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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. In this example, a Deployment Template will be created which will configure the servers to

boot to the redundant SD module containing a factory-installed ESXi image. This will also configure

fabric A and fabric B Broadcom CNAs to support iSCSI offload on fabric A for the ESXi data volume

connections and the network partitioning on fabric B for the various standard Ethernet networking

required by each host.

To create a deployment template, select “Create Deployment Template” from either the “Home” or

the “Templates” menu. Create a name and a description for your deployment template. Select the

minimum CPU and memory capabilities for the host, which will allow servers that don’t meet your

minimum requirements to be filtered from the available hardware.

Specify the necessary BIOS settings for your ESXi host. In this example, it’s important to ensure that

“Processor Virtualization Technology” is enabled and that the internal RAID is disabled since the server

will be booting from the SD modules and using iSCSI storage.

Next, the template for networking required on the servers must be configured. There is a fabric A and

fabric B Broadcom 57810 2 port 10Gb CNA in each server. On fabric A both ports will be used to provide

a redundant 10Gb connection to the iSCSI storage distribution device, thus this CNA will not be

partitioned. On fabric B, both ports will be used to provide 4 redundant connections to the various

networks outlined earlier in this document.

Active System Manager presents the concept of Virtual NICs which are synonymous with partitions on a

port of your networking devices. Each partition, or Virtual NIC, will be seen as an individual networking

and/or storage adapter device in the operating system. For each partition, a dedicated portion of the

available 10Gb bandwidth will be specified. You can also enable Bandwidth Oversubscription, or the

ability to allow Virtual NICs to consume more than their guaranteed portion of the bandwidth in the

event that it is available and not being used by other partitions. In this case, Bandwidth

Oversubscription has been disabled.

Active System Manager provides a wizard which will allow you to create each CNA partition. In this

example, a Virtual NIC will be created for the iSCSI data volume connectivity. First, specify a name for

the virtual NIC, or partition, on the CNA port. Then set the connection type to “SAN (iSCSI)”. Setting

the network type will assist with configurations by filtering out networks that are not associated with

SAN(iSCSI) to help ensure you are not assigning the wrong network to your template.

In Active System Manager we have specified the Native VLAN in the Deployment Template as

Storage16. Selecting the native VLAN in an ASM Deployment Template has the effect of configuring the

server facing port of the I/O Module for untagged traffic. Specifying this Native VLAN in Active System

Manager means that traffic ingressing from the server into this port must be untagged (in other words,

it cannot be tagged by the CNA or by software in the OS). Once this traffic enters the I/O Module, the

switch configuration will tag this traffic with the Native VLAN, in this case VLAN 16. This is important

because the storage distribution device is expecting tagged traffic with VLAN 16. Using the native VLAN

in the scenario of iSCSI data volume connections is optional; one could choose to tag in the operating

system before making these connections. This method has been chosen simply to avoid that