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Dell EMC VxRail Appliance, Operation Manual

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36 | Dell EMC VxRail Appliance Operations Guide 
© 2017 Dell Inc. or its subsidiaries. 
 

 

Figure 14: VM with two replicas and witness  

 

Erasure coding 

Erasure coding is an alternative failure tolerance method. Erasure codes provides up to 50 
percent more usable capacity than RAID-1 mirroring. Erasure coding is supported on All-Flash 
models only. 

Erasure coding breaks up data into chunks and distributes them across the nodes in the vSAN 
cluster. It provides redundancy by using parity. Data blocks are grouped in sets of n, and for 
each set of n data blocks, a set of p parity blocks exists. Together, these sets of (n + p) blocks 
make up a stripe. If a drive containing a data block fails, the surviving data blocks (n + p) is 
sufficient to recover the data in the stripe. 

In VxRail clusters, the data and parity blocks for a single stripe are placed on different ESXi 
hosts in a cluster, providing failure tolerance for each stripe. Stripes do not follow a one-to-one 
distribution model. It is not a situation where the set of n data blocks sits on one host, and the 
parity set sits on another. Rather, the algorithm distributes individual blocks from the parity set 
among the ESXi hosts in the cluster. 

Erasure coding provides single-parity data protection (RAID-5) that can tolerate one failure 
(FTT=1) and double-parity data protection (RAID-6) that can tolerate two failures (FTT=2). The 
figures below illustrate the implementations. A single-parity stripe uses three data blocks and 
one parity block (3+1), and it requires a minimum of four hosts or four fault domains to ensure 
availability in case one of the hosts or disks fails. It represents a 30 percent storage savings 
over RAID-1 mirroring. RAID-5 (FTT=1) requires a minimum of four nodes. 

Figure 14: Storage object with FTM=Erasure Coding FTT=1  

 

Summary of Contents for VxRail Appliance

Page 1: ...re Appliance from Dell EMC and VMware ABSTRACT This document describes how to perform day to day operations on a VxRail Appliance environment after the system has been installed and configured The target audience for this document includes customers field personnel and partners who manage and operate a VxRail Appliance November 2017 PART NUMBER H16788 ...

Page 2: ...upport eServices 11 Opening a live chat session with support personnel 11 Contacting Customer Service to request service 12 VxRail community forums 12 Support knowledge base 12 SolVe Desktop application for VxRail series 12 Monitoring a VxRail Appliance using VxRail Manager 13 Monitoring logical system health 14 Procedure 14 Viewing physical system health 15 Procedure 15 Powering down and powering...

Page 3: ...vPortGroup 34 Choosing a failure tolerance method FTM 35 Mirroring 35 Erasure coding 36 FTM considerations 38 Configuring IOPS limit for objects QoS 39 Configuring IOPS limit for a VM 39 vSAN fault domains 41 Configuring fault domains 42 VxRail deduplication and compression 43 Considerations 44 Enabling deduplication and compression 44 Procedure 45 Disabling deduplication and compression 46 Proced...

Page 4: ... activity and performance 62 VxRail Manager Logical Health view 63 Monitoring storage capacity using vCenter web client 64 Using native vSphere performance monitoring 65 Viewing CPU and memory performance metrics 65 Enabling vSAN performance data collection 67 Viewing vSAN performance metrics 68 Understanding vSAN performance metrics 69 Advanced workload and performance analysis 72 Creating a vSAN...

Page 5: ...ronment after the system has been installed and configured Audience The target audience for this document includes customers field personnel and partners who manage and operate a VxRail Appliance Related resources and documentation This document references other documentation resources available on https support emc com vmware com and the Solve Desktop application ...

Page 6: ...il is the only HCI appliance on the market that fully integrates Intel based Dell EMC PowerEdge Servers with VMware vSphere and vSAN VxRail is jointly engineered with VMware and is supported as a single product delivered by Dell EMC VxRail seamlessly integrates with existing VMware eco system and cloud management solutions including vRealize NSX and Horizon The VxRail Manager provides lifecycle ma...

Page 7: ...e Standard and ROBO editions vSphere Enterprise is also supported but is no longer available from VMware Also supported are vSphere licenses from Horizon bundles or add ons when the appliance is dedicated to VDI If vSphere licenses need to be purchased they can be ordered through Dell EMC the customer s preferred VMware channel partner or from VMware directly Licenses acquired through VMware ELA V...

Page 8: ...ing the VMware Virtual Distributed Switch VDS which functions as a single logical switch that spans multiple nodes in the same cluster VDS uses standard network protocols and VLAN implementations and it forwards frames at the data link layer VDS is configured in vCenter Server at the datacenter level maintaining a consistent network configuration as VMs migrate across multiple hosts The VxRail App...

Page 9: ...consistent and predictable performance and a system configuration that follows best practices Storage policy based management SPBM vSAN is policy driven and designed to simplify storage provisioning and management vSAN policies define VM storage requirements for performance and availability Policy assignments are generated based on a ruleset Administrators can dynamically change a VM storage polic...

Page 10: ...cure Remote Services ESRS Dell EMC support account A Dell EMC Support account provides direct online access to the following resources Product license files and software updates Product documentation SolVe Desktop with detailed procedures component replacement and software upgrades VxRail community Users with a Dell EMC Support account can add support credentials to VxRail Manager and then access ...

Page 11: ...SRS communication is displayed in the Last Heartbeat section on the Support view of VxRail Manager Accessing Support eServices You can access Support eServices directly from VxRail Manager Services include Chat with Support Opens a chat session with a Dell EMC support representative Open a Service Request Opens a web form where you can open a service request VxRail Community Displays the most rece...

Page 12: ...il Community list on the VxRail Manager Support view To join the conversation click the title of a message or article and view the topic in a new browser tab Support knowledge base The support knowledge base is often the fastest way to identify solutions to problems or get answers to questions Access the support knowledge base from support emc com or from the Support view in VxRail Manager Type th...

Page 13: ...sical resources Use VxRail Manager dashboards to view resource operability performance and utilization data as well as information about cluster and node level storage memory capacity and consumption Locate and identify critical events errors and warnings on any appliance in the cluster VxRail leverages VMware vRealize Log Insight to monitor system events and provide ongoing notifications about th...

Page 14: ... VxRail Manager Health Logical screen Procedure 1 Click HEALTH Logical The default view shows cluster level utilization levels for storage IOPS CPU usage and memory The view is color coded to enable you to identify resource utilization Red More than 85 used Yellow 75 to 85 used Green Less than 75 used 2 Click on a node name to view information about that node 3 Click the components of a node to vi...

Page 15: ... Physical screen Cluster view Use the Health Physical tab to view Nodes in the cluster View status of the cluster and information about each individual node such as ID and model number Individual node components Drill down to see status and information for appliance components such as disks compute nodes and power supplies Procedure 1 In VxRail Manager click HEALTH to view the overall health of th...

Page 16: ...k in the Front View or Back View to see disk status and information Click a node in the Back View to see compute and network information Click a power supply in the Back View to see power supply status and information Click the Back View to see compute information Click a NIC in the Back View E S P and V models to see network information 5 If a status icon is displayed for a component click it to ...

Page 17: ...nt VMs before performing this procedure VxRail Manager only shuts down the infrastructure VMs in the cluster The operator is responsible for properly shutting down all client VMs Shutting down a VxRail cluster 1 In VxRail Manager left panel click CONFIG and navigate to the General view 2 Scroll down the page until you see the Shut Down Cluster option Click Shut Down Figure 6 Shut Down Cluster 3 At...

Page 18: ...ed to the network 2 Power on each node manually by pressing its power button Wait several minutes for all service VMs to be powered on automatically The locator LED of Node1 is turned off automatically when VxRail Manager starts 3 Using VCenter manually restart all client VMs Note If vCenter and VxRail Manager VMs are not available in 10 minutes use the vSphere client to log into host 1 to check t...

Page 19: ...ow is an example of the Events view Figure 8 VxRail Manager Events view The event severity levels are Critical Immediate action is required Take immediate action to prevent downtime or data loss If critical events are detected the EVENTS icon displays the number of unread events in red in the navigation bar Error An error has occurred Address the issue as soon as possible Warning System needs atte...

Page 20: ...to navigate through the events list Click a row to view more information about an event New critical events are shown in red When you click an event the red highlight is removed 2 To set all critical events as read click Mark All as Read 3 If a physical component is listed in the Component column click its Component ID to navigate to the Event Details view on the Health Physical screen 4 To downlo...

Page 21: ...en the Market tab 2 Scroll the Available Applications for this Cluster list of all applications available for your VxRail Appliance The list includes a description and version number for each application Filter the application list using the filter selector at the top of the list if desired Click Learn more if you want to view information about the application The application page opens in a separ...

Page 22: ...here is only one instance of an application the expand arrow is not displayed Scroll to the instance you want to manage The following status messages may be displayed for an application instance Downloading The application is currently downloading Pending The application is waiting until another application finishes downloading IP address The application is installed ...

Page 23: ...vCenter is internal to the VxRail system and can only manage the VxRail cluster on which it is deployed The VxRail software package includes the license for this vCenter instance The license is only used when VxRail Manager deploys it when the system is initialized The license is non transferable and cannot be used for any other purpose Figure 10 Each VxRail Cluster Managed by VxRail Manager deplo...

Page 24: ...SAN encryption will be enabled The figure below shows an example of a customer deployed vCenter Server managing multiple VxRail and non VxRail clusters Figure 11 VxRail Managed by customer deployed vCenter The decision to use a VxRail Manager deployed vCenter or a customer deployed vCenter is made during system planning prior to installation Once the system has been deployed changing vCenter deplo...

Page 25: ...duplication and compression efficiency Virtual disk status Physical device status vSAN cluster health Running vSAN health checks vSAN health checks allow you to assess the status of cluster components diagnose issues and troubleshoot problems The health checks cover hardware compatibility network configuration and operation advanced vSAN configuration options storage device health and VM objects H...

Page 26: ...review the vSAN health check categories If the Test Result column displays Warning or Failed expand the category to review the results of the individual health checks 7 Select an individual health check and check the detailed information at the bottom of the page Click the Ask VMware button to open a knowledge base article that describes the health check and provides information about how to resol...

Page 27: ...ts the capacity availability and performance of a virtual machine Figure 13 Storage Policy Based Management A default storage policy is configured when the system is initialized You can use the vSphere web client to configure new policies based on a set of rules The table below summarizes vSAN policy rules Table 1 vSAN policy rules vSAN SPBM Rule Description and Recommendation Failures to tolerate...

Page 28: ...n Number of disk stripes per object Establishes the minimum number of capacity devices used for striping a replica of a storage object A value higher than 1 may result in better performance but may consume more system resources The default value is 1 The minimum value is 1 The maximum value is 12 vSAN may decide that an object needs to be striped across multiple disks without any stripe width poli...

Page 29: ... Allows an object to be provisioned even though there are not enough resources available to meet the policy The default of No is appropriate for most production environments If set to Yes an object can be created even if there are not enough resources available to satisfy other policy rules In this case the object appears as Not Compliant Default storage policy If a storage policy is not specified...

Page 30: ...ased on data services drop box The page expands to show capabilities reported by the vSAN datastore 3 Add a rule and supply appropriate values Make sure that the values you provide are within the range of values advertised by storage capabilities of the vSAN datastore Review the storage consumption model to understand how the rules specified impact the capacity required Optional Add tag based capa...

Page 31: ... the default storage policy for the selected datastore is assigned to the VM as shown in the figure below Figure 16 New Virtual Machine dialog Select VM Storage Changing a storage policy for a VM You can change the storage policy for a VM while the VM is online without impacting availability Select the VM Manage Policies and click Edit VM Storage Policy Select the policy to assign to the VM and cl...

Page 32: ...o match the new policy Availability is not impacted while the storage object is being reconfigured For example if the original policy used a FTM of Mirroring and the new policy has a FTM of Erasure Coding a new replica of the storage object is created using erasure coding before deleting the original copy that used mirroring Therefore the storage capacity consumption may increase while the storage...

Page 33: ...ed a default name in the vCenter Server inventory Use the procedure below to change the name to conform to local naming conventions See the SolVe Desktop procedure for VxRail available on support emc com for more detail 1 Log in to the vSphere Web Client as administrator vsphere local 2 Select VM and Templates 3 Right click Discovered with machine in internal vCenter and select Rename In an extern...

Page 34: ...unning the following command esxcli network vswitch dvs vmware list Renaming VxRail dvPortGroup When the VxRail cluster is configured onsite a default name is assigned to the vSphere distributed in the vCenter Server inventory Use the procedure below to change the name to conform to local naming conventions See the SolVe Desktop procedure for VxRail available on support emc com for more detail NOT...

Page 35: ... the optimal failure tolerance method by modeling the characteristics of your workload against a specific VxRail system configuration A VxRail system can have multiple SPBM rules allowing the flexibility to configure different FTM rules for different workloads that run on the same system The following sections review how the FTM and FTT rules impact the configuration of storage objects within vSAN...

Page 36: ...parity blocks for a single stripe are placed on different ESXi hosts in a cluster providing failure tolerance for each stripe Stripes do not follow a one to one distribution model It is not a situation where the set of n data blocks sits on one host and the parity set sits on another Rather the algorithm distributes individual blocks from the parity set among the ESXi hosts in the cluster Erasure ...

Page 37: ...With erasure coding in the event of a drive failure backend activity increases During a rebuild operation a single read from the VM requires multiple reads from disk and additional network traffic since the surviving drives in a stripe must be read to calculate the data of the failed member This additional IO is the primary reason why only all flash VxRail configurations use erasure coding The rat...

Page 38: ...t in data unavailability Therefore the best practice is to always configure the cluster with enough nodes to allow data to be rebuilt The following table contrasts the requirements recommendations for data protection and compares the requirements for mirroring and RAID 5 6 erasure coding for the different FTT values Table 2 Requirements recommendations for data protection Note the number of nodes ...

Page 39: ...kloads This rule establishes Quality of Service QoS for an object by defining an upper limit on the number IOPS a VM VMDK can perform When an object exceeds the IOP limit IO operations to that object are throttled The algorithms used by vSAN intelligently handle bursts of activity and allow an object to double its IOP limit rate for the first second after a period of inactivity By default the IOPS...

Page 40: ...describes how to add an IOPS limit for object rule by editing an existing policy This can be completed while the VM is online 1 Within vCenter select the VM in the navigation tree in the Host and Clusters 2 On the Manage Policies tab click Edit VM Storage Policy 3 Click Edit VM Storage Policy and select the policy with the IOPS limit for object rule configured The screenshot below is an example of...

Page 41: ...ications are exposed to rack level failure By defining the nodes in each rack as a separate fault domain the system can be protected from rack level failures The figure below shows an 8 node cluster spread across four physical racks with four separate fault domains Fault domain 1 FD1 contains esxi 01 esxi 02 Fault domain 2 FD2 contains esxi 03 esxi 04 Fault domain 3 FD3 contains esxi 05 esxi 06 Fa...

Page 42: ...lt domains configured The best practice is to configure each fault domain with the same number of nodes to ensure that sufficient resources are available to provide full coverage in the event of a failure Configuring fault domains 1 Within vCenter navigate to the Host and Cluster view 2 Select the VxRail Cluster and in the Manage tab select Fault Domains Stretch Clusters The screenshot below is an...

Page 43: ...e same data identical blocks are saved once and references to the unique blocks are tracked using metadata maintained in the capacity tier The figure below shows how data is deduplication inline before it written to the capacity drives on VxRail Figure 19 Inline data deduplication The de duplication algorithm is applied at the disk group level and results in a single copy of each unique 4K block p...

Page 44: ...the fingerprints and looks for duplicated segments only when the data is being de staged from the cache to the capacity tier Under normal operations VM writes to the write buffer in the cache SSD should incur no latency impact Environments that benefit most for deduplication are read intensive environments with highly compressible data Use the figure below to determine the value of deduplication f...

Page 45: ...d ON pane click the Edit button 4 Configure deduplication and compression The figure below shows the vSAN setting for enabling compression Figure 21 Deduplication and compression enabled 5 Set deduplication and compression to Enabled 6 Click OK to save your configuration changes When deduplication and compression is enabled vSAN changes disk format on each disk group in the cluster To accomplish t...

Page 46: ...isk group removes the disk group and recreates it without deduplication and compression This adds workload overhead to the system The time required for this operation depends on the number of hosts in the cluster and amount of data You can monitor the progress on the vCenter Tasks and Events tab Procedure 1 Navigate to the vSAN host cluster in the vSphere Web Client and click the Configure tab 2 U...

Page 47: ...47 Dell EMC VxRail Appliance Operations Guide 2017 Dell Inc or its subsidiaries An example of this view is shown below Figure 22 Monitoring datastore showing deduplication and compression efficiency ...

Page 48: ...le with VxRail data efficiency options including deduplication compression and all protection types Fully compatible with vSphere features such as vMotion HA and DRS No special hardware required since encryption is software based Efficient and in a properly sized cluster no performance impact and estimated 5 15 CPU overhead Can be optionally enabled on new or existing VxRail 4 5 clusters vSAN Ente...

Page 49: ...N datastore must be reformatted before the data is protected Enabling encryption at the time the system is initialized minimizes the overhead and time it takes to protect the system Note Encryption is only supported in VxRail environments that are configured with customer deployed vCenter servers Setting up vSAN encryption on a VxRail cluster involves the following two steps First configure a Key ...

Page 50: ...7 Dell Inc or its subsidiaries An example of this dialog is shown below Figure 23 Configure KMS The options used depend on the KMS and local security policies In the example dialog below Root CA Certificates are used Figure 24 Select certificate type ...

Page 51: ...ling encryption for the VxRail cluster Use the following procedure to enable encryption for a VxRail cluster Prerequisites Domain of trust is set up Procedure 1 Using the vSphere web client navigate to the vSAN host cluster and click Configure 2 Under vSAN select General 3 In the vSAN pane click Edit 4 On the Edit vSAN settings dialog check Encryption and select a KMS cluster Click OK ...

Page 52: ...process VxRail clusters with three nodes may require Reduced Redundancy since there may not be enough headroom to move data during the conversion process When encryption is turned on the VxRail cluster performs a disk format change DFC The DFC creates a new partition on the disk that holds the metadata information and prepares the disk to encrypt all write operations The automated DFC process for ...

Page 53: ...oring the primary key used to encrypt data While continuous connectivity to the KMS server is not required connectivity to the KMS server is required when Enabling of disabling encryption Performing key management activities such as rekeying Replacing an encrypted drive Rebooting an ESXi host while encryption is enabled Adding a node to the VxRail cluster while encryption is enabled ...

Page 54: ...network interfaces and vSphere virtual distributed switch are configured following proven best practices Changes to the network configuration post installation should be performed with extreme caution Physical network Physical network considerations for VxRail are no different from those of any enterprise IT infrastructure availability performance and extensibility Generally VxRail appliances are ...

Page 55: ...um of four VLANs for the four types of network traffic in a VxRail cluster Management Management traffic is use for connecting to VMware vCenter web client VxRail Manager and other management interfaces and for communications between the management components and the ESXi nodes in the cluster Either the default VLAN or a specific management VLAN is used for management traffic vSAN Data access for ...

Page 56: ...tiple switches it is important that IPv4 and IPv6 multicast traffic is passed between them Beginning with VxRail 4 5 and vSAN 6 6 vSAN uses Unicast rather than multicast Virtual machine and optional data services networks When the system is installed and initialized a minimum of one VLAN is configured for guest virtual machines Additional VLANS can be defined as required Additional VLANs may be re...

Page 57: ...physical switches connecting the target VxRail and port groups for the application environment may need to be configured on the virtual distributed switch VDS in vCenter Access to network services and related applications Consider all the services that are used by the application virtual machines including DNS and NTP and how these may change in the new environment If there are dependencies on oth...

Page 58: ...e displayed as the target cluster is selected and verified vSphere copies the files VMX NVRAM VMDKs and so on from the source storage to the VxRail vSAN datastore Potentially large amounts of data need to be copied How long it takes to complete the migration is determined by the size of the dataset and the speed of the storage In most cases it is best to perform the migration a few VMs at a time U...

Page 59: ...the same vCenter and the target does not need to have access to the source data store An example of a RecoverPoint for VM environment is shown below Figure 29 Migration for source vSphere environment and recovery on VxRail Once migration is complete you can continue to use RecoverPoint for VM as part of your disaster recovery strategy RecoverPoint for VM supports flexible configuration options inc...

Page 60: ...ate it with the port group and assign an IP address 3 From the vCenter Manage Storage Adapters view use the Add iSCSI Software Adapter dialog to create the software adapter This step binds the iSCSI software adapter with the VMkernel adapter Once this is complete iSCSI targets and LUNs can be discovered used to create new datastores and mapped to the hosts in the cluster Refer to VMware documentat...

Page 61: ...ed with VxRail CloudArray uses local vSAN storage as a buffer to eliminate the latency normally associated with cloud storage It presents either iSCSI LUNS or NFS CIFS NAS storage either to external clients or back to the VxRail cluster and used as a datastore While CloudArray is normally backed by public or private cloud storage this is not necessary CloudArray can be used to simply present NFS o...

Page 62: ... data services that are enabled The workload characteristics also significantly impact capacity and system capabilities IOPs and throughput directly relate to IO block size and the size of the active working data set Application concurrency impacts memory and compute efficiencies When a VxRail system is initially sized all requirements including the expected workload are modeled to determine an op...

Page 63: ...sumption exceeds 70 For capacity planning purposes observe both the cluster totals and each individual node If the consumption for individual nodes exceeds 70 but the cluster average is below 70 using vMotion and or DRS may help in rebalance the workload across nodes in the cluster The Logical view displays total storage capacity and used capacity The first consideration is to have enough availabl...

Page 64: ...age capacity using vCenter web client vCenter web client displays capacity details about the vSAN datastore including deduplication and compression space efficiencies if enabled The figure below shows the vCenter Storage view for the vSAN datastore Figure 33 vCenter Storage Monitor Virtual SAN Note the Deduplication and Compression savings and ratio Deduplication and compression savings vary but g...

Page 65: ...y performance metrics Compute and memory are critical to application performance Capacity management balances between the risk of degraded performance caused by insufficient resources and the inefficiency of underutilizing available compute and memory You can view memory and CPU consumption at the cluster host and virtual machine level Use cluster level metrics to understand overall utilization fo...

Page 66: ... memory that is used and a VM does not normally need its full allocation of memory at all times For example a VM allocated with 4GB might only need the full 4GB of memory for 15 minutes a day otherwise it may only use 5GB The ESXi hypervisor allocates 5GB of memory to the VM increases it to 4GB only when needed and then reclaims memory afterward for use elsewhere In addition to memory allocation o...

Page 67: ...rical analysis Enable vSAN performance data collection services from the cluster view by selecting Configure Health and Performance If the service is turned off click Edit Setting to enable it Historical performance data is stored on the vSAN datastore as an object and like any other storage object and storage policy must be specified when enabling Virtual SAN Performance Services Note Turning off...

Page 68: ... that performs 200 write per second The front end shows 200 write IOPS while the backend displays 400 write IOPS because with mirroring there are two replicas of the data A top down approach is typically used when monitoring and analyzing systems starting at the cluster level and working down through the ESXi hosts to the individual virtual machines Use cluster level metrics on the front end to mo...

Page 69: ... and provides guidelines on how to interpret them These metrics show IO from the client side of vSAN and represent reads and writes from a VM prospective For capacity planning monitor these metrics at the cluster and host level to understand normal workloads and to detect abnormalities Table 5 vSAN cluster level front end workload metrics Front end Metric What it means How to interpret the data IO...

Page 70: ...gestion see this KB article https kb vmware com Sustained congestion is not usual In most cases it should be near zero It is possible to see congestion during bursts of workload activity and this can impact response time If the system consistently shows high levels of congestion further analysis is required and may indicate that the system needs additional resources Outstanding IO When a virtual m...

Page 71: ...ce operation and do not necessarily indicate a problem Throughput Throughput is a measure of the data rate and is calculated as block size times IOPS Separate read write throughput metrics are maintained Additional metrics include Recovery Write and Resync Read Throughput vSAN 6 6 Recovery writes occur during the resync of components impacted by a failure Resync reads are the result of recovery op...

Page 72: ... cluster level metrics Host level metrics are more granular and include details down to the disk group and physical disk level with more metrics available for analysis Advanced workload and performance analysis Advanced performance analysis and troubleshooting may require more granular data VMware Virtual SAN Observer part of the Ruby vSphere Console RVC provides a command line interface for captu...

Page 73: ...igate to the VxRail Cluster using the following command cd VxRail vSAN Cluster name Note replace VxRail vSAN Cluster name with the name of your VxRail Cluster 8 Run the following command to enable vSAN Observer to create a performance bundle vsan observer g tmp o i 60 m 2 The output bundle will be placed in tmp unless other location is specified The default interval is 60 seconds unless otherwise ...

Page 74: ...k Updates to both VxRail and VMware software components are applied across all nodes in a cluster using VxRail Manager VxRail Clusters that meet the minimal configuration requirements use a fully automated and non disruptive process that is initiated and executed entirely from VxRail Manager The figure below summarizes the overall software upgrade workflow Figure 39 High level software upgrade wor...

Page 75: ...g the rolling upgrade Environments with fewer than four nodes or running vSphere standard require assistance from Dell EMC support to perform an upgrade Depending on the type of upgrade the upgrade may be a two step process where VxRail Manager is upgraded first followed by the upgrade of other components Before performing any software upgrades consult the VxRail Appliance Software Release Notes T...

Page 76: ...the nodes in the rack cables it to the network switches and connects power Procedure 1 Power on the new appliance Once the appliance is powered on it broadcasts availability and VxRail Manager displays the available node in the Dashboard view of VxRail Manager The following figure shows an example of a newly detected node ready to be added to the cluster Figure 40 VxRail Manager Dashboard view sho...

Page 77: ... required network ESXi host management vSAN and vMotion IP address pools are created when the cluster is first initialized and can include additional IP addresses to handle future expansion If the pools do not have sufficient available IP addresses they can be added in the dialog shown in the figure below Figure 42 VxRail Manager Cluster Expansion dialog Allocate new IP addresses 5 Enter the ESXi ...

Page 78: ...configured with IP addresses and hostnames before continuing Confirm that the DNS records have been configured by clicking the checkbox at the bottom of the dialog 6 Click Validate to continue 7 If the validation succeeds click Expand Cluster to add the new nodes Progress is displayed in the VxRail Manager Dashboard view When complete the new nodes can be seen in the Cluster Health view 8 Verify t...

Page 79: ...sed for cache must be installed in specific slots This drive slot locations vary for different VxRail models Disk group configuration rules must be followed For example while there may be available slots within a node it may not be possible to add additional drives to the disk group A disk group includes one cache drive and a minimum of one capacity drives The maximum number of capacity drives per...

Page 80: ... shipping carton and remove the drives from the foam carrier one drive at a time Open the anti static bag containing the drives remove the drive and place the drive on top of the bag until ready to insert the drive 4 Remove the bezel from the server If the bezel has a key lock unlock the bezel with the key provided Press the two tabs on either side of the bezel to release it from its latches and p...

Page 81: ...ss can take a few minutes to complete When the disk addition completes successfully it shows that New disk s have been added successfully 9 Click Close 10 In the VxRail Manager HEALTH Logical tab select the node and scroll down to the ESXi node Verify that the host is now reporting the new disks and that there are no errors The figure below is an example of this dialog Figure 46 VxRail Manager Hea...

Page 82: ...le To receive a replacement component you must open a service request with Dell EMC Support NOTE When handling a FRU during replacement there is the potential of inadvertently damaging the sensitive electronic when an electrostatic charge that accumulates on your body discharges through the circuits Do not attempt any replacement procedures unless you understand and follow proper ESD handling proc...

Page 83: ...the procedures generated from the SolVe Desktop available from Dell EMC support https support emc com 1 On the VxRail Manager Health page Physical view click the failed drive to display the disk information 2 Click HARDWARE REPLACEMENT to initiate the drive replacement The automated procedure verifies the system and prepares for drive replacement 3 Remove the bezel from the VxRail appliance If the...

Page 84: ...e failed drive and click on it to display the disk information 2 Click HARDWARE REPLACEMENT to initiate the drive replacement The automated procedure performs the necessary steps to verify the system and prepare for drive replacement 3 Remove the bezel from the VxRail appliance If the bezel has a key lock unlock the bezel with the provided key Press the two tabs on either side of the bezel to rele...

Page 85: ...place a capacity drive For more detailed procedures for specific hardware configurations see the procedure generated from the SolVe Desktop available from Dell EMC support https support emc com 1 On the VxRail Manager Health Physical view identify the failed component 2 Disconnect the power cable from the power source and from the PSU 3 Press the release latch and slide the power supply unit out o...

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