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Use Case Study: Using Active System For VMware Cluster Environment Configuration
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maintain their own identities and act as two independent switches that work together, so they must be
configured and managed separately.
Downlinks to the I/O aggregators must be configured as LACP-enabled LAGs. LACP must also be enabled
on the storage distribution switches to allow auto-configuration of downstream I/O aggregators and to
tag storage VLANs on the LAGs, since they will be used to configure VLANs on the downstream switch.
iSCSI-Only Network Diagram Figure 1.
B2C2 A2B1 C1A1
4
1
7
5
2
8
6
3
9
CMC2CMC1KVM
123456
GbGb21
CMC iKVM
GbGb21
CMC
12
34
CONSOLE
PowerConnect M8024 -k
17
18
19
20
12
34
CONSOLE
PowerConnect M8024 -k
17
18
19
20
Uplinks from IOA To
iSCSI Only Distribution
VLT Peers
(Orange)
Routed Core
Dell M1000e Blade Enclosure with
two PowerEdge M I/O Aggregators
iSCSI (blues)
OOB Mgmt Connection
LACP Enabled LAG
40GbE VLT Domain Link
Uplinks from IOA (oranges)
Legend
SY
S
P
SU
M
A
ST
E
R
FAN
S4810P
0
1
102468 12 2214 16 18 20 24 3426 28 30 32 36 4638 40 42 44 48 56
6052
LNK ACT
Ethernet
QSFP+
SFP+
RS-232
SYS
PS
U
M
A
STER
FAN
S4810P
0
1
102468 12 2214 16 18 20 24 3426 28 30 32 36 4638 40 42 44 48 56
6052
LNK ACT
Ethernet
QSFP+
SFP+
RS-232
X2 X2
ID
Invalid
Address
2Gb
Hub
Mode
CONTROL MODULE
SERIAL PORT 0
ERR
PWR
ACT
ETHERNET 2
ETHERNET 1 ETHE RNE T 0
CONTROL MODULE
SERIAL PORT 0
ERR
PWR
ACT
ETHERNET 2
ETHERNET 1 ETHERNET 0
X2 X2
ID
Invalid
Address
2Gb
Hub
Mode
CONTROL MODULE
SERIAL POR T 0
ERR
PWR
ACT
ETHERNET 2
ETHERNET 1ETHERNET 0
CONTROL MODULE
SERIAL P ORT 0
ERR
PWR
ACT
ETHERNET 2
ETHERNET 1 ETHERNET 0
LAG
LAG
21 22 23 24
LNKACT
Reset
Stack No.
MRPS Fan
P W
R
S
ta
t
u s
COMBO PORTS
LNKACT
24681012141618202224
1357911131517192123
VLT Peer set LAG
connections are seen as
originating from a single
network device . This allows
connections from switches
with separate management
planes to be aggregated into
a resilient, LACP enabled
link aggregation.
Equallogic
Storage
Fabric B, LAN-Only Configuration
For this use case, Fabric B will be set up by Active System Manager for a LAN-only configuration. A LAN-
only network contains all other Ethernet traffic (but not iSCSI storage traffic). In this example, the LAN
distribution layer switches are a set of Dell Force10 S4810 switches that are configured as a stack.
Stacking allows these switches to be managed as a single, logical switch. Active System Manager will
only configure hardware within the Active Infrastructure blade chassis environment, thus the
distribution layer and above must be configured manually or by other tools. These switches connect
the downstream Dell Force10 PowerEdge M I/O aggregator switches in the chassis with the upstream
routed network.