Use Case Study: Implementing a VMware ESXi Cluster with Dell Active System Manager Author: Amy Reed Dell Group: Software Systems Engineering
Use Case Study: Using Active System For VMware Cluster Environment Configuration 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. Dell and the Dell logo are trademarks of Dell Inc.
Use Case Study: Using Active System For VMware Cluster Environment Configuration Contents Introduction ........................................................................................................... 4 Active Infrastructure ................................................................................................. 4 Active System Manager (ASM) ......................................................................................
Use Case Study: Using Active System For VMware Cluster Environment Configuration Introduction This whitepaper describes how to use Active System Manager (ASM) Management and Deployment templates to configure a blade system infrastructure to host a VMware cluster. The servers in this cluster will be configured by Active System Manager to boot from an ESXi 5.1 image on their internal redundant SD cards which have been pre-installed with ESX 5.1 at the factory.
Use Case Study: Using Active System For VMware Cluster Environment Configuration Fabric A, iSCSI-Only Configuration (No Data Center Bridging) For this use case, Fabric A will be set up by Active System Manager for an iSCSI-only configuration. An iSCSI-only network contains iSCSI traffic and no other traffic.
Use Case Study: Using Active System For VMware Cluster Environment Configuration maintain their own identities and act as two independent switches that work together, so they must be configured and managed separately. Downlinks to the I/O aggregators must be configured as LACP-enabled LAGs.
Use Case Study: Using Active System For VMware Cluster Environment Configuration In a LAN-only configuration, the LAN distribution switches have only four types of ports: Out-of-band management Stacking ports Downlinks to the I/O aggregator in the M1000e chassis Uplinks to the routed network Downlinks to the I/O aggregators must be configured as LACP-enabled LAGs.
Use Case Study: Using Active System For VMware Cluster Environment Configuration Network Partitioning (NPAR) Network or NIC partitioning (NPAR) divides a network adapter into multiple independent partitions. In the case of the Broadcom 57810 CNA, these partitions can each support concurrent network and storage functions, which appear as independent devices to the host operating system.
Use Case Study: Using Active System For VMware Cluster Environment Configuration The Chassis Management Controllers (CMCs) within the M1000e blade environment are the main access point to the management of the blade chassis, I/O Modules, and servers. It is a Dell best practice to configure and connect redundant CMC modules to the out of band management network. The ASM virtual appliance will also require access to the same network the CMC’s are plugged into.
Use Case Study: Using Active System For VMware Cluster Environment Configuration Keep in mind IQN names have a specified format and it is recommended to maintain this format to avoid issues when customizing your iSCSI initiators in ESXi. Keep a record of the IQN names assigned to each of the shared storage volumes as they will be required later when the iSCSI connections are configured on each of the ESXi hosts. Figure 3.
Use Case Study: Using Active System For VMware Cluster Environment Configuration example for heartbeat or vMotion). Finally, Active System Manager will configure the I/O Module server facing ports to provide access to the necessary VLANs required by the ESXi host. Create Networks and Identity Pools In Active System Manager, first create the various network and identity pools required for the overall environment.
Use Case Study: Using Active System For VMware Cluster Environment Configuration Discover Chassis Once you have defined the networks and virtual identities for your environment you are ready to discover your blade chassis using Active System Manager. Chassis discovery will be initiated by providing the CMC IP Address of the chassis you wish to manage.
Use Case Study: Using Active System For VMware Cluster Environment Configuration Create Deployment Template Before moving forward with configuration of the chassis, this section describes creating the Deployment Template for the ESXi hosts. This template will specify the various settings required to configure the BIOS, RAID, and Networking for the servers, as well as the server facing ports of the I/O Module.
Use Case Study: Using Active System For VMware Cluster Environment Configuration configuration in the OS. If this scenario was executing an iSCSI boot use case, specifying the Native VLAN would be a requirement. The bandwidth minimum and maximum in this case will both be set to 10Gb since this port will not be divided into partitions. Redundancy is enabled on this Virtual NIC. By enabling redundancy here, one iSCSI connection on fabric A1 and one on fabric A2 with identical settings will be enabled.
Use Case Study: Using Active System For VMware Cluster Environment Configuration physical ports of the device. This allows you to distribute the load of these devices across both of your I/O Modules. On the right side of the diagram you can see how the virtual NICs in Active System Manager map to the physical NIC partitions when you map based on Physical Partition order. Your virtual NICs map in order to your physical NIC partitions, but you do not maximize the entire fabric of I/O Modules. Figure 4.
Use Case Study: Using Active System For VMware Cluster Environment Configuration Figure 5. Mapping Order Example with Redundancy Going forward with Deployment Template configuration, you will set the “OS Boot” type to “SD Card”. This assumes you have ordered your server from Dell with ESXi pre-installed on your SD module. If this is not the case, you may configure your Deployment template to use a one-time boot mechanism such as PXE or iDRAC secure boot to install an ESXi image to the SD card.
Use Case Study: Using Active System For VMware Cluster Environment Configuration Part of the chassis configuration process is to bring all of the firmware in the devices in the chassis to a baseline level. The wizard will display the firmware which will be updated on each device. You must select the option to update the firmware to proceed with configuration of the chassis. Active System Manager requires a certain minimum level of firmware to be installed on the device for management.
Use Case Study: Using Active System For VMware Cluster Environment Configuration on. Select one or more servers you wish to deploy to under the category of “Manual Server Selection”, then complete the wizard to start deployment. The deployment of servers should take several minutes to complete. You may check the status of your deployments by navigating to the “Deployments” item in the navigation menu on the left.
Use Case Study: Using Active System For VMware Cluster Environment Configuration Create Cluster Before adding hosts to the vCenter environment, create a cluster for these hosts to reside in. Creating a cluster will provide the ability to pool the resources of all of the added hosts. Two or more iSCSI volumes will be utilized for the clusters datastores which will be used to store the virtual machines hosted by the cluster.
Use Case Study: Using Active System For VMware Cluster Environment Configuration Configure Management Network, Storage Network, vMotion Network, and Customer Networks ESXi Networking Overview There are several networks that must be set up on the ESXi host. This section describes completing configuration of the hypervisor management network, vMotion, and Virtual Machine networks as well as adding networking for storage which is handled via the EqualLogic MEM.
Use Case Study: Using Active System For VMware Cluster Environment Configuration Configure Redundant Hypervisor Management Network Upon initial setup of the host, vmnic2 was selected as the management NIC, this corresponds to the B1 fabric mezzanine card port 1 partition 1 of the CNA. Another NIC (vmnic3) will be added for redundancy and will corresponds to port 2 partition 1 of the B2 fabric mezzanine card.
Use Case Study: Using Active System For VMware Cluster Environment Configuration Where is the zip file, such as dell-eql-mem-esx5-1.1.2.292203.zip. When prompted, login as “root” with the correct ESXi host setup password. This process could take several minutes. Successful setup will present the “Clean install was successful” message. Next configure the host using the MEM. At the same vCLI prompt, execute the following command.
Use Case Study: Using Active System For VMware Cluster Environment Configuration adapter. Since an iSCSI IQN was from the Active System Manager pool, it is recommended to enter the IQN assigned by Active System Manager for consistency, but you may use a different IQN if you wish. Note that VMware software does check for the correct IQN format and will not let you enter a value if it doesn’t follow the IQN naming specification referenced earlier in this document.
Use Case Study: Using Active System For VMware Cluster Environment Configuration highlighted, click the link to go to “Properties”. Click the “Manage Paths” button to go to the multipathing settings for this shared volume. By default the volume will be set to a “Fixed” multi-pathing configuration. For the purposes of this example, change this to a “Round Robin” configuration. This will allow both paths to the storage to be active and fully utilize the throughput of both ports.
Use Case Study: Using Active System For VMware Cluster Environment Configuration Once the settings are capture in the Host Profile, this profile can be applied to the other hosts in the cluster. Keep in mind that some settings are still host-specific and you will be prompted to configure these settings when you deploy the host profile to the host. For example, you will have to create specific MAC Addresses, IQNs, and IP Addresses when you apply your host profile.
Use Case Study: Using Active System For VMware Cluster Environment Configuration Native VLAN – is an ASM Deployment Template term. When a Native VLAN is selected in an ASM Deployment Template, that VLAN ID is designated as an untagged VLAN on the server facing port of the blade I/O module. Virtual Link Trunking (VLT) – Force 10 technology that allows you to create a single link aggregated port channel using ports from two different switch peers providing redundancy in the case of a switch failure.
