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Use Case Study: Using Active System For VMware Cluster Environment Configuration
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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. In this use case there will be five VLANs (16, 20, 22, 23, and 28) which will be used as
follows:
VLAN Usage and Fabrics Table 1.
VLAN ID Purpose Fabric
16 iSCSI Storage A1 and A2
20 Virtual Machine Networ
k
B1 and B2
22 vMotion B1 and B2
23 Virtual Machine Networ
k
B1 and B2
28 Hypervisor Management B1 and B2
Keep in mind, all of the above VLANs should have been configured on your top of rack distribution
switches on the downlink LAG to the I/O modules in the chassis prior to connecting them. Navigate to
the Networking menu within Active System Manager and select “Networks”. For each of the above
VLANs a network will be created in Active System Manager. For each network you will provide a name,
a description, the network type, and the VLAN ID. The example below shows a network type of Private
LAN, which could be used for traffic such as vMotion.
Additional information is required for creating certain type of networks in Active System Manager. For
example, when “SAN (iSCSI)” is selected as the network type, an additional option is provided to create
a range of static IP addresses. These addresses can then be used when configuring the CNA hardware
settings for iSCSI boot, which requires an IP address to be configured in the firmware of the device. In
this case only iSCSI data volumes will be used, not boot connections, so the storage initiator IP
addresses will be configured in ESXi.
NOTE: You must create a network in Active System Manager for every VLAN you wish to use in your
environment.
In addition to creating networks, Active System Manager has the concept of Identity Pools. These are
the identities that will be assigned to the hardware CNA devices as necessary for MAC Addresses, iSCSI
MAC and IQNs, and so on. To create an identity pool, you must first create a pool and give it a name.
Once you have created a pool, you will then add identities to the pool. In the case of iSCSI this allows
us to customize the IQN names which get assigned to the hardware adapters for iSCSI boot. In this case
since iSCSI data connections will be used, identities will be assigned ESXi will be used to configure the
IQN identities on the CNAs. It is recommended that you utilize the IQN pool capability of Active System
Manager, record the IQN identities assigned by Active System Manager to the CNA, manually apply
them to the ESXi host and include them in the access control list for your storage volume. This will
allow you to maintain consistency between the identities shown in ASM, the storage management
console, and vCenter.
Active System Manager comes with a default “Global” pool for CNA MAC addresses for your
environment. You may choose to utilize this pool for your network devices or create a new pool to
assign new virtual MAC identities.