You can easily migrate the VM’s workload between the VxRail cluster and the non-VxRail cluster.

It can manage different types of VxRail clusters—that is, a VxRail All-Flash cluster and a hybrid cluster.

Each VxRail cluster with a customer-supplied vCenter Server instance has its own VxRail Manager.

Figure 7.11 shows VxRail Stretched Cluster with the customer-supplied vCenter Server instance:

Figure 7.11 – VxRail Stretched Cluster with the customer-supplied vCenter Server instance

With Figure 7.10 and Figure 7.11, you now understand the differences between both vCenter Server
instances. Table 7.2 shows a comparison of vCenter features:

Embedded vCenter Server Customer-supplied vCenter

Server

vCenter The vCenter Server Standard license is It requires the optional vCenter
Server bundled with VxRail Appliance. Server Standard license.
 License

Compatibility It is bundled with VxRail software that is You need to verify the VxRail and
compatible with VxRail Manager and external vCenter interoperability
vSphere software. matrix.

Deployment It will deploy automatically into the VxRail You need to deploy it manually
cluster during VxRail initialization. into your VMware environment.

Lifecycle VxRail’s one-click upgrade includes this It does not include this feature.
management feature.

vCenter It cannot be migrated from the VxRail It can be migrated to either a

migration cluster. VxRail cluster or a non-VxRail
cluster.

Cluster It can be migrated to a customer-supplied It cannot be migrated to an

migration vCenter Server. embedded vCenter Server.

Multihoming It does not support multihoming. It can support multihoming.

Single sign-on It only supports a single vsphere.local It has no domain restrictions.

domain single sign-on (SSO) domain.

Table 7.2 – vCenter feature comparison

When designing VxRail Stretched Cluster, you can choose which configuration is suitable for your
environment. The next section will discuss a sample configuration of VxRail Stretched Cluster.

A scenario using VxRail Stretched Cluster

This section will discuss a sample configuration of VxRail Stretched Cluster, shown in Figure 7.12.
Now, we will discuss VxRail Stretched Cluster with eight nodes, including the requirements, the
design of the network configuration, and the VM storage policy configuration. When you design the
deployment of VxRail Stretched Cluster, you need to consider all hardware and software
requirements; you can refer to the Overview of VxRail Stretched Cluster section in this chapter for
more details:
 Figure 7.12 – VxRail Stretched Cluster with eight nodes

This configuration is a standard VxRail Stretched Cluster with eight nodes. Table 7.3 shows the
hardware configuration of each VxRail node. Each P670F model installed one 800 GB SSD (cache
tier), four 7.68 TB SSDs (capacity tier), and one quad-port 10 GB Ethernet adapter:

VxRail model VxRail P670F

CPU model 2 x Intel Xeon Gold 5317 3G, 12C/24T

Memory 512 GB (8 x 64 GB)

Network adapter Intel Ethernet X710 Quad Port 10GbE SFP+, OCP NIC 3

Cache drive 1 x 800 GB SSD SAS drive

Capacity drive 4 x 7.68 TB SSD SAS drive

 Table 7.3 – A sample configuration of VxRail P670F

Each VxRail P670F model includes the following software; Table 7.4 shows the software edition of
each VxRail and VMware component:

VxRail software release 7.0.370 build 27485531

VMware ESXi edition 7.0 Update 3d

VMware vCenter Server 7.0 Update 3d

VMware vSAN 7.0 Update 3d

VMware vSAN witness 7.0 Update 3d

Table 7.4 – VxRail software releases

The next section will discuss the network design of the scenario in Figure 7.12.

Network settings
Each VxRail P670F model has four 10 GB network ports, as shown in Figure 7.13. The P1 and P2
ports are used for ESXi with a VxRail management network and witness traffic. The P3 and P4 ports
are used for the vSAN and vMotion networks:

Figure 7.13 – Rear view of VxRail P670F

For the network design of VxRail Stretched Cluster, you can refer to the following table. Table 7.5
shows a network layout used for VxRail Stretched Cluster with WTS:

Network Traffic NIOC VMkernel VLAN P1 P2 P3 P4

Shares ports
 Management 40% vmk2 101 Standby Active Unused Unused
network

vCenter Server N/A N/A 101 Standby Active Unused Unused

management
network

VxRail management N/A vmk1 101 Standby Active Unused Unused

network

vSAN network 100% vmk3 200 Unused Unused Active Standby

vMotion network 50% vmk4 100 Unused Unused Standby Active

Witness traffic N/A vmk5 102 Active Standby Unused Unused

Virtual machines 60% N/A N/A Active Standby Unused Unused

Table 7.5 – Network layout of VxRail Stretched Cluster with WTS

Table 7.5 helps you understand VxRail Stretched Cluster’s network layout. The next section will
discuss the storage design of the scenario in Figure 7.12.

Storage settings
The VxRail P670F model installed one 800 GB SSD and four 7.68 TB SSDs; you can create a vSAN
disk group with one 800 GB SSD for the cache tier and four 7.68TB SSDs for the capacity tier. For
the disk groups upgrade, you can refer to the Design of disk groups on VxRail P-Series section in
Chapter 5. Since P670F is an All-Flash model, it can support RAID-1, RAID-5, and RAID-6 site
protection. In the VM storage policy, make sure the Site Disaster Tolerance parameter is configured
to Site mirroring - stretched cluster and the Failures to tolerate parameter is configured to 1
failure - RAID-1 (Mirroring). For the other type of site protection, you can refer to the Overview of
VxRail Stretched Cluster section in this chapter. The next section will discuss the required software
licenses for this scenario.

Software licenses
When you deploy VxRail Stretched Cluster, it requires the following VMware licenses. Table 7.6
shows a summary of all the bundled software licenses on VxRail P670F:

Software Name License Edition Quantity Remark

VMware vSphere VMware vSphere 8 N/A

Enterprise Plus
per CPU

VMware vSAN VMware vSAN 8 You can choose the vSAN Enterprise or
Enterprise per Enterprise Plus edition.
CPU

VMware vCenter VMware vCenter 1 Suggest deploying the customer-supplied

Server Server Standard vCenter Server. It requires an optional
instance vCenter Server Standard license.

VMware vRealize Bundled with 1 N/A

Log Insight VxRail Appliance

VMware Bundled with N/A N/A

Replication VxRail Appliance

Dell EMC Bundled with N/A Five VM licenses per node

RecoverPoint for VxRail Appliance
Virtual Machines

Table 7.6 – Summary of all bundled software licenses on VxRail P670F

With the preceding information, you understand the requirements of VxRail Stretched Cluster in
Figure 7.12.

Failure scenarios of VxRail Stretched Cluster

This section will discuss some failure scenarios of VxRail Stretched Cluster. The VMs allocated on
VxRail Stretched Cluster trigger different behavior when any hardware failure (for example, VxRail
node, vSAN witness, HDD, network uplinks, and so on) exists in the cluster. In Figure 7.14, two
VMs (VM A and VM B) are running on this VxRail Stretched Cluster instance; these two VMs are