Reference Architecture for an Active System 800 with VMware vSphere Release 1.
Active System 800v with VMware vSphere: Reference Architecture This document is for informational purposes only and may contain typographical errors and technical inaccuracies. The content is provided as is, without express or implied warranties of any kind. © 2012 Dell Inc. All rights reserved. Dell and its affiliates cannot be responsible for errors or omissions in typography or photography.
Active System 800v with VMware vSphere: Reference Architecture Revision History Revision A00 Description Initial Version Page iii
Contents 1 Introduction .......................................................................................................... 2 2 Audience .............................................................................................................. 2 3 Overview .............................................................................................................. 2 4 Design Principles ..................................................................................................
1 Introduction Dell Active Infrastructure is a family of converged infrastructure solutions that combine servers, storage, networking, and infrastructure management into an integrated and optimized system that provides general purpose virtualized resource pools. Active Infrastructure leverages Dell innovations including unified management (Active System Manager), converged LAN/SAN fabrics, and modular server architecture for the ultimate converged infrastructure solution.
EqualLogic Storage, as illustrated in Figure 1. Readers can skip the sections of products with which they are familiar.
Table 1 below describes the key solution components and the roles served. Table 1: Solution Components Component Details Hypervisor Server Up to 2x Dell PowerEdge M1000e chassis with up to 32x Dell PowerEdge M620 Blade Servers and embedded VMware vSphere 5.
VMware vCenter Update Manager: VMware vCenter Update Manager automates patch management, enforcing compliance to patch standards for VMware ESXi hosts. VMware Storage vMotion™: VMware Storage vMotion enables real-time migration of running VM disks from one storage array to another with no disruption or downtime. It minimizes service disruptions due to planned storage downtime previously incurred for rebalancing or retiring storage arrays.
local configuration), six hot-pluggable/redundant power supplies, and nine hot-pluggable N+1 redundant fan modules. Blade Servers: The PowerEdge M620 blade server is the Dell 12th generation PowerEdge half height blade server offering: New high-efficiency Intel® Xeon® E5-2600 family processors for more advanced processing performance, memory, and I/O bandwidth. Greater memory density than any previous PowerEdge server.
Remote Services are standards-based interfaces that enable consoles to integrate, for example, bare-metal provisioning and one-to-many OS deployments, for servers located remotely. Dell‘s Lifecycle Controller takes advantage of the capabilities of both USC and Remote Services to deliver significant advancement and simplification of server deployment. Lifecycle Controller Serviceability aims at simplifying server re-provisioning and/or replacing failed parts, and thus reduces maintenance downtime.
PowerEdge™ servers — Integrated Dell Remote Access Controller 7 (iDRAC7) with Lifecycle Controller — to enable agent-free remote management and monitoring of server hardware components like storage, networking, processors, and memory.
management traffic. The PS6110 Series 10GbE arrays can use Data Center Bridging (DCB) to improve Ethernet quality of service and greatly reduce dropped packets for an end-to-end iSCSI over DCB solution, from host adapters to iSCSI target. The key features of the EqualLogic PS6110 series arrays are: Dedicated 10GbE ports that enable you to use SFP+ or 10GBASE-T cabling options Simplified network storage management with a dedicated management port 2.5" drives in 2U or 3.
3.11 Dell Cloud Connectivity using VMware vCloud Connector VMware vCloud Connector lets you view, operate on, and transfer your computing resources across vSphere and vCloud Director in your private cloud environment, as well as Dell vCloud public cloud. Expand your view across hybrid clouds. Use a "single pane of glass" management interface that seamlessly spans your private vSphere and public Dell vCloud environment. Extend your datacenter.
8. Power, Cooling, and Weight Considerations: Active System 800v solution is configured with Power Distribution Units (PDUs) to meet the power requirements of the components as well as regional constraints. Power consumed, cooling required, and information regarding rack weight are provided to enable customers to plan for the solution. 9. Flexible configurations: Active System 800v is pre-configured to suit most customer needs for a virtualized infrastructure.
The figure shows high-level logical connectivity between various components. Subsequent sections of this document provide more detailed connectivity information. 6 Dell Blade Network Architecture In Active System 800v, the Fabric A in PowerEdge M1000e blade chassis contains two Dell PowerEdge M I/O Aggregator modules, one in I/O module slot A1 and the other in slot A2, and is used for converged LAN and SAN traffic. Fabric B and Fabric C (I/O Module slot B1, B2, C1, and C2) are not used.
7 Converged Network Architecture One of the key attributes of the Active System 800v is the convergence of SAN and LAN over the same network infrastructure. LAN and iSCSI SAN traffic share the same physical connections from servers to storage. The converged network is designed using Data Center Bridging (IEEE 802.1) and Data Center Bridging Exchange (IEEE 802.1AB) technologies and features.
Connectivity between the Dell PowerEdge M I/O Aggregator and Force10 S4810 switches: The two PowerEdge M I/O Aggregator modules are configured to operate as a port aggregator for aggregating 16 internal ports to eight external ports. The two fixed 40GbE QSFP+ ports on each PowerEdge M I/O Aggregator are used for network connectivity to the two Force10 S4810 switches.
Figure 4: Converged Network Logical Connectivity 7.2 Converged Network Configuration This section provides details of the different configurations in the Active System 800v that enable the converged network in the solution. DCB Configuration: Data Center Bridging (DCB) and Data Center Bridging Exchange (DCBX) technologies are used in Active System 800v to enable converged networking.
Broadcom NDCs in the PowerEdge M620 blade servers, and the EqualLogic PS6110 storage controllers. The DCB settings are not propagated to the Force10 S55 out-of-band management switch and the associated out-of-band management ports but the out-of-band management traffic going to the core from Force10 S55 switch traverses through the Force10 S4810 switches. When the out-of-band management traffic traverses through the Force10 S4810 switches, it obeys the DCB settings.
connecting bridge or server. Both links from the bridge network can actively forward and receive traffic. VLT provides a replacement for Spanning Tree-based networks by providing both redundancy and active-active full bandwidth utilization. Major benefits of VLT technology are: 1. Dual control plane on the access side that lends resiliency. 2. Full utilization of the active LAG interfaces. 3. Rack-level maintenance is hitless and one switch can be kept active at all times.
Table 2: VLAN Overview Traffic Type (VLAN segregation) Management Description Associated Network Device vSphere management traffic and Broadcom NDC and Broadcom Network Adapter Active System 800v management services vMotion VMware vMotion traffic Broadcom NDC and Broadcom Network Adapter VM LAN traffic generated by compute cluster VMs Broadcom NDC and Broadcom Network Adapter iSCSI iSCSI SAN traffic Broadcom NDC and Broadcom Network Adapter Out-of-Band Management Out-of-Band Management traf
Figure 6: vSwitch and NPAR Configuration for the Hypervisor Hosts Page 19
Load Balancing and Failover: This solution uses Route based on the originating virtual switch port ID configuration at the vSwitch for load balancing the LAN traffic. Any given virtual network adapter will use only one physical adapter port at any given time. In other words, if a VM has only one virtual NIC, it will use only one physical adapter port at any given time.
It is important to include space for the guest operating system memory cache, snapshots, and VMware configuration files when sizing these volumes. Additionally, you can configure thin-provisioned volumes to grow on demand only when additional storage is needed for those volumes. Thin provisioning can increase the efficiency of storage utilization. With each volume created and presented to the servers, additional iSCSI sessions are initiated.
As storage I/O requests are generated on the ESXi hosts, the MEM plug-in will intelligently route these requests to the array member best suited to handle the request. This results in efficient load balancing of the iSCSI storage traffic, reduced network latency and increased bandwidth. For more information on EqualLogic MEM, refer to white-paper, Configuring and Installing the EqualLogic Multipathing Extension Module for VMware vSphere 5.1, 5.0 and 4.1 and PS Series SANs.
Figure 7: Management Components The remainder of this section will provide an introduction to each component and how they are integrated into the Active System 800v solution. 9.1 Dell Active System Manager As described in section 3.2, ―Dell Active System Manager‖, the Dell Active System Manager is the Active Infrastructure management software that is part of the Active System 800v solution. The Dell Active System Manager virtual appliance is deployed on the management cluster.
Availability service. OME utilized a local SQL Express database. For fullest functionality, direct internet access, or through a proxy, is recommended. Within the Active System 800v, OME is utilized for discovery, inventory, and hardware level monitoring of blade & Rack servers, blade chassis, PowerEdge M I/O Aggregator modules, EqualLogic storage, and Force10 network switches.
9.5 Dell EqualLogic Virtual Storage Manager (VSM) for VMware Within Active System 800v, the Dell EqualLogic Virtual Storage Manager (VSM) for VMware is deployed as a virtual appliance within the management cluster and is attached to the VMware vCenter Server within the Active System 800v stack. VSM communicates with the dedicated management interfaces of the EqualLogic storage enclosures over the out-of-band network.
Formatted reports, graphs and archives: Customizable reports and graphs are available on performance, capacity utilization and trending, group configuration with alerts, replication, status, host connections, and more. 9.7 VMware vCloud Connector VMware vCloud Connector is an optional component of the Active System 800v solution. When included, it is deployed upon the management stack, alongside other management VMs.
configuration can be added to the existing PS 6110 arrays. New volumes can be created or existing volumes can be expanded to utilize the capacity in the added enclosures. Active System 800v solution can scale up to maximum of 8 arrays. To scale beyond this, additional racks can be added which may require additional switches and networking. 11 Delivery Model This Reference Architecture can be purchased as a complete solution, the Dell Active System 800v.
Figure 8: Active System 800v Single Chassis: Rack Overview Page 28
Figure 9: Active System 800v Two Chassis and Maximum Storage: Rack Overview Page 29
12 Reference Dell Active Infrastructure reference: Dell Active System Manager Dell Active Infrastructure Wiki VMware references: VMware vSphere Edition Comparisons VMware vSphere Compatibility Matrixes VMware High Availability (HA): Deployment Best Practices VMware Virtual Networking Concepts Dell PowerEdge References: Dell PowerEdge M1000e Technical Guide Dell PowerEdge M I/O Aggregator Configuration Quick Reference NIC Partitioning (NPAR) Dell EqualLogic references:
