White Paper

Use Case Study: Using Active System For VMware Cluster Environment Configuration

Part of the chassis configuration process is to bring all of the firmware in the devices in the chassis to a

baseline level. The wizard will display the firmware which will be updated on each device. You must

select the option to update the firmware to proceed with configuration of the chassis. Active System

Manager requires a certain minimum level of firmware to be installed on the device for management.

The next step is to specify your fabric type. This identifies the purpose for which the I/O Module in

your chassis will be used. In this example, fabric A will carry all of the iSCSI SAN traffic. There are two

I/O Modules in fabric A and these will allow redundant connectivity to the iSCSI storage distribution

devices. The Fabric Purpose is set to “SAN iSCSI” which will ensure storage best practices, such as

jumbo frames, are used when configuring this fabric. Because there are separate iSCSI and LAN fabrics,

DCB isn’t required to be enabled in this configuration and since DCB is required end-to-end if enabled,

it will be disabled for this example. Finally, the storage networks which will be present on fabric A are

selected. In this case the only storage network which will be used is the single storage network called

“Storage16” which represents VLAN 16.

Continuing on to configure fabric B in the chassis. Fabric B will carry only standard Ethernet traffic.

There will be two redundant I/O modules which will connect to the LAN distribution devices at the top

of rack. The purpose of this fabric is specified as LAN. DCB will be disabled as it was with fabric A since

it will not be enabled end-to-end. Finally the networks are selected which will be present on this

fabric. In this example VLAN 20 and 23 will be included for Virtual Machine networks, VLAN 22 for

vMotion, and VLAN 28 for VMware Management.

Fabric C is not populated in this chassis with I/O Modules, so fabric C connectivity will be left

unspecified.

Next, the management template which was created earlier in this process called

“VMwareClusterEnvironment” is selected. The identity, DNS, and location information can be specified

on the chassis, as well as the DNS information for servers and hostnames for the I/O Modules.

Finally the configuration can be reviewed and completed. The chassis will take several minutes to

apply the management template and to baseline the firmware and the settings. Once the chassis,

servers, and I/O Modules have reached the “ready” state, they are ready for deployment.

Deploy Servers

Once the chassis, servers, and I/O Modules have been discovered and configured in preparation for use

as members of the VMware cluster, the servers are ready for deployment. The four servers which will

be the initial members of the cluster will be deployed using the previously created deployment

template. You can save time deploying several servers which require identical configuration at once

using Active System Manager Deployment Templates.

You may begin the deployment process by selecting the “Deploy” option from either the “Home” or the

“Deployments” menu. You will then be required to select the deployment template which you

previously created and provide your deployment with a name and description. When deploying multiple

servers with a single template, the actual deployment name will be an enumeration of the name you

provide.

Once you have identified your deployment, you will select which servers you would like to include in it

from a list of servers matching the filtering criteria you specified in your deployment template.

Filtering criteria will include things such as the number of CPUs, memory, networking available, and so