Deployment Guide

32 Dell EMC XC Xpress Hyper-Converged Appliance Deployment Guide for ESXi | A02
A Installation prerequisites
A.1 ESXi installation requirements
The Dell EMC Xpress solution requires the following. Detail of each are in the following sections.
 Network Time Protocol (NTP)
 Domain Name Server (DNS)
 vCenter (Required for configuring Xpress features.)
A.2 About Network Time Protocol (NTP)
Dell EMC recommends using accurate time on the hypervisor and the Controller VM (CVM) on all XC Xpress
clusters, regardless of the hypervisor type (ESXi, KVM, or Hyper-V) being run. Dell EMC recommends
syncing to three or five external Stratum One time sources, the same as used by your Active Directory (AD)
servers.
 Nutanix clusters must have accurate time relative to the AD domain, which is handling authentication.
A Nutanix cluster cannot function if the time discrepancy is greater than 5 minutes.
 Accurate timestamps are also important for troubleshooting interactions with third-party software
products, which may require synchronized time between the hypervisor and the Controller VM to
determine which files to back up.
 Accurate time synchronization between Nutanix clusters paired in Disaster Recovery (DR)
configurations is important so that snapshots do not expire too quickly or too late.
 Graphs in the Prism interface rely on the CVM time. Incorrect time skews graphs, especially in
relation to other monitoring platforms, which rely on other clock sources.
A.2.1 Configuring NTP servers
To add (or delete) an NTP server entry, do the following:
1. In Prism, on the main page, click the Gear icon.
2. On the Gear menu (see Main Menu Options), select NTP Servers.