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Mike_Gray
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

VIO/NSX install

Hello Team.

I have six 8 Core /64GB servers, someone please give me some idea how  i can utilize these servers to deploy VIO/NSX with VSAN.

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admin
Immortal
Immortal

Hi Mike,

did you start taking a look at the following documentation:

Architectural Overview of NSX Deployments

As per the above, you need 3 clusters, in order to install VMware VIO in HA mode.

If you are going to install VMware VIO in compact mode, you should need only 2 clusters.

Please, let me know if you need more information, not covered by the documentation.

Cheers,

Domenico

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benjamin000
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

A simple setup would be :-

2 Clusters - Management and Compute with 2 Hosts in each

Setup provide network and place all hosts there.

Deploy NSX to the  Management Cluster making sure you have DNS setup and reverse DNS working for all hosts including vcenter.

Deploy VIO.

Setup vSAN on Compute Cluster

Bear in mind that with vSAN you will need to install ESXi on USB or some other medium as vSAN will format any drives allocated to it. In addition you will need at minimum 1 x SSD and 1 x SAS or SATA drive for vSAN in each Compute Host.

As you are deploying in a non production setup trial and error is your friend but to be honest it is fairly straight forward. I cannot stress enough to read the admin guide and also the hardware compatibility guide to make sure your hardware is supported especially for vSAN.

Regards Ben McGuire
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admin
Immortal
Immortal

sorry Benjamin,

probably I'm missing something... where is it written in the case requirements that we are talking about a non production environment?

Is it an assumption?

Cheers,

Domenico

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benjamin000
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

Sorry Domenico....

I just assumed it wasn't due to the fact that he has 6 servers each with 64GB of RAM and he is wanting to run VIO, NSX and vSAN and having a minimum of 3 hosts for a compute cluster to run vSAN ( vSAN need min 3 ) that leaves 2 for Edge Services and VIO management VMs which with just 192GB allocated to his Management Cluster is no way is this going to be enough as if he was using this in production he would need to utilze ESG HA and general VIO HA and again 192 GB is just not going to cut it here.

Cheers

Regards Ben McGuire
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benjamin000
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

And FYI HA will work just fine with 2 clusters.

Regards Ben McGuire
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admin
Immortal
Immortal

your analysis is right!

at this point there are two possible solutions I like, depending on the use of the environment:

1) Test environment  ->  management cluster (3 hosts) + edge cluster (1 or 2 hosts) + compute cluster ( 2 or 1 hosts)

2) Production environment -> management cluster (4 hosts, getting the possibility to putting in maintenance mode one host) + compute cluster (2 hosts)

but, as I wrote in the starting stage... all depends on the requirements Smiley Happy

Let me know what you think about.

Cheers,

Domenico

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benjamin000
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

Yes when you break it down like that you are also correct. I guess it boils down to specific requirements as there are multiple ways to configure the setup but I probably would not advise him to use such small servers as if it were a production system he will run out of memory sooner rather than later and he may as well do things properly first.

Anyway he probably should elaborate a little more on what his use case will be so we can advise further and provide a more clarity on specific setups.

Regards Ben McGuire
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Mike_Gray
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

Banjamin and Domenico,

Thanks for the support, I already installed with 3 node management cluster and 3 node shared edge payload cluster.

Everything working fine, this is test environment in prod we have different set  of servers

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admin
Immortal
Immortal

this is perfect Mike!

anything you need, let us know!

cheers,

Domenico

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