02 - Vce 1CN Vxrailam PDF

This module introduces the management interfaces used for the administration and management of a
VxRail Appliance. An overview of VMware vSAN and the VxRail naming conventions is also presented.
Copyright © 2017 Dell Inc. VxRail Appliance Administration and Management 1

This lesson introduces the management interfaces used for the administration and management of a
VxRail Appliance. VxRail Manager, VMware vSphere Web Client, VMware vRealize Log Insight, and
iDRAC/BMC.

VxRail Appliance is designed to simplify everyday management tasks and activities, even monitoring.
VxRail Manager provides efficient management through easy to follow simplified set of processes and
procedures.

VxRail Infrastructure Management is the practice of managing the physical infrastructure of a VxRail
Appliance and optimizing its ongoing operation. The objective is to reduce complexity and costs while
making it easier to quickly support new applications and other business requirements.

VxRail’s complete lifecycle management approach is at the heart of simplifying and extending a VMware
environment. Let us look at the elements that make up this lifecycle management, starting with the VxRail
manager.
The VxRail Manager provides a wizard-based, user-friendly dashboard interface to automate the
appliance configuration, health, and management. Another feature within VxRail Manager is EMC Secure
Remote Services (ESRS). ESRS is a two-way, secure remote connection between the Dell EMC
equipment and Dell EMC Customer Service that enables remote monitoring, diagnosis, and repair.
vCenter Server is included with VxRail. Customers can optionally use the vCenter Server license included
with their VxRail Appliance or alternatively, they can add the VxRail nodes to an existing vCenter Server.
VMware vCenter Server provides a centralized platform for managing VMware vSphere environments to
automate and deliver a virtual infrastructure with confidence. Administer the entire vSphere infrastructure
from a single location. Allocate and optimize resources for maximum efficiency.
VxRail manager uses VMware vRealize Log Insight to capture events and provide real-time holistic
notifications about the state of applications, VMs, and hardware. Log Insight also tracks alerts for
hardware, software, and VMs. It delivers real time automated log management with log monitoring,
intelligent grouping, and analytics.
Remote management is also available for the VxRail hardware. Remote management can provide, but is
not limited to, remote console access, power controls, virtual media, and BIOS access type activities. Dell
iDRAC is used for the Gen 3 VxRail hardware, and the older generation VxRail hardware nodes use the
IPMI/BMC interface providing the same basic capabilities.
When managing across sites and the entire ecosystem, VxRail seamlessly integrates with vRealize
Operations and vRealize Automation.

VxRail Manager streamlines deployment, configuration, and management for easier initial setup and
ongoing operations. VxRail Manager also provides integration for Dell EMC services and support to help
get the most out of the VxRail Appliance.
You can use VxRail Manager to monitor system health with deep hardware intelligence and graphical
representation. View appliance software versions and updates. Access online support and community
resources such as the user forum and knowledgebase. Use the VxRail Market to access qualified
software products. Perform maintenance operations such as replacing hardware, adding drives, and
cycling power to the cluster or nodes. Perform system software upgrades, and expand the cluster by
adding nodes.
Dell EMC or Dell EMC Partners execute the initial setup of the VxRail Appliance. VxRail Manager is
accessed via a supported web browser – https://<VxRail Manager hostname or IP address>. Log in to
VxRail Manager with the administrator or management user names that were used during the VxRail initial
setup.
The VxRail Manager software stack runs on a VM hosted on the VxRail vSAN cluster.

The graphic shows the VxRail Manager Dashboard view when you log in to VxRail Manager. We present
all the VxRail Manager views and tasks in a subsequent module. The VxRail Manager has tabs for
Dashboard, Support, Events, Health, and Config. Click a specific tab to navigate and use the functionality
of that tab. VxRail Manager also has online help and a link to the vSphere Web Client for the vCenter
Server managing the VxRail cluster.

EMC Secure Remote Services (ESRS) is a two-way, secure remote connection between your Dell EMC
environment and Dell EMC Customer Service. It enables remote monitoring, diagnosis, and repair—
assuring availability and optimization of your Dell EMC products. It is secure, high speed, and included in
all Enhanced and Premium support agreements at no additional cost.
With ESRS, Dell EMC can periodically monitor the appliance and is notified of failures enabling support to
take preventative measures to help avoid downtime. When coupled with ESRS, Dell EMC 24x7 Support is
incredibly simple. Dell EMC handles all appliance issues regardless of whether they are hardware or
software related. Support can be reached directly from the VxRail Manager.

VxRail virtual infrastructure is managed through the VMware vCenter Server interface. It provides a
familiar vSphere experience that enables streamlined deployment and the ability to extend the use of
existing IT tools and processes. Within a VxRail solution, vCenter provides several services and
interfaces, including:
• Core VM and resource services such as an inventory service, task scheduling, statistics logging, alarm
and event management, and VM provisioning and configuration
• Distributed services such as vSphere vMotion, vSphere DRS, and vSphere HA

vSphere Web Client and the vSphere Client communicate directly with vCenter Server. VMware vSphere
Web Client is a browser-based, fully extensible, platform-independent user interface. vSphere Web Client
is based on Adobe Flex. All operations necessary for working with vSphere, ESXi, and VMware vCenter
Server are possible with vSphere Web Client. vSphere Client is a new HTML5-based client that can be
used alongside vSphere Web Client. In its initial release in vSphere 6.5, it does not yet have feature parity
with vSphere Web Client.
VMware Host Client was introduced in vSphere 6.0 U2 and provides direct management of individual ESXi
hosts. In vSphere 6.5, it replaces the Windows-based vSphere Client, and it is only used when
management through vCenter Server is not possible.

VMware vRealize Log Insight delivers highly scalable log management with intuitive, actionable
dashboards, sophisticated analytics and broad third-party extensibility, providing deep operational visibility
and faster troubleshooting.

Remote management is also available for the VxRail hardware—all generations. Remote management
can provide, but is not limited to, remote console access, power controls, virtual media, and BIOS access
type activities. Dell iDRAC – Integrated Dell Remote Access – is used for the Gen 3 VxRail hardware.
IPMI/BMC – Intelligent Platform Management Interface/Baseboard Management Controller is used for
remote management of the older generation VxRail hardware.
When using the Remote Management interface, you must adhere to the power guidelines in the Dell EMC
VxRail Appliance Guide unless otherwise instructed. Use VxRail Manager to handle VxRail cluster
shutdown operations. This action enforces proper cluster shutdown unless working on a single node, such
as a node replacement or node maintenance.

The Integrated Dell Remote Access Controller – iDRAC – is designed to make server administrators more
productive and improve the overall availability of Dell servers. iDRAC alerts administrators to server
issues, helps them perform remote server management, and reduces the need for physical access to the
server. iDRAC with Lifecycle Controller is embedded in every Dell PowerEdge server.
When you log in to iDRAC, the System Summary page allows you to view the managed system's health
and server information. You can also preview the virtual console, and quickly launch tasks. The tab on the
top provides you option to view system details including hardware, iDRAC information, and system
location. The system inventory tab provides information on system hardware and firmware inventory. The
menu on the left provides information on various aspects of a Dell PowerEdge server. The list contains:
• System event and Lifecycle Logs
• Power and Thermal configuration and monitoring
• Access to server console through HTML5 and Java plug-ins
• Alerts, and SNMP settings
• System boot setup
• Diagnostics and troubleshooting
• iDRAC license and chassis intrusion
• iDRAC settings
• System performance and hardware overview
• Storage overview and topology
• Host OS information
For detailed information on iDRAC, refer to the iDRAC user manual available at www.dell.com.

When you log in to the IPMI/BMC interface, the Dashboard gives the overall information about the status
of the remote server. Device information, network information, and the status of all the sensors is also
shown. The menu options on the top allow you to switch between different views and tasks. E.g. The
Remote Control option allows you to launch a remote console with Console Redirection or to manage the
power status using the Server Power Control option.

This lesson presents vSAN architecture, components, and fault tolerance concepts.

VxRail is powered by VMware Virtual SAN (vSAN). vSAN provides an efficient means of pooling storage
across the ESXi nodes. This slide provides a brief introduction to the VMware Virtual SAN (vSAN)
architecture. It is helpful to have a foundational understanding of vSAN functionality and administration
when administering a VxRail Appliance. vSAN aggregates local or direct-attached data storage devices to
create a single storage pool shared across all hosts in the vSAN cluster.
A vSAN enabled system eliminates the need for external storage resources, such as a storage array while
providing storage configuration and virtual machine provisioning. vSAN software resides in the ESXi
hypervisor itself and is fully integrated with VMware vSphere. It also supports vSphere features that
require shared storage such as High Availability (HA), vMotion and Distributed Resource Scheduler
(DRS).

There are several options available to provide storage efficiencies. Deduplication and compression,
erasure coding, vSAN software checksum, Storage Based Policy Management (SPBM), along with
efficient use of snapshots and clones. Deduplication and compression, along with erasure coding is only
available for All Flash models. Data encryption requires external vCenter server.

A vSAN cluster consists of any number of physical ESXi hosts – VxRail requires at least three. Each host
either contains flash devices (all flash configuration) or a combination of flash and HDDs (hybrid
configurations). These devices contribute cache and capacity to the vSAN datastore. Each host can have
one to five disk groups, a disk group contains one cache device and one to seven capacity devices. Refer
to the VxRail specification sheet for details on specific VxRail models.
Similar to SAN storage, the cluster boundary is similar to SAN zoning. No host outside the cluster can
access the vSAN datastore.

Object Store File System (OSFS) is used to mount the vSAN datastore. vSAN stores and manages data in
the form of flexible data containers called objects. An object is a logical volume that has its data and
metadata distributed across the cluster. The objects include VM Home, VM Swap, VMDK, Memory
(vmem), and Snapshots. At least four objects are created per VM based on the policies defined.

Each object in a vSAN is composed of a set of components. The VM storage policy determines the set of
components. When needed, vSAN might also break large objects into multiple components. The
maximum size of a component is 255 GB.

The Number of failures to tolerate (FTT) and Failure tolerance method (FTM) settings in the storage policy
govern vSAN fault tolerance behavior. FTT is the number of failures the cluster should be designed to
tolerate before data loss occurs. FTT=1, and FTM = RAID-1 are the default settings.
FTM is the failure tolerance method, either RAID-1 (Mirroring) or RAID-5/6 (Erasure Coding). Mirroring
can accommodate an FTT setting of 1–3. If FTM is set to mirroring, then for N failures tolerated, N+1
copies of the object are created. Mirroring requires witness components, the number of witnesses is equal
to the FTT setting. Hence 2N+1 hosts contributing storage are required. The witness components serve as
tiebreakers when availability decisions are made in the vSAN cluster.
Erasure coding can only accommodate FTT=1 (RAID-5) or FTT=2 (RAID-6). Erasure coding does not
require a witness disk stripe per object
Objects are objects on disk like snapshots, VMDK files, and witnesses. VMware recommends leaving the
default value of one. Force provisioning can be used to override all variables

While erasure coding uses less storage, more IO is driven to the disks. For this reason erasure coding is
only supported on all flash VxRail systems.

Erasure coding provides enhanced data protection from a disk or node failure in a storage efficient fashion
compared with traditional protection solutions. Erasure coding stripes the data in equal size chunks.
There are two protection options. RAID-5, single parity to protect against one failure and RAID-6 to protect
against two concurrent failures.
Erasure coding is only available for all flash VxRail systems. There is a slight impact on latency and IOPS
throughput of the All Flash appliance. It takes CPU cycles to compute parity and some additional network
activity. However, consider that the All Flash appliance provides significantly higher throughput and lower
latency than the Hybrid appliance.

VxRail requires a minimum of three nodes. The default vSAN storage policy with FTT set to 1 and FTM to
RAID-1 mirroring supports this configuration. This example shows the two copies of the data and Witness.
vSAN uses a quorum voting algorithm to protect against split-brain scenario. As long as more than 50% of
the components are accessible, an object is available for reads and writes. In a RAID-1 scenario with FTT
set to 1, each vSAN object has three components, two copies of data and, the witness. If one of the
components fails, two of the three components, i.e. 66% of the components are still accessible. So reads
and writes can continue. One more component failure cannot be tolerated. We will look at a single node
failure in the next slide.

In this example, node-02 experiences a failure. This failure could be due to multiple causes including
hardware failure, software bugs, or regular maintenance. Because the requirements in the previous slide
are met, the failure is tolerated. Two of the three vSAN components are still accessible, the copy of data
on node-01, and the witness on node-03. IO can still flow through the data copy on node-01, no outage is
experienced.
While there is no data loss, the appliance is now exposed and further failures could lead to data loss or
data unavailability.
If there is a failure that is less than a complete node failure like storage controller or disk. There is a
possibility of recovery, but only to the node with the failed component.
The scenario above shows why three nodes is not a desired configuration even though it is supported.

In this example, we have a four node VxRail cluster with the default vSAN storage policy – FTM set to
RAID-1 and FTT set to 1. The three elements – two copies of data and the witness – are spread across
three of the four nodes shown. Assume node-02 experiences a failure.

Just as we saw in the three node failure case, the data is still accessible from node-01. Unlike the three
node case, the fourth node allows for recovery after a failure by rebuilding any of the failed components on
node-04. Resources from node-04 are used by other components to accomplish the recovery, but each
component only needs resources from three nodes. Four nodes results in a much higher level of
availability.

The tables show the minimum number of nodes required for various FTT/FTM combinations. Self-healing
requires an extra host/node beyond the minimum.
Understanding the implications of this table is critical. Three is the minimum node configuration, but that is
only available in FTT=1, FTM=RAID1. This configuration is vulnerable to a failure during maintenance and
if a node fails and the system cannot self-heal.
In all flash VxRail systems, customers might want to use RAID-5 for space efficiency. For RAID-5, a
minimum of four nodes are required. An extra node would be required for each configuration for self-
healing.
It is important to understand that three node clusters are only supported with specific storage
configurations which are not ideal for all use cases.

This lesson presents the VxRail naming conventions and a review of the VxRail configuration after initial
setup has been completed.

The VxRail datacenter and cluster names depend on the choice of vCenter Server during VxRail
deployment.
For a customer supplied (external) vCenter Server, the datacenter, and cluster names are customer
specified. The datacenter must exist in the external vCenter Server, the dluster name is specified during
the initial setup of VxRail. The specified cluster name applies to the VxRail vSAN cluster and to the VDS
(virtual distributed switch).
For deployments which use the VxRail deployed vCenter Server, the datacenter and cluster names are
created during deployment. The names are as shown on the slide depending on the version of VxRail.
VxRail components can be renamed, follow the specific procedures which are available in Dell EMC
SolVe Desktop. We present renaming in a later module of this course.

The VxRail cluster hosts the system virtual machines used to manage and monitor the VxRail deployment.
The VxRail Manager VM is always hosted on the VxRail cluster.
VxRail deployments with the internal vCenter Server: The VxRail Manager, the vCenter Server Appliance,
and the vCenter Server Platform Services Controller VMs are hosted on the VxRail cluster. Optionally with
the internal vCenter Server deployment the vRealize Log Insight and ESRS/VE VMs could also be hosted
on the VxRail cluster.
VxRail deployments with a customer supplied vCenter Server: In addition to the VxRail Manager VM, the
ESRS/VE could also be hosted on the VxRail cluster.

The VxRail initial setup creates the VxRail vSAN cluster. The VxRail cluster network configuration uses a
virtual distributed switch with multiple distributed port groups. The graphic shows the VxRail distributed
switch topology. In this example VxRail was deployed with the internal vCenter Server. The vCenter
Server port group shows the VxRail system VMs. Uplink 1 in the uplink port group contains vmnic0 from
each of the VxRail nodes in the cluster, likewise Uplink 2 contains vmnic1 from each node.

We take a closer look at the VxRail virtual distributed switch and the distributed port groups. The uplink
port group contains the physical adapters from each of the VxRail nodes – 2 x 10 Gb vmnics from each
node.
Each VxRail node is configured with at least four VMkernel adapters, these adapters are members of the
VxRail Management, Management, vSAN and vMotion port groups. The VxRail Management port group is
used internally by VxRail during initial setup.
The vCenter Server port group is for the virtual machine traffic generated by the VxRail system VMs like
the VxRail Manager. Customer VM network port groups are also typically configured for customer VM
traffic.

The graphic in an example of the VMkernel adapters configured on a Gen 2 VxRail node. The Network
Label column indicates the port group name in the distributed switch. We also see the services that are
enabled on each port group.

The VxRail vSAN cluster is automatically configured during the initial setup. Deduplication and
compression can be enabled for all flash VxRail systems, it is disabled by default.
Encryption is a vSAN feature introduced in vSAN 6.6 and is available in VxRail 4.5. Encryption requires an
external vCenter Server and an external key management system. Integrates with all KMIP-compliant key
management technologies.
Unicast is supported for vSAN communications starting with vSAN 6.6 and is available on VxRail 4.5.
vSAN automatically uses unicast mode in new VxRail 4.5 deployments. The core benefit is to reduce
network configuration complexity. ToR switches do not have to be configured for IGMP snooping, or PIM
for routing multicast traffic.

Each VxRail node contributes storage to the vSAN datastore. The graphic shows an example of a VxRail
node that has one disk group. The example is a hybrid system, each disk group has five disks – one flash
disk used for caching and four capacity HDDs.

The initial setup of VxRail creates two VxRail vSAN storage policies in addition to the default vSAN
storage policy as shown in the graphic. Do not delete the VxRail vSAN storage policies.
The VxRail system VMs use VXRAIL-SYSTEM-STORAGE-PROFILE which guarantees 100% object
space reservation with failures to tolerate set to 1. Thus in effect the system VMs have RAID-1 protection
with guaranteed storage.
VXRAIL-STORAGE-PROFILE has number of failures to tolerate set to 1, this policy is available for use by
any VMs deployed on the VxRail cluster. Other vSAN storage policies can be created and used as
necessary.
On VxRail systems pre-v4.5 the VxRail vSAN storage policy names started with MARVIN instead of
VXRAIL.

The default storage policy for the VxRail vSAN datastore can be changed if necessary. The default built-in
vSAN storage policy is effectively a RAID-1 policy. Customers with all flash VxRail systems may choose to
implement a storage policy which uses RAID-5/6 (Erasure Coding) for space efficiency. In this example
we have created a storage policy called “All flash R5 vSAN profile”. This policy can be made the default
for the vSAN datastore.

The purpose of this lab is to become familiar with the VxRail Manager GUI.

The purpose of this lab is to use the vSphere Web Client to explore a recently deployed VxRail cluster.

The purpose of this lab is to use the HTML5 vSphere Client to explore a recently deployed VxRail cluster.
The functionality of the HTML5 vSphere Client is compared to the vSphere Web Client.

This module introduced the management interfaces used for the administration and management of a
VxRail Appliance. Overview of VMware vSAN and the VxRail naming conventions were also presented.

02 - Vce 1CN Vxrailam PDF

Uploaded by

Document Information

Original Title

Copyright

Available Formats

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Available Formats

02 - Vce 1CN Vxrailam PDF

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

This module introduces the management interfaces used for the administration and management of a

Copyright © 2017 Dell Inc. VxRail Appliance Administration and Management 1

Copyright © 2017 Dell Inc. VxRail Appliance Administration and Management 2

Copyright © 2017 Dell Inc. VxRail Appliance Administration and Management 3

Copyright © 2017 Dell Inc. VxRail Appliance Administration and Management 4

Copyright © 2017 Dell Inc. VxRail Appliance Administration and Management 5

Copyright © 2017 Dell Inc. VxRail Appliance Administration and Management 6

Copyright © 2017 Dell Inc. VxRail Appliance Administration and Management 7

Copyright © 2017 Dell Inc. VxRail Appliance Administration and Management 8

• Distributed services such as vSphere vMotion, vSphere DRS, and vSphere HA

Copyright © 2017 Dell Inc. VxRail Appliance Administration and Management 9

Copyright © 2017 Dell Inc. VxRail Appliance Administration and Management 10

Copyright © 2017 Dell Inc. VxRail Appliance Administration and Management 11

Copyright © 2017 Dell Inc. VxRail Appliance Administration and Management 12

Copyright © 2017 Dell Inc. VxRail Appliance Administration and Management 13

Copyright © 2017 Dell Inc. VxRail Appliance Administration and Management 14

Copyright © 2017 Dell Inc. VxRail Appliance Administration and Management 15

Copyright © 2017 Dell Inc. VxRail Appliance Administration and Management 16

Copyright © 2017 Dell Inc. VxRail Appliance Administration and Management 17

Copyright © 2017 Dell Inc. VxRail Appliance Administration and Management 18

Copyright © 2017 Dell Inc. VxRail Appliance Administration and Management 19

Copyright © 2017 Dell Inc. VxRail Appliance Administration and Management 20

Copyright © 2017 Dell Inc. VxRail Appliance Administration and Management 21

Copyright © 2017 Dell Inc. VxRail Appliance Administration and Management 22

Copyright © 2017 Dell Inc. VxRail Appliance Administration and Management 23

Copyright © 2017 Dell Inc. VxRail Appliance Administration and Management 24

Copyright © 2017 Dell Inc. VxRail Appliance Administration and Management 25

Copyright © 2017 Dell Inc. VxRail Appliance Administration and Management 26

Copyright © 2017 Dell Inc. VxRail Appliance Administration and Management 27

Copyright © 2017 Dell Inc. VxRail Appliance Administration and Management 28

Copyright © 2017 Dell Inc. VxRail Appliance Administration and Management 29

Copyright © 2017 Dell Inc. VxRail Appliance Administration and Management 30

Copyright © 2017 Dell Inc. VxRail Appliance Administration and Management 31

Copyright © 2017 Dell Inc. VxRail Appliance Administration and Management 32

Copyright © 2017 Dell Inc. VxRail Appliance Administration and Management 33

Copyright © 2017 Dell Inc. VxRail Appliance Administration and Management 34

Copyright © 2017 Dell Inc. VxRail Appliance Administration and Management 35

Copyright © 2017 Dell Inc. VxRail Appliance Administration and Management 36

Copyright © 2017 Dell Inc. VxRail Appliance Administration and Management 37

Copyright © 2017 Dell Inc. VxRail Appliance Administration and Management 38

Copyright © 2017 Dell Inc. VxRail Appliance Administration and Management 39

Copyright © 2017 Dell Inc. VxRail Appliance Administration and Management 40

Copyright © 2017 Dell Inc. VxRail Appliance Administration and Management 41

Copyright © 2017 Dell Inc. VxRail Appliance Administration and Management 42

You might also like