White Paper

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

Network Partitioning (NPAR)

Network or NIC partitioning (NPAR) divides a network adapter into multiple independent partitions. In

the case of the Broadcom 57810 CNA, these partitions can each support concurrent network and

storage functions, which appear as independent devices to the host operating system. With iSCSI

offload enabled on the CNA, one partition can appear as a storage controller while another partition

with network enabled appears as a standard Ethernet NIC.

NPAR supports the TCP/IP networking protocol and the iSCSI and FCOE storage protocols. It is

important to note that different CNAs support NPAR differently—for example, not all CNAs support all

protocols on all partitions. Refer to the documentation for your device, in this use case a Broadcom

57810, to determine which protocols are available.

Pre-Requisites Introduction

Before you begin configuration of your environment with Active System Manager, you must ensure that

the following items are in place:

 Top of Rack Switch Configuration

 Out of Band Management Connectivity and Chassis Management Controller Firmware

 ESX Images on Managed Server’s SD Card or Hard Disk

 VMware vCenter Server

 Deploy Active System Manager

 Create EqualLogic Storage Volumes

 EqualLogic Multipathing Extenstion Module

Top of Rack Switch Configuration

The configuration of the top of rack distribution switches provides the access to the various iSCSI and

standard Ethernet networks, while the configuration of the top of rack switches drives the auto-

configuration of the Dell Force10 PowerEdge M I/O Aggregators (IOA). It is important to ensure that

each IOA has exactly one uplink to the desired top of rack distribution switch and that this uplink is

configured with LACP enabled as well as the VLANs needing to be accessed from that fabric. The uplink

can be configured using combinations of ports on the IOA from a single 10 Gb connection and up to six

40 Gb connections. Despite the number of connections, only a single uplink can be configured on the

IOA.

M1000e Out of Band Management Connectivity and CMC Firmware

The out of band management network is the primary network which the Active System Manager will use

to configure the Chassis, I/O Modules, and Servers in the environment. A simple flat network with no

VLANs is used for access to the management interfaces for these devices. In Active Infrastructure the

Active System Manager will need to be deployed to an ESXi Host with access to this management

network.