can help unlock the value of your unstructured data through better consolidation, optimization, organization, collaboration, and insight through business intelligence and analytics.
The Isilon OneFS operating system provides the power and tools to consolidate, administer, and manage the growth of unstructured data efficiently so that it can be used prescriptively across your entire organization. This capability enables you to analyze the
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Chapter 1: Introduction
data, unlocking value beyond the recording of an event or timestamp. Analysis can reveal patterns, trends, and associations that serve a business purpose, including targeted advertising, real-time analytics, business intelligence, predictive analytics, and performance monitoring.
Solution benefits This Ready Stack provides the following key benefits: • Resiliency—The Ready Stack architecture ensures that no single point of failure exists. Redundancy is incorporated in the critical aspects of the Ready Stack, which includes server high-availability features, redundant networking, and multi-path storage. • Virtualization support—We designed this Ready Stack for general-purpose virtualized workloads. Each server is equipped with suitable processing power, memory, and connection options to support Ethernet or Fibre Channel (FC)- attached storage. Each server also supports multiple transport protocols for added deployment flexibility. Various integration points provide for advanced functionality and increased visibility of your end-to-end virtualized environment. • Scalability—You can configure this Ready Stack to suit your virtualized infrastructure needs. The Ready Stack supports flexibility in the form of various options, such as server model, number of compute servers, server processor model, server memory capacity, type of Isilon and Unity XT storage, and storage capacity. • Storage intelligence—Dell EMC Isilon scale-out network-attached storage (NAS) solutions combine three layers of traditional storage architectures—file system, volume manager, and data protection—into one unified software layer, creating a single intelligent distributed file system that runs on an Isilon storage cluster. The Isilon OneFS operating system is ideally suited for file-based and unstructured data applications in enterprise environments, including large-scale home directories, file shares, archives, virtualization, and business analytics. This Ready Stack includes the Unity XT All-Flash storage platform for cost-effective and efficient handling of traditional block storage. With all-inclusive software and increased density, these all-flash systems deliver consistent performance with low response times and are ideal for mixed virtual workload requirements.
• Integrated Dell EMC management—This Ready Stack includes the following Dell EMC management tools: . Dell EMC OpenManage Integration for VMware vCenter—A virtual appliance that enables administrators to view physical host details in VMware vSphere. . Dell EMC Virtual Storage Integrator (VSI)—A vCenter plug-in that enables administrators to view, manage, and optimize storage for vSphere servers and hosts. . Dell EMC Integrated Dell Remote Access Controller 9 (iDRAC9)—An out-of- band (OOB) management tool for Dell EMC PowerEdge rack servers. iDRAC9 has its own HTML5-based UI and can be accessed through various methods, including SSH, RACADM, and the Redfish API. iDRAC9 Group Manager provides a one-to-many console for accessing the details of multiple servers.
6 Dell EMC Ready Stack for VMware vSphere with Isilon and Unity XT Storage Design Guide Chapter 1: Introduction
Administrators can also use Dell EMC OpenManage Enterprise to manage server content that is accessible through iDRAC9. . Dell EMC OpenManage Enterprise—A systems management and monitoring application that provides a comprehensive view of the Dell EMC servers, storage, and switches on the enterprise network. The application’s intuitive one-to-many HTML5 management console is deployed as a virtual appliance for VMware ESXi and other platforms.
Document purpose
This Ready Stack design guide provides design principles, best practices, architectural guidance, and validated configurations for compute, management, networking, and storage. It includes component specifications for a sample configuration and information about scaling the Ready Stack. This guide also includes general deployment guidelines and best practices.
Note: For links to the Dell EMC Ready Stack Reference Architecture Guide and documentation about other Ready Stack solutions, see the Ready Stack Info Hub.
Audience
This guide is for customers, channel partners, and Dell Technologies personnel. We recommend that readers have a working knowledge of virtualization technologies for servers, storage, and networking.
We value your feedback
Dell Technologies and the authors of this document welcome your feedback on the solution and the solution documentation. Contact the Dell Technologies Solutions team by email or provide your comments by completing our documentation survey.
Authors: Robert Percy, Don Pisinski, David Hartman
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Chapter 2: Ready Stack Architecture
Chapter 2 Ready Stack Architecture
This chapter presents the following topics:
Installation and configuration considerations ...... 9
Existing infrastructure requirements ...... 9
Ready Stack architecture overview ...... 10
Key components ...... 10
8 Dell EMC Ready Stack for VMware vSphere with Isilon and Unity XT Storage Design Guide Chapter 2: Ready Stack Architecture
Installation and configuration considerations
Installing and configuring a production-ready CI involves multiple considerations, including: • Operating system and virtualization software distributions • Selection of monitoring and management software • Allocation of cluster services and data storage to physical nodes and arrays • Selection of appropriate server hardware • Design of network fabric • Sizing and scalability • Performance requirements
Multiple factors complicate these considerations, including: • The need to understand the types of workloads that will be running on the cluster • The challenges of managing a system that is designed to accommodate multiple general-purpose, virtualized workloads • The fast-moving pace of the industry
Dell Technologies’ customer-centered approach is to create rapidly deployable and highly optimized CI solutions running on enterprise-class hardware. Dell Technologies solutions combine optimized hardware, software, and services to streamline deployment and improve the customer experience.
Dell EMC Ready Stack solutions can include all the hardware, software, resources, and services that are needed to run a scalable, highly available CI environment. This approach means that organizations can be operational in a shorter time than is typically possible with homegrown solutions. The architecture design for this Ready Stack incorporates storage, networking, and virtualization best practices to ensure availability, serviceability, and optimal performance. Existing infrastructure requirements
Implementation of this Ready Stack requires that the following minimum infrastructure elements be present in the existing data center: • A Domain Name System (DNS) server on the management network • A Network Time Protocol (NTP) server on the management network • An Ethernet infrastructure Dell Technologies recommends a 10/25 GbE or 40/100 GbE infrastructure. Additional components, such as Dell EMC Networking cables and transceivers, are required to uplink the Ready Stack to the network. The specific component requirements depend on your networking and uplink requirements. • Sufficient power and cooling to support the Ready Stack
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Chapter 2: Ready Stack Architecture
Ready Stack architecture overview
This section provides an overview of the Ready Stack architecture, including compute servers, management servers, LAN switches, SAN switches, storage arrays, and OOB switches. The following figure shows the architecture of this Ready Stack.
Figure 1. Physical architecture
Key components
Compute The portfolio of Dell EMC PowerEdge rack servers is designed to optimize application performance and ensure a stable, worry-free environment with intuitive tools that simplify and automate processes throughout the entire server life cycle. Every data center and virtual environment has unique requirements, and PowerEdge provides the flexibility that is needed to build scalable infrastructures that are tightly integrated with VMware vSphere.
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The PowerEdge R640 is an ideal platform for dense scale-out data center computing. The R640 combines density, performance, and scalability to optimize application performance and data center density. The scalable architecture of the R640 is designed to maximize application performance and provide the flexibility to optimize configurations based on the application and use case. The PowerEdge R640 is a 1U, two-socket server platform, which supports up to 24 DIMM slots, ten 2.5 in. drives, and 3 PCIe cards.
iDRAC9 with Lifecycle Controller Embedded in every PowerEdge server is iDRAC9 with Lifecycle Controller. iDRAC9 provides secure and remote server access for a multitude of common management functions. iDRAC with Lifecycle Controller operates regardless of the operating system state or the presence of a hypervisor. It offers a complete set of server management features including configuration, operating system deployment, firmware updates, health monitoring, and maintenance.
iDRAC9 provides a variety of remote connectivity interfaces and protocols, enabling administrators to securely configure, deploy, manage, monitor, and update the server. IPMI, Redfish, SMASH-CLP, and WS-Man are some of the common standard management interfaces that iDRAC9 supports.
The iDRAC9 HTML5 web UI provides for secure connectivity through HTTPS. With the Group Manager feature in iDRAC9 Enterprise, administrators can create a one-to-many console experience, which enables them to view and manage a set of servers rather than visually inspecting servers for faults and manually managing the servers.
Networking The Ready Stack architecture network design consists of these functional groups: • OOB network • LAN • SAN • Isilon back-end network • Dell EMC SmartFabric OS10
OOB network The key building block of the OOB network is the Dell EMC PowerSwitch S4148T-ON switch, which provides forty-eight 10GBASE-T ports and multiple uplink port options.
LAN The Dell EMC PowerSwitch S5248F-ON switch provides LAN connectivity. This switch provides up to forty-eight 25 GbE ports and six 100 GbE ports. Using two S5248F-ON switches—referred to as top-of-rack (ToR) switches—provides redundancy. Integrated NICs directly connect the ToR switches to the rackmount servers. Isilon nodes connect to these switches to provide data services.
The Dell EMC Isilon storage array in this Ready Stack design uses LAN networking. Its front-end network consists of the two Dell EMC PowerSwitch S5248F-ON switches.
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SAN For FC storage traffic to and from the Dell EMC Unity XT array, Ready Stack uses Dell EMC Connectrix DS-6620B switches. The DS-6620B switch delivers up to 32 Gbps FC performance in a 1U form factor and, by default, has twenty-four 32 Gbps ports enabled. You can add more ports—up to 48 ports per chassis—through Ports on Demand upgrade kits. Brocade Web Tools, the embedded UI on the Connectrix DS-6620B switches, facilitates the monitoring and management of single or small fabrics, switches, and ports.
Isilon back-end network The back-end network for Isilon storage consists of two Dell EMC PowerSwitch Z9100-ON switches. The back-end switches enable the Isilon nodes to remain in full communication with each other to take advantage of the full performance and benefits of the Isilon OneFS operating system. The network is 40 GbE, but 10 GbE is also supported.
These switches are used solely for Isilon and are not physically connected to the LAN network. For more information, see the Dell EMC Isilon Ethernet Backend Network Overview.
Dell EMC SmartFabric OS10 Dell EMC PowerSwitch components support the OS10 network operating system. Standard in OS10 is Dell EMC SmartFabric Services, which enables you to accelerate IT transformation by providing more agile and simplified central management across both virtual and physical network infrastructures. Dell EMC Open Networking Switching Fabrics and Dell EMC Isilon NAS provide an intelligent and capable architecture that can scale on demand to increase the efficiency of the data center. Dell EMC PowerSwitch switches significantly reduce the deployment complexity and time to value for Isilon node inter- networking.
For more information about using Dell EMC Open Networking Switching fabrics with Isilon storage, see the Scalable Dell EMC Isilon Storage Solutions with Dell EMC Open Network Fabrics Solution Brief.
Storage In this Ready Stack design, the Dell EMC Unity XT Series array provides the primary FC storage. To complement Unity XT, for managing the challenge of high volumes of unstructured data, we also provide Dell EMC Isilon storage.
Dell EMC CloudIQ Both Unity XT and Isilon arrays support the Dell EMC CloudIQ application—a no-cost, cloud-native software-as-a-service solution that enables you to proactively monitor your Dell EMC storage systems. The CloudIQ solution provides intelligent, comprehensive, and predictive analytics. These analytics enable storage administrators to monitor their Dell EMC storage proactively and in detail to help eliminate risks in their environment, such as unused capacity, overused capacity, and system component health.
The CloudIQ solution provides password-protected access. It is easy to use and designed to help you achieve higher uptime, increased performance, and effective capacity planning.
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On an ongoing basis, the CloudIQ application performs the following proactive system health checks: • System Health—Identifies faulty components such as cables or fans • Configuration—Intelligently checks the context for a given component, such as whether a failed drive is an unused spare or active in a RAID 5 configuration • Capacity—Monitors capacity issues, such as pools that are either oversubscribed or approaching full, and estimates when capacity will be reached • Performance—Identifies when CPUs are running at high rates or if there is an imbalance, so that you can shift workloads as needed • Data Protection—Monitors your data protection policies to ensure that your data is protected as expected in terms of scheduled replication and snapshot policies
At the highest level, the CloudIQ application combines these five metrics into an overall health score. The health score provides a useful visual indicator of the health of each storage system you have configured to use the CloudIQ solution, as shown in the following figure:
Figure 2. Dell EMC CloudIQ Health Score panel
Dell EMC Unity XT storage Dell EMC Unity XT All-Flash storage systems implement an integrated architecture for block, file, and vSphere Virtual Volumes, with concurrent support for native NAS, iSCSI, and FC protocols. Each system uses dual storage processors, full 12 Gb SAS back-end connectivity, and Dell Technologies’ patented multi-core architected operating environment to deliver performance and efficiency. Disk array enclosures (DAEs) provide more storage capacity, and, for additional performance, online controller upgrades are available. Dell EMC Unity XT All-Flash systems support: • File and block environments • Point-in-time snapshots and thin clones
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• Synchronous and asynchronous replication • Integrated encryption • Tiering to the cloud • Deep ecosystem integration with VMware, Microsoft, and OpenStack
Data reduction Dell EMC Unity Data Reduction includes deduplication and compression logic within a space-savings algorithm. Data reduction features are available for block LUNs and VMFS datastores in an all-flash pool. You can enable Unity Data Reduction at the resource level, so that storage resources with and without the Data Reduction feature enabled can exist in the same pool on a system. Also, data reduction savings occur at multiple levels, including system level, pool level, and resource level, providing varying levels of reporting granularity.
Dynamic pools Dynamic pools increase the flexibility of configuration options within a Dell EMC Unity system. In Unity XT All-Flash systems, dynamic pools replace the existing pool technology as the default pool type within Dell EMC Unisphere storage management. As with traditional pools, you can create, expand, and delete dynamic pools. You can expand a dynamic pool with as little as a single drive to increase the pool’s capacity. This flexible deployment model improves the planning and provisioning process and reduces the total cost of ownership.
Host I/O limits The Host I/O Limits feature enables you to limit the amount of I/O activity that the Unity XT system services. This ability is useful when specific LUNs, vSphere VMFS datastores, thin clones, and their associated attached snapshots are consuming a large portion of the system’s resources and reducing the performance of other resources on the system. You can use the Host I/O Limits feature to limit incoming host activity based on IOPS, bandwidth, or both.
A related feature allows you to set burst policies for host I/O limits. This option is available for any host I/O limit policy and allows host activity/traffic to exceed the base policy limit by a user-specified percentage. The user specifies parameters of amount (percentage), duration, and frequency of the I/O limit burst allowance.
vSphere Storage APIs vSphere Storage APIs - Array Integration (VAAI) enables the Unity XT system to handle offloaded VMware operations, improve performance, and reduce network overhead. VAAI improves the utilization rates of ESXi hosts in a VMware environment by offloading tasks to the Unity XT system. The Unity XT system processes various operations—including clone and snapshot operations as well as hardware-assisted moves—for both block and file datastores and for Virtual Volumes.
vSphere Storage APIs for Storage Awareness (VASA) enables intercommunication between the storage and virtualization layers so that administration of one layer can be performed from the other. This capability can enable more efficient workflows for administrators who are familiar with one interface. VASA enables VMware administrators to access storage technologies and features from within the familiar vCenter management console, such as the creation of vSphere Virtual Volumes, and surfaces array-specific
14 Dell EMC Ready Stack for VMware vSphere with Isilon and Unity XT Storage Design Guide Chapter 2: Ready Stack Architecture details to vCenter. This capability eliminates the need to manage a VMware storage environment from multiple management consoles.
Unisphere storage management HTML-based Unisphere storage management for the Unity XT array provides a dedicated page for accessing VMware, which allows for the end-to-end discovery of a vSphere environment. Unisphere imports and displays information about vCenter, ESXi hosts, virtual machines (VMs), and virtual disks. It also registers the VMware hosts on the Unity system so that they can be granted access to LUNs, VMFS datastores, NFS file systems or datastores, and vSphere Virtual Volumes datastores. Unisphere storage management can also display system status and performance information, including a graphical representation of the Unity XT system that highlights areas of interest, such as for drive faults and network link failures.
Dell EMC Isilon storage Dell EMC Isilon storage has a wide variety of applications in various vertical markets, including oil and gas, medical imaging, and astrophysical data. However, most Isilon customers use Isilon arrays as tier 2 storage, typically for: • Unstructured data • Log archiving • Financial analysis • Generic file shares • User home directories
Therefore, this design guide focuses less on building a design for a specific use case than on describing a general NAS environment and the Dell Technologies tools that help speed design and deployment. Those tools include iDRAC, Dell EMC OpenManage Integration for VMware vCenter, and the Dell EMC Fabric Design Center.
Isilon hardware tiers Heterogeneous Isilon clusters can be architected with a wide variety of node styles and capacities to meet the needs of a varied dataset and wide spectrum of workloads. These node styles encompass several hardware generations and fall loosely into four main categories or tiers. The following figure illustrates these tiers and the associated hardware models:
Figure 3. Isilon hardware tiers and node generations
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Chapter 2: Ready Stack Architecture
In this Ready Stack design, we provide a hybrid/utility midsize reference architecture. You can easily expand an Isilon implementation of any size, scaling up or scaling out, by adding Isilon nodes. Isilon features Isilon scale-out storage solutions are designed for enterprises of all sizes. Isilon NAS, driven by the OneFS operating system, enables you to eliminate storage silos by consolidating all your unstructured data and to store petabytes of file data in a single data lake. The Isilon portfolio includes the following platform types: • All-Flash—Combines extreme performance and scalability with high efficiency and enterprise-grade capabilities • Hybrid—Provides optimum cost benefits with a versatile balance of performance and capacity • Archive—Provides efficient and resilient high-capacity archive storage This Ready Stack design describes the Isilon H500 Hybrid array. The Hybrid-class storage platforms, which are powered by the OneFS operating system, use a dense, modular architecture. The architecture provides a powerful, yet simple, scale-out storage platform to speed access to unstructured data while reducing cost and complexity.
Isilon Hybrid-class storage platforms provide: • Storage tiering—Isilon SmartPools software provides a native, policy-based tiering capability. This capability enables enterprises to reduce storage costs and optimize their storage investment by automatically moving data to the most appropriate storage tier within an Isilon cluster. SmartPools implements a highly efficient, automated tiered-storage strategy to optimize storage performance and efficiency for organizations that are experiencing high growth and complexity in managing their unstructured data. • Small-file storage efficiency—The Small File Storage Efficiency (SFSE) feature helps organizations drive down storage management costs and complexity. SFSE is a simple, scalable solution for enhancing the efficiency of small-file storage in archive applications and workloads. SFSE maximizes the space utilization of a cluster by decreasing the amount of physical storage that is required to house a small-file archive repository. In addition, SmartDedupe data deduplication software enhances storage efficiency to reduce physical storage requirements by up to 35 percent. Both SFSE and SmartDedupe use shadow stores (file system containers that allow data to be stored in a shareable manner).
• Thin provisioning—The SmartQuotas feature assigns and manages quotas that seamlessly partition and thin-provision storage into easily managed segments at the cluster, directory, subdirectory, user, and group levels. • Load balancing—The SmartConnect feature enables client-connection load balancing and the dynamic NFS failover and failback of client connections across storage nodes to optimize the use of cluster resources. • Data protection—Isilon scale-out NAS and the Isilon OneFS operating system architecture provide native data protection through high availability and fault
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tolerance for high volumes of digital content and unstructured data. The storage is highly resilient and offers N+1 through N+4 redundancy. • Security—The SmartLock feature protects critical data against accidental, premature, or malicious alteration or deletion with a software-based approach to write once read many (WORM). SmartLock meets stringent compliance and governance needs, such as SEC 17a-4 requirements. The OneFS operating system also offers a broad range of security options, including: . FIPS 140-2 level 2 self-encrypting drives . Role-based access control (RBAC) . Secure access zones . SMB3 encryption . HDFS Transparent Data Encryption (TDE) . File system auditing • Management and monitoring—The InsightIQ feature maximizes the performance of your Isilon scale-out storage system with performance management, monitoring, and reporting capabilities. • Flexibility—OneFS powered storage solutions support all major protocols and data-access methods including NFS, SMB, HDFS, HTTP, and FTP. This capability means that you can support a wide range of applications and workloads on a single platform. In Isilon scale-out NAS, the OneFS operating system combines the three layers of traditional storage architectures—file system, volume manager, and data protection—into one software layer. This unified layer provides a single intelligent distributed file system that runs on an Isilon storage cluster.
Figure 4. OneFS: One unified software layer
The OneFS operating system provides enterprises with the ability to successfully use scale-out NAS in their environments today by adhering to the key principles of scale-out: intelligent software, commodity hardware, and distributed architecture. The system stores and manages data in the Isilon storage cluster by providing a single file system that operates outside the constraints of traditional scale-up constructs such as RAID groups. This file system enables the placement of data anywhere on the cluster to accommodate a variety of levels of performance and protection.
Each Isilon cluster operates within a single volume and namespace within the file system that is distributed across all nodes. There is no partitioning, and clients have a coherent view of their data from any node in the cluster. Because all information is shared among nodes across the internal network, data can be written to or read from any node. This
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capability optimizes performance when multiple users are concurrently reading and writing to the same set of data.
Because the storage has been virtualized for the users and administrator, all capacity is available from an application or user perspective. The file system can grow organically without requiring significant planning or oversight. The administrator does not have to manage tiering files to the appropriate disk because the SmartPools feature handles that automatically. Also, because the Isilon SyncIQ service automatically parallelizes the transfer of the data to one or more alternate clusters, replicating such a large file system requires no special considerations.
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Chapter 3 Configurations and Specifications
This chapter presents the following topics:
Recommended platforms and components ...... 20
Design configuration ...... 21
Dell EMC Fabric Design Center ...... 22
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Chapter 3: Configurations and Specifications
Recommended platforms and components
The following table provides a list of the components that are required to build a virtualized infrastructure for this Ready Stack: Table 1. Component specifications
Component Details
Compute hosts 6 Dell EMC PowerEdge R640 servers
Processor Intel Xeon Gold-6252
Memory 256 GB: 8 x 32 GB DDR4–2,933 MT/s, dual-rank RDIMMs
Storage adapter PERC H730p RAID controller, 2 GB NV cache, mini-card
Local storage 2 x 240 GB SSD SATA read-intensive 6 Gbps 2.5 in. hot-plug boot AG drives, 1 DWPD, 438 TBW (RAID 1)
Operating system volume BOSS controller card + with 2 M.2 sticks 240 GB (RAID 1), low profile
Network Mellanox ConnectX-54 LX dual-port 10/25 GbE SFP28 adapter, PCIe low profile
HBA Emulex 35002 dual-port 32 Gb FC PCIe low profile
Hypervisor VMware ESXi 6.7 U3
Management hosts 2 Dell EMC PowerEdge R640 servers
Processor Intel Xeon Gold 6252
Memory 128 GB: 16 x 8 GB DDR4–2,933 MT/s, dual-rank RDIMMs
Storage adapter PERC H730p RAID controller, 2 GB NV cache, mini-card
Local storage 2 x 240 GB SSD SATA Read Intensive 6 Gbps 2.5 in. hot-plug boot AG drives, 1 DWPD, 438 TBW
Operating system volume BOSS controller card + with 2 M.2 sticks 240 GB (RAID 1), low profile
Network Mellanox ConnectX-54 LX dual-port 10/25 GbE SFP28 adapter, PCIe low profile
HBA Emulex LPE 35002 2692 dual-port 32 Gb FC PCIe low profile
Hypervisor VMware ESXi 6.7 U3
Management software • VMware vCenter Server Appliance • Dell EMC OpenManage Integration for VMware vCenter • Dell EMC Virtual Storage Integrator (VSI)
OOB connectivity Dell EMC PowerSwitch S4148T-ON switch
LAN connectivity Ethernet traffic: • For leaf: 2 x Dell EMC PowerSwitch S5248F-ON switches • For spine (if needed): Dell EMC PowerSwitch Z9264F-ON switches
Isilon back-end network 2 Dell EMC PowerSwitch Z9100-ON switches
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Component Details
Storage arrays • Dell EMC Unity XT 480F (All-Flash) • Dell EMC Isilon H500 (Hybrid)
Storage fabric • For Dell EMC Unity XT 480F: FC (SAN) • For Dell EMC Isilon H500: NAS
Storage fabric switches • SAN: 2 Dell EMC Connectrix DS-6600 Series • NAS: 2 Dell EMC PowerSwitch S5248F-ON
Data protection Options available with Dell EMC Isilon OneFS operating system
Hypervisor VMware ESXi 6.7 U3
Licenses* • Dell EMC iDRAC9 Enterprise • VMware vSphere Enterprise Plus 1 CPU, 3 Year • VMware vCenter Standard License, 3 Year • Dell EMC OpenManage Integration for VMware vCenter, 3 Year
Cable requirements Consult Dell Technologies Sales team
*Match the quantity of required licenses to the number of servers that will be deployed.
Design configuration
This Dell EMC Ready Stack includes Dell Technologies’ latest enterprise-level rack servers, LAN and SAN switches, storage arrays, and state-of-the-art management software. These Ready Stack components have been carefully selected and tested to provide outstanding performance and value.
This Ready Stack design offers flexibility to address various virtualization use cases and workloads, including the increasing demands that come from unstructured data. Sizing a physical infrastructure for all virtualized workloads in a specific environment requires knowledge of all the individual workloads and related compute, memory, storage, and network performance requirements. After you have created one or more VM profiles that meet your requirements, you can approximate the physical infrastructure that is required to support VMs while also accounting for expected future growth. When finalizing sizing, ensure that you also consider server and storage maintenance requirements and virtualization features such as high availability. Conduct a site survey in cases where an approximation is not sufficient.
This Ready Stack provides a description of a typical implementation. For information about applying the resources and methodologies that are described in this guide to a smaller- or larger-scale implementation, consult your Dell Technologies Sales team.
For the purposes of this document, we have proposed a sample configuration that is based on the following balanced VM profile for a single VM:
2 vCPUs, 6 GB vRAM, 60 GB vDisk, 50 IOPS
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Chapter 3: Configurations and Specifications
For example, when scaled to a configuration of 500 VMs, the resource totals are:
1,000 vCPUs, 3 TB vRAM, 30 TB vDisk, 25,000 IOPS
We based our configuration sizing on a vCPU-to-CPU oversubscription of 4:1. The configuration provides the physical infrastructure resources that are necessary to accommodate the total number of VMs while providing ample headroom for growth.
Dell EMC Fabric Design Center
Dell EMC Fabric Design Center (FDC), shown in the following figure, is a web-based network design customization and configuration tool that helps you quickly design and deploy Dell EMC PowerSwitch network fabrics.
Figure 5. Fabric Design Center
Using the FDC wizard, you can experiment with network configurations from initial roll-out to future expansions and additions. The FDC: • Automates the planning, design, and deployment of network fabrics for Dell Technologies’ compute and storage infrastructure solutions, such as Isilon • Translates business intent to network designs and switch configurations • Generates logical and physical network views for networking planning and topology decisions
22 Dell EMC Ready Stack for VMware vSphere with Isilon and Unity XT Storage Design Guide Chapter 3: Configurations and Specifications
• Provides Dell EMC PowerSwitch details such as bills of materials, network diagrams, and cabling diagrams • Simplifies and automates new fabric deployments and helps you scale up and scale out existing fabrics in the data center
The FDC accelerates time to value, automates network deployment, offers faster time to production, and provides an interoperable network fabric that is sized for the environment. The FDC is available at fdc.emc.com.
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Chapter 4: Ready Stack Design
Chapter 4 Ready Stack Design
This chapter presents the following topics:
Compute design ...... 25
Network design ...... 25
Storage design ...... 28
Management design ...... 32
24 Dell EMC Ready Stack for VMware vSphere with Isilon and Unity XT Storage Design Guide Chapter 4: Ready Stack Design
Compute design
Dell EMC Ready Stack offers customers a selection of rack servers for their compute infrastructure. The Ready Stack architecture can easily be scaled up by adding compute resources to existing nodes or adding nodes to the existing cluster, or by doing both. You can also easily scale out to a multi-pod/multi-rack architecture.
The latest generation of Intel Scalable processors, Cascade Lake, power this Ready Stack design. With up to 28 cores per CPU and clock speeds of up to 4.0 GHz in the PowerEdge rack servers, you can reduce CPU socket-based licensing costs and achieve greater VM density.
The PowerEdge rack server platforms support the RDIMM and Load Reduced DIMM (LRDIMM) memory types. LRDIMMs use an isolation memory buffer (iMB) to isolate electrical loading from the host memory controller. This buffer and isolation allow for the use of quad-ranked DIMMs to increase overall memory capacity. For performance- optimized virtualization solutions, 2,933 MT/s RDIMMs are recommended. You can configure memory in various modes from within the BIOS. For optimized memory performance with most virtualization use cases, use the default mode, Performance Optimized. For improved reliability and resiliency, other modes such as mirror mode and spare mode are available.
The Mellanox CX4 LX 10/25 Gb dual-port Ethernet adapter is the recommend adapter for virtual workload and host communication. The Emulex 35002 dual-port 32 Gb FC low- profile adapter is the recommended adapter for FC SAN storage connectivity.
PowerEdge servers support various BIOS configuration profiles that control the processor, memory, and other configuration options. Dell Technologies recommends that you: • Enable the Performance Optimized Virtualization profile. • Disable processor C-states and C1E to ensure the highest performance in a virtualized environment. • Enable Intel Hyper-Threading Technology and Virtualization Technology features.
Network design
Dell EMC The network architecture employs a Virtual Link Trunking (VLT) connection between the PowerSwitch two ToR switches. In a VLT environment, all paths are active, adding immediate value and S5248F-ON throughput while still protecting against hardware failures. Redundancy of a non-VLT switches environment requires standby equipment, which drives up infrastructure costs and increases complexity.
VLT technology allows a server or bridge to uplink a physical trunk into more than one Dell EMC PowerSwitch S5248F-ON switch by treating the uplink as one logical trunk. A VLT- connected pair of switches acts as a single switch to a connecting bridge or server. Both links from the bridge network can actively forward and receive traffic. VLT provides a replacement for Spanning Tree Protocol (STP)-based networks by providing both redundancy and full bandwidth utilization using multiple active paths. VLT technology provides: • Dual control planes for highly available resilient network services
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• Full utilization of the active link aggregation group (LAG) interfaces • Active/active design for seamless operations during maintenance events
The Dell EMC PowerSwitch S5248F-ON switches each provide six 100 GbE uplink ports. The following figure shows the VLT interconnect (VLTi) configuration in this architecture:
Figure 6. PowerSwitch S5248F-ON VLTi configuration
The configuration uses two 100 GbE ports from each ToR switch to provide a 200 Gb data path between the switches. The remaining four 100 GbE ports allow for high-speed connectivity to spine switches or directly to the data center core network infrastructure. They can also be used to extend connectivity to other racks.
You can scale out the Ready Stack by adding multiple compute nodes (pods) in the data center. You can use the Dell EMC PowerSwitch Z9264F-ON switch to create a simple yet scalable network, as shown in the following figure:
Figure 7. Multiple compute pods scaled out using leaf-spine architecture
26 Dell EMC Ready Stack for VMware vSphere with Isilon and Unity XT Storage Design Guide Chapter 4: Ready Stack Design
The Z9264F-ON switches serve as the spine switches in the leaf-spine architecture. The Z9264F-ON is a multi-rate switch that supports 10/25/40/50/100 GbE connectivity and can aggregate multiple racks with little or no oversubscription.
When connecting multiple racks, by using the 40/100 GbE uplinks from the rack you can build a large fabric that supports multi-terabit clusters. The density of the Z9264F-ON enables flattening the network tiers and creating an equal-cost fabric from any point to any other point in the network.
For large domain layer-2 requirements, you can use extended multi-domain VLT on the Z9264F-ON, as shown in the following figure. The VLT pair that is formed can scale in terms of hundreds of servers inside multiple racks. Each rack has six 100 GbE links to the core network (two are used for VLT), providing enough bandwidth for all the traffic between each rack.
Figure 8. Multiple compute pods scaled out using multi-domain VLT
Network The Isilon arrays are configured for connection to two different networks—the external or connections for client-facing network and the internal or back-end network, as shown in Figure 1. Isilon arrays The external or client-facing network uses 10 GbE fiber to connect the Isilon nodes to the Isilon cluster’s external network PowerSwitch S5248F-ON switches. The internal or back- end network connects Isilon nodes to the Isilon cluster's internal network so that the Isilon nodes can communicate with each other. With Isilon OneFS 9.0.x, back-end communication between Isilon cluster nodes includes the option to use a pair of redundant
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10 GbE or 40 GbE switches. The Isilon H500 uses 40 GbE fiber connections to the Z9100-ON switches. With the Z9100-ON switches, you can add Isilon nodes to support rapidly growing unstructured data needs for a true scale-out NAS solution.
Network The compute cluster consists of Dell EMC PowerEdge rack servers. The compute and configuration for management rack servers have two 10/25 GbE connections to S5248F-ON switches PowerEdge rack through one Mellanox ConnectX-5 LX dual-port 10/25 GbE network card. servers
Network Customers can achieve bandwidth prioritization for different traffic classes such as host configuration for management, vSphere vMotion, NFS, and the VM network using vSphere Distributed vSphere Switch (VDS). VDS can be configured, managed, and monitored from within vCenter and Distributed provides: Switch LAN • Simplified VM network configuration traffic • Enhanced network monitoring and troubleshooting capabilities • Support for Network I/O Control (NIOC) when Network Partitioning (NPAR) is not available
The following figure shows the VDS configuration for the management and compute servers:
Figure 9. VDS configuration
Storage design
Dell EMC Unity This Ready Stack uses the Dell EMC Unity XT x80F All-Flash storage platform with XT All-Flash vSphere integration. The Ready Stack is connected to a 32 Gb FC storage network. The systems Unity XT x80F is designed for all-flash storage. With all-inclusive software, Unity XT All- Flash systems deliver consistent performance with low response times and are ideal for mixed virtual-workload requirements. Two Dell EMC Connectrix DS-6620B switches make up the FC fabrics.
28 Dell EMC Ready Stack for VMware vSphere with Isilon and Unity XT Storage Design Guide Chapter 4: Ready Stack Design
The following table shows a comparison of the Unity XT x80F All-Flash storage arrays that this Ready Stack solution supports. For more information, see the Dell EMC Unity XT Storage Series Specification Sheet.
Table 2. Dell EMC Unity XT x80F All-Flash systems
Resources Unity XT 380F Unity XT 480F Unity XT 680F Unity XT 880F
Processor (per storage 2 x Intel CPUs, 12 2 x dual-socket Intel 2 x dual-socket Intel 2 x dual-socket Intel processor) cores per array, CPUs, 32 cores per CPUs, 48 cores per CPUs, 64 cores per 1.7 GHz array, 1.8 GHz array, 2.1 GHz array, 2.1 GHz
Memory (per storage 128 GB 192 GB 384 GB 768 GB processor)
Maximum number of 500 750 1,000 1,500 drives
Maximum capacity 2.4 PB 4.0 PB 8.0 PB 16.0 PB (raw)
Maximum FAST Cache Up to 800 GB Up to 1.2 TB Up to 3.2 TB Up to 6.0 TB
Storage fabric configuration The solution configuration includes two FC fabrics for high availability. For the Unity XT x80F arrays, FC port 0 from each controller connects to the FC fabric switch A, while FC port 1 connects to FC fabric switch B. Unity XT x80F arrays have expansion slots that can provide additional front-end (FC) or back-end (mini-SAS HD) ports. For more information, see the Dell EMC Unity XT Storage Series Specification Sheet.
Storage connectivity for compute and management servers Each management and rack compute server is configured with an Emulex 35002 dual- port FC 32 Gb PCIe low-profile adapter for connecting to the storage fabrics. Each port connects to a Connectrix switch.
Unity XT enclosures Each Unity x80F storage array is equipped with two back-end buses that use mini-SAS HD connectivity. Connect additional enclosures so that the load is balanced equally between the available buses. The Disk Processor Enclosure is on Bus 0. Therefore, place the first expansion enclosure on Bus 1, the second expansion enclosure on Bus 0. For details about adding enclosures, see the Dell EMC Unity: Best Practices Guide.
Unity XT storage configuration For both rack server platforms, each server’s HBA port 1 connects to the Connectrix switch 1, while HBA port 2 connects to the Connectrix switch 2. These ports are then zoned with the Unity array target ports to enable storage access for the hypervisor hosts.
Multiple datastores within the vSphere cluster enable vSphere High Availability (HA) datastore heartbeating, ensuring that partitioning or isolated host networks do not trigger VM movement within the cluster. By default, the vSphere cluster selects at least two (and up to five) datastores for datastore heartbeating.
Block storage presented to vSphere hosts from the Unity XT x80F array has the round- robin Path Selection Policy (PSP) applied by default. While a round-robin PSP is
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recommended for Unity block storage, the default number of IOPS between switching paths is 1,000. Reducing this value enables more efficient use of all paths.
VMware currently supports a maximum datastore size of 64 TB and 2,048 powered-on VMs per VMFS datastore. However, in most circumstances and environments, the target number of VMs per datastore depends on multiple factors. These factors include workload profile (IOPS, throughput, data locality, read/write percentage), underlying storage and fabric configuration, and recoverability requirements. As a conservative recommendation, 15 to 25 VMs per 1.25 TB to 2.5 TB datastore is typical. You can easily expand LUNs and vSphere datastores to address future growth. Maintaining a smaller number of VMs per datastore greatly reduces the potential for I/O contention, which results in more consistent performance across the environment.
Unity arrays offer thin provisioning as a recommended option for block storage, and they require thin provisioning to enable compression. Using thin provisioning within VMware on virtual disks does not initially result in additional space efficiency when thin provisioning is enabled on the array. However, the ability to reclaim space from within a compatible guest operating system requires that thin provisioning be used on both the storage and the virtual disks.
Isilon NAS Sixth-generation Isilon platforms The sixth generation of Isilon storage arrays consists of eight new platforms: two All-Flash platforms (F800, F810), four Hybrid platforms (H600, H5600, H500, H400), and two Archive platforms (A200, A2000). All Isilon platforms are powered by the Isilon OneFS 9.0.x operating system. The new Isilon platforms integrate easily into an existing Isilon cluster or can be deployed as a new cluster to enable IT modernization. These platforms all use a new, highly dense modular architecture that provides four Isilon nodes within a single Isilon chassis.
The previous generation of Isilon hardware required a minimum of three nodes with a minimum of 6U of rack space to form a cluster. The new generation of Isilon hardware requires a single chassis of four nodes in only 4U of rack space to create a cluster, providing a 75-percent density savings. For back-end internode communication, the new generation of hardware adds support for Ethernet connectivity, in addition to the previously supported InfiniBand connectivity.
The new Isilon arrays provide newly designed drive sleds to contain the physical drives. The drive sleds provide increased availability and redundancy, allowing for faster disk rebuilds during recovery from a hardware failure. In addition, the “node-pair” design provides increased resiliency and availability. Within each chassis, each node in an identical pair of nodes shares a mirrored journal and two power supplies to eliminate single points of failure and increase data availability.
This generation of Isilon hardware also delivers vastly improved serviceability due to its standardized modular design. All new Isilon models include similar components. For example, in the front of the chassis, all nodes across all models have five sleds that house the drives, with identical specific locations at the back. This design consistency means that pulling out a drive or drive sled is the same across all nodes. Streamlining serviceability of hardware improves speed to recovery, reduces errors, and lowers risk.
30 Dell EMC Ready Stack for VMware vSphere with Isilon and Unity XT Storage Design Guide Chapter 4: Ready Stack Design
The following table compares the new Isilon platforms:
Table 3. Sixth-generation Dell EMC Isilon systems
Model Capacity per chassis Storage per chassis
F800 96–924 TB 60 SSDs (1.6 TB, 3.2 TB, 3.84 TB, 7.68 TB, or 15.36 TB)
F810 230–924 TB 60 SSDs (3.84 TB, 7.68 TB, or 15.36 TB)
H600 72–144 TB 120 SAS drives (600 GB or 1.2 TB)
H5600 800–960 TB 80 SATA drives (10 TB or 12 TB)
H400 and H500 120–720 TB 60 SATA drives (2 TB, 4 TB, 8 TB, or 12 TB)
A200 120–720 TB 60 SATA drives (2 TB, 4 TB, 8 TB, or 12 TB)
A2000 800 TB or 960 TB 80 SATA drives (10 TB or 12 TB)
Isilon H500 The Isilon H500 array runs on the OneFS 9.0.x operating system. This versatile hybrid platform is designed to provide high throughput and scalability by delivering up to 5 GB/s bandwidth per chassis with a capacity of up to 720 TB per chassis. With 60 SATA drives per chassis, the Isilon H500 offers a choice of 2 TB, 4 TB, 8 TB, or 12 TB capacity. It can also be configured with four to eight 1.6 TB or 3.2 TB SSDs in each chassis for cache, to optimize performance.
The Isilon H500 can support a broad range of enterprise workloads and file use cases. Compared to the Isilon S210 platform, the H500 provides two times more throughput and eight times more rack capacity. Each Isilon H500 has 128 GB of memory per node, a choice of 10 GbE or 40 GbE for front-end networking, and InfiniBand or 40 GbE for back- end connectivity.
Table 4. H500 node attributes and options
Attribute Description
Capacity 120–720 TB
Hard drives 15 per node/60 per chassis (2 TB, 4 TB, 8 TB, or 12 TB SATA drives)
Number of nodes (per chassis) 4
Cache (per node) solid-state drives 1 or 2 (1.6 TB or 3.2 TB)
Self-encrypting drive (SED) option? Yes
OneFS version .9.0.x and later
System memory (per node) 128 GB
Front-end networking (per node) 2 x 10 GbE (SFP+) or 2 x 40 GbE (QSFP+)
Network interfaces Support for IEEE 802.3 standards for 1 GbE, 10 GbE, 25 GbE, and 40 GbE network connectivity
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Attribute Description
Drive controller SATA-3 6 Gbps, SAS-3 12 Gbps
CPU type Intel Xeon E5-2630 v4
Infrastructure (back-end) networking 2 InfiniBand connections with quad data rate (per node) (QDR link or 2 x 40 GbE (QSFP+)
Management design
Management The management infrastructure consists of two PowerEdge R640 servers that form a infrastructure management cluster. Management components are virtualized to provide high availability. Redundant 10/25 GbE uplinks to the network infrastructure and redundant 32 Gbps FC uplinks to the storage array combined with vSphere HA ensure that management components stay online. A PowerSwitch S4148F-ON switch provides OOB connectivity. iDRAC ports in each management and compute cluster connect to the S4148F-ON switch.
The management software components include: • VMware vCenter Server Appliance • Dell EMC OpenManage Integration for VMware vCenter • Dell EMC Virtual Storage Integrator (VSI)
The following figure shows the management infrastructure:
Figure 10. Management infrastructure
Management The management software components for this Ready Stack solution require a nominal cluster amount of virtual server resources. Running the management software on a separate virtual environment hosted on dedicated servers provides for security and workload isolation and for less resource contention with the compute workloads. Our design shows a minimal configuration with only two management servers; however, for a VMware HA cluster, we recommend a minimum of three management servers.
32 Dell EMC Ready Stack for VMware vSphere with Isilon and Unity XT Storage Design Guide Chapter 4: Ready Stack Design
VMware vCenter vCenter Server Appliance 6.7 is a preconfigured Linux VM that is optimized for running Server Appliance vCenter Server and its associated services. The appliance package contains the following software: • Project Photon OS 1.0 • PostgreSQL database • vCenter Server 6.7 and vCenter Server 6.7 components • VMware Platform Services Controller (contains all the necessary services for running vCenter Server, such as vCenter Single Sign On, VMware License Service, and VMware Certificate Authority)
vCenter Server provides management of virtualized hosts and VMs from a single console. It gives administrators visibility into the configuration of the critical components of a virtual infrastructure. vCenter Server enables key vSphere features such as vMotion, Distributed Resource Scheduler, HA, and Fault Tolerance. The open plug-in architecture of vCenter Server supports a broad range of additional capabilities from VMware and its partners. The vCenter Server APIs also allow integration of physical and virtual management tools for maximum flexibility.
Dell EMC Virtual Dell EMC VSI for vSphere Web Client is a vCenter plug-in. It enables administrators to Storage view, manage, and optimize storage for VMware ESXi hosts, and then map that storage to Integrator the hosts. VSI consists of a UI and the Dell EMC Solutions Integration Service (SIS), which provides communication and access to the storage systems.
Using the SIS, a storage administrator can enable VM administrators to perform management tasks on a set of storage pools. For the Unity XT platforms, these tasks include datastore provisioning, compression management, space reclamation, and multipathing policy management.
When you install VSI, it automatically registers Dell EMC PowerPath/VE SAN multipathing software and enables you to set multipathing policies for all devices by using the VMware Native Multipathing Plug-In (NMP) or PowerPath/VE software. After installing VSI, you can provision VMFS-6 datastores in vCenter Inventory Lists in data centers, folders, clusters, and hosts. Also, using the space reclamation feature in VSI, you can reclaim unused storage on datastores, hosts, clusters, folders, and storage folders. Space reclamation tasks are created per datastore. Scheduling from the host, cluster, folder, or storage folder level results in one scheduled task per datastore under the target object. Only one scheduled reclamation task can exist for each datastore.
Dell EMC Dell EMC OpenManage Integration for VMware vCenter is designed to streamline the OpenManage management processes in your data center environment. It allows you to use vCenter to Integration for manage your entire server infrastructure—both physical and virtual. For example, with VMware vCenter Dell EMC OpenManage Integration for VMware vCenter, you can use vCenter to: • Monitor system-level information and obtain system alerts • Deploy cluster-level BIOS and firmware updates for an ESXi cluster • Perform bare-metal deployments
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Dell EMC OpenManage Integration for VMware vCenter provides deep-level details for inventory, monitoring, and alerting of Dell EMC hosts within vCenter. It recommends or performs vCenter actions, based on Dell EMC hardware events.
Proactive HA is a vCenter feature that works with Dell EMC OpenManage Integration for VMware vCenter. When enabled, Proactive HA safeguards your workloads by acting proactively in response to degradation of redundancy health of supported components in a host. When Dell EMC OpenManage Integration for VMware vCenter detects a change in the redundancy health status of supported components (either through traps or polling), the health update notification for the component is sent to the vCenter server. Polling runs every hour, and it is available as a fail-safe mechanism to cover the possibility of a trap loss. After assessing the redundancy health status of the supported host components, the Dell EMC OpenManage Integration for VMware vCenter appliance updates the vCenter server with the health status change.
Deployment templates contain a system profile, hardware profile, hypervisor profile, a combination of system profile and hypervisor profile, or a combination of the hardware profile and hypervisor profile. The Dell EMC OpenManage Integration for VMware vCenter Configuration Wizard uses the deployment template to provision server hardware and deploy hosts within vCenter. We recommend that you use the latest system profile type for Dell EMC rack servers. For internal dual SD module deployment, enable the IDSDM from the BIOS before you deploy a hypervisor with Dell EMC OpenManage Integration for VMware vCenter.
Management The management software components run on VMs that reside in the management software cluster. The following table lists the management components in the bundle and the resources recommended VM sizing of those components:
Table 5. Management component sizing
CPU RAM Disk Component VMs NICs cores (GB) (GB)
VMware vCenter Server Appliance 1 8 24 525 1
Dell EMC OpenManage Integration for 1 4 16 95 1 VMware vCenter
34 Dell EMC Ready Stack for VMware vSphere with Isilon and Unity XT Storage Design Guide Chapter 5: References
Chapter 5 References
This chapter presents the following topics:
Dell EMC documentation ...... 36
VMware documentation ...... 37
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Chapter 5: References
Dell EMC documentation
The following Dell EMC documentation provides relevant information. Access to these documents depends on your login credentials. If you do not have access to a document, contact your Dell EMC representative.
• Dell EMC PowerEdge R640 documentation
• Dell EMC PowerEdge R640 Spec Sheet • Dell EMC PowerEdge R640 Technical Guide
• Dell EMC PowerEdge Rack Servers Quick Reference Guide
• Dell EMC PowerEdge Server Solutions Brochure • Support for Integrated Dell Remote Access Controller 9 (iDRAC9)
• Dell EMC Networking OS10 Enterprise Edition Quick Start and Interoperability Guide
• Dell EMC Data Center Networking Quick Reference Guide
• Dell EMC Connectrix DS-6600B Switches Specification Sheet • Dell EMC Networking ONIE Quick Start Guide
• Dell Networking S-Series 25/40/50/100GbE switches
• PowerSwitch S4148F-ON/S4148T-ON/S4148FE-ON documentation • Dell EMC Networking Z9264F-ON Series Switch Spec Sheet
• S5200F-ON Series Installation Guide
• Dell EMC Unity Family |Dell EMC Unity All Flash documentation • Dell EMC Unity: Unisphere Overview White Paper
• Dell EMC Unity XT Storage Series Specification Sheet
• Dell EMC Unity XT: Introduction to the Platform Technical White Paper • Dell EMC Unity: Best Practices Guide
• Dell EMC Isilon Scale-Out Network Attached Storage
• Isilon technical documents and videos • Dell EMC Isilon Hybrid Scale-Out NAS Specification Sheet
• Dell EMC Isilon Scale-Out NAS Product Family Data Sheet
• Isilon H500 Documentation • Dell EMC Isilon OneFS Operating System Data Sheet
• Storage Tiering with Dell EMC Isilon SmartPools White Paper
• Scalable Dell EMC Isilon Storage Solutions with Dell EMC Open Network Fabrics Solution Brief
• Dell EMC OpenManage Integration for VMware vCenter Knowledge Base
36 Dell EMC Ready Stack for VMware vSphere with Isilon and Unity XT Storage Design Guide Chapter 5: References
• Dell EMC OpenManage Integration for VMware vCenter Web Client documentation
• Dell EMC PowerScale: Network Design Considerations • Dell EMC Virtual Storage Integrator (VSI) for VMware vSphere Client Product Guide • VSI for VMware vSphere Web Client
VMware documentation
For additional information about vSphere, see VMware vSphere Documentation on the VMware Docs website.
Dell EMC Ready Stack for VMware vSphere with Isilon and Unity XT Storage 37 Design Guide
Appendix A: Deployment Considerations
Appendix A Deployment Considerations
This appendix presents the following topics:
Introduction ...... 39
General deployment guidelines ...... 39
Planning for growth ...... 40
Compute ...... 40
Networking ...... 41
Storage ...... 42
Additional considerations ...... 43
38 Dell EMC Ready Stack for VMware vSphere with Isilon and Unity XT Storage Design Guide Appendix A: Deployment Considerations
Introduction
The converged infrastructure system described in this design guide combines Isilon and Unity XT storage with PowerEdge rack servers and PowerSwitch networking. This appendix provides additional deployment details to help you get the most out of your overall design.
General deployment guidelines
The physical architecture of this solution offers an infrastructure foundation that affords flexibility, scalability, redundancy, workload isolation, security, and high availability.
This Ready Stack solution provides the following design characteristics: • Both vSphere management and compute cluster hosts use local storage to boot the operating system. • The Unity XT system provides high-performance block storage to both vSphere management and compute cluster hosts through the FC SAN fabric. LUN-backed VMFS datastores host the VMDKs. • The Isilon system provides high-performance NAS storage to both vSphere management and compute cluster hosts through NFS over the Ethernet fabric. NFS-backed shares provide file share repository services. • Security and isolation are achieved by physical and logical separation of: . Hosts . Fabrics . Services
• Enterprise infrastructure services such as Active Directory, NTP, and DHCP are hosted as VMs on the management cluster, though they may be present externally. • A single vCenter instance is used for both management and compute cluster resources. • The PowerSwitch S5232F-ON terminates L2 and connects to the customer network through redundant uplinks to either a spine switch or router by way of Open Shortest Path First (OSPF) or Border Gateway Protocol (BGP) with equal-cost multi-path (ECMP) routing.
We imaged all hosts with the Dell EMC customized VMware ESXi 6.7 U3 A04 image, which contains Dell specific driver VIBs already packaged and configured. This customized imaging reduces the amount of manual work involved in standardizing images by ensuring that the latest supported drivers and features are installed.
You can download the customized ESXi image from Dell Support at Dell EMC customized VMware ESXi 6.7 U3 A04 image.
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Appendix A: Deployment Considerations
Planning for growth
You can scale this Ready Stack solution up or out by adding resources. For example:
• Scale out by adding: . Servers . Switches . Storage arrays
• Scale up by adding: . Server memory . Storage array disk enclosures
You can scale resources asymmetrically, which provides a high degree of flexibility and prevents unnecessary overprovisioning of resources. For example, storage resources can be scaled up or out independently of network and server resources. Both Unity XT and Isilon systems allow drive expansion, while PowerSwitch switches support Ports on Demand licensing expansion.
Depending upon your rack power distribution unit (PDU) configuration, scale-out scenarios might require additional racks and have additional thermal requirements. The product documentation details the environmental requirements. As a best practice, place all PDUs on separate UPS circuits. When a port count exceeds a single set of S5248F- ON ToR switches, expand to another set and implement an upstream S9264F-ON as a spine switch to create a meshed leaf/spine architecture.
Compute
We recommend the following BIOS settings for the PowerEdge servers: • Memory: Default options • Processor: Default options • System Profile: Performance (nondefault option)
The following table shows the performance BIOS settings:
Table 6. Performance BIOS settings
System profile Custom/performance
CPU Power Management Maximum Performance
Memory Frequency Maximum Performance
Turbo Boost# Enabled
C-States Disabled
C1E Disabled
Memory Patrol Scrub Standard
40 Dell EMC Ready Stack for VMware vSphere with Isilon and Unity XT Storage Design Guide Appendix A: Deployment Considerations
Networking
VLAN for NFS To isolate NAS traffic, use a separate VLAN for NFS traffic. Using a separate VLAN also traffic provides an additional layer of security for deployments using NFSv3, which does not support encryption by default. Isilon systems support NFSv4.1, which provides encryption capabilities; however, NFSv4.1 does not support vSphere features such as Storage DRS, Storage I/O Control, and Site Recovery Manager. For this reason, we recommend using NFSv3, which Isilon supports as well.
Jumbo frames For optimal performance, enable jumbo frames on the network components servicing on Isilon nodes Isilon NFS. Testing has shown that enabling jumbo frames delivers 98 to 99 percent efficiency, depending on the packet type, when all hops from the client endpoint to an Isilon node support jumbo frames.1 Without jumbo frames enabled, packets likely will be fragmented, leading to additional processing overhead on devices or Path MTU Discovery finding the lowest MTU along the path. Because each workload environment is unique, enable jumbo frames and measure performance enhancements in a lab before updating a production network.
We enabled jumbo frames on the Isilon nodes, physical switches, NICs, and VMkernel ports.
Single root I/O The Mellanox ConnectX-5 supports singe root I/O virtualization (SR-IOV), which allows virtualization multiple operating systems to share a physical interconnect. This feature eliminates costly emulation layer overhead between the guest driver and I/O hardware. SR-IOV is enabled by default in the PowerEdge BIOS; however, ensure that it is enabled in ESXi and the VMs that will use this feature.
The following figure shows the SR-IOV architecture:
Figure 11. Basic SR-IOV architecture
1 See Dell EMC PowerScale: Network Design Considerations.
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Appendix A: Deployment Considerations
Flow control and The IEEE 802.3x standard defines an Ethernet flow control mechanism at the Data Link Isilon nodes Layer. It specifies a pause flow control mechanism through MAC control frames in full- duplex link segments. For flow control to be successfully implemented, it must be configured for the network hops through which the source and destination endpoints communicate. Otherwise, the pause flow control frames are not recognized and are dropped.
By default, the Isilon OneFS operating system listens for pause frames but does not transmit them, meaning flow control is only applicable when an Isilon node is the source. In the default behavior, the OneFS system recognizes pause frames from the destination. However, pause frames can be enabled for transmission, depending on the NIC.
For sixth-generation Isilon nodes with ix NICs, check for pause frames by running the following command from the OneFS CLI:
infPerf-1# sysctl -d dev.ix.0.mac_stats.xon_txd dev.ix.0.mac_stats.xon_txd: Link XON Transmitted <<<<<<<<
vSphere To ensure that NFS network traffic would not oversaturate the network links, we optimizations: implemented vSphere Network I/O Control (NIOC) and Storage I/O Control (SIOC). Two NIOC and SIOC 25 GbE links per host provide sufficient bandwidth for most general-purpose VMs, however enabling NIOC and SIOC ensures fine-grained control of network traffic such as NFS.
SIOC is used to throttle IOPS to a datastore on a per-VM basis, which prevents “noisy- neighbor” scenarios where certain VMs can monopolize storage bandwidth. NIOC works by setting priority and bandwidth using priority tags in TCP/IP packets. These priority tags allow administrators to control network consumption by traffic type, which is particularly beneficial when using shared network pipes. NIOC and SIOC are complementary traffic- control features.
Storage
The sample workload in this Ready Stack solution may be different than your anticipated workload. Be sure to size the VMFS datastores hosted on the Unity XT array properly, factoring in VMDK size, IOPS, and concurrency. The Dell EMC Midrange Sizer Tool can help you to model your storage requirements, providing customized array configurations based on your current and future storage workloads.
For the IOPS created by this Ready Stack use-case, the Unity XT480F is more than sufficient.
Unless you have specific use cases, use dynamic storage pools on the Unity XT 480F. Dynamic pools were introduced for all-flash systems in Dell EMC Unity OE version 4.2 and later. Dynamic pools replace the previous pool technology, now referred to as traditional pools, as the default pool type for all-flash systems. Dynamic pools use advanced RAID techniques and distributed sparing to offer better storage utilization and more simplified planning than traditional pools. Dynamic pools provide numerous benefits over traditional pools.
42 Dell EMC Ready Stack for VMware vSphere with Isilon and Unity XT Storage Design Guide Appendix A: Deployment Considerations
Dynamic pools eliminate the need to design a pool based on a multiple of a stripe width. When creating a dynamic pool, after selecting a minimum drive count for a given level of RAID protection, you can select almost any number of drives to place within the pool. Thus, you can plan a pool based on a specific capacity without concern for stripe-width- based multiples of drives counts. When expanding a dynamic pool, since the stripe-width multiple does not apply, you can also expand the pool by a specific target capacity. In most cases, you can add a single drive to the pool to increase its capacity. These features provide flexible deployment models, which improve the planning and provisioning process. Eliminating the need for extra drives to fulfill a stripe-width multiple also reduces the total cost of ownership of the configuration.
For Isilon systems, we suggest implementing SmartConnect using a round-robin load- balancing policy. Binding multiple IP addresses to each node interface in a SmartConnect subnet pool is considered a best practice. Most deployments achieve optimal balancing and failover when the number of addresses allocated to the subnet pool equals N * (N – 1), where N equals the number of node interfaces in the pool. For example, if a pool is configured with a total of five node interfaces, the optimal IP address allocation would total 20 IP addresses (5 * (5 – 1) = 20). In this scenario, you would allocate four IP addresses to each node interface in the pool.
SmartConnect also supports IP failover to provide continuous access to data when hardware or a network path fails. Dynamic failover is recommended for high availability workloads on SmartConnect subnets that handle traffic from NFS clients.
To evenly distribute connections and optimize performance, size SmartConnect for the expected number of connections and for the anticipated overall throughput likely to be generated. The sizing factors for a SmartConnect pool include: • The total number of active client connections expected to use the pool’s bandwidth at any time • The expected aggregate throughput that the pool needs to deliver • The minimum performance and throughput requirements in case an interface fails
Additional considerations
For additional information and resources, contact your Dell Technologies sales team.
Dell EMC Ready Stack for VMware vSphere with Isilon and Unity XT Storage 43 Design Guide