Deployment Guide

6 VxFlex Network Deployment Guide using Dell EMC Networking 25GbE switches and OS9
1 Introduction
VxFlex is a software-only solution that uses existing servers’ local disks and LAN to create a virtual SAN that
has all the benefits of external storage – but at a fraction of cost and complexity. VxFlex uses the existing
local storage devices and turns them into shared block storage. For many workloads, VxFlex storage is
comparable to, or better than, external shared block storage.
The lightweight VxFlex software components are installed on the application servers and behave like a
software initiator. A standard LAN handles communication and application I/O requests sent to VxFlex block
volumes. An efficient decentralized block I/O flow, combined with a distributed, sliced volume layout, results in
a massively parallel I/O system that can scale to thousands of nodes.
VxFlex is designed and implemented with enterprise-grade resilience. The software features an efficient
distributed self-healing process that overcomes media and server failures, without requiring administrator
involvement.
In the modern data center, 100 Gbps Ethernet is now at an affordable price to respond to the increasing
demands of bandwidth from storage and compute. Dell EMC offers the S5048F-ON, offering 25/100GbE
Ethernet, designed to be used as a data center Top of Rack (ToR) switch.
The example topology that is illustrated in this guide uses VxFlex Ready Nodes (formerly known as ScaleIO
Ready Nodes). Dell EMC VxFlex Ready Nodes are a combination of VxFlex software-defined block storage
and Dell PowerEdge servers, optimized to run the VxFlex OS, enabling the deployment of an entirely
architected, software-defined, scale-out server SAN. This guide covers deploying the VxFlex solution on
VMware vSphere ESXi, creating a Hyper-Converged Infrastructure (HCI) by enabling each ESXi host to
present computing as well as storage resources.
This guide does not cover physically cabling or connecting the S5048F-ON switches to existing data center
infrastructure. A prerequisite for this deployment guide is access to a VMware vSphere vCenter Server
capable of using virtual distributed switches.
Note: For deploying a spine-leaf architecture using Dell EMC Networking see Dell EMC Leaf-Spine
Deployment Guide for a step-by-step guide for more information. For steps on deploying and configuring
VMware vSphere, see vSphere Networking Guide for vSphere 6.5, ESXi 6.5, and vCenter Server 6.5.
1.1 Dell EMC VxFlex software components
A VxFlex virtual SAN consists of the following software components:
• Meta Data Manager (MDM) - Configures and monitors the VxFlex system. The MDM can be
configured in redundant cluster mode, with three members on three servers, five members on five
servers, or in single mode on a single server. The example in this guide creates a three-member
MDM configuration.
• Storage Data Server (SDS) - Manages the capacity of a single server and acts as a back-end for data
access. In this guide, all servers act as an SDS.
• Storage Data Client (SDC) - A lightweight device driver that exposes VxFlex volumes as block
devices. In this guide, all servers act as an SDC.