• Use at least two 10-Gb Small Form-Factor Pluggable (SFP) cables per server when using the 6200 series FI. Use at least two 40-GbE QSFP cables per server when using the 6300 series FI.

• Ensure that the Fabric Interconnect console cable (CAB-CONSOLE-RJ45) has an RJ-45 connector on one end and a DB9 connector on the other. This cable is used to connect into the RS-232 console connection on a laptop.

• Ensure that the standard power cords have an IEC C13 connector on the end that plugs into the power supplies. Make sure that the optional jumper power cords have an IEC C13 connector on the end that plugs into the power supplies and an IEC C14 connector on the end that plugs into an IEC C13 outlet receptacle.

  For further details, see the Cisco UCS 6200 Series Fabric Interconnect Hardware Guide.

• The KVM cable provides a connection for the Cisco HX-Series Servers into the system. It has a DB9 serial connector, a VGA connector for a monitor, and dual USB 2.0 ports for a keyboard and mouse. With this cable, you can create a direct connection to the operating system and the BIOS running on the system.

  Note	This same KVM cable is used for both UCS rack mount and blade servers.

For further details on cables and ordering information for M4 or M5 servers, see the respective Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series Models and Cisco UCS B200 Blade Server Installation and Service Note.

A Cisco HyperFlex cluster contains a minimum of three converged HyperFlex nodes. There is an option of adding compute-only nodes to provide additional compute power if there is no need for extra storage. Each server in a HyperFlex cluster is also referred as a HyperFlex node. Make sure that each node has the following settings installed and configured before you deploy the storage cluster.

For further information, refer to the Cisco HX240c/220c HyperFlex Node Installation Guides.

Ensure that the following host requirements are met.

• Use the same VLAN IDs for all the servers (node or hosts) in the cluster.

• Use the same administrator login credentials for all the ESXi servers across the storage cluster.

• Keep SSH enabled on all ESXi hosts.

• Configure DNS and NTP on all servers.

• Install and configure VMware vSphere.

• Use single VIC only for Converged nodes or Compute–only nodes. Additional VICs or PCIe NICs are not supported.

The disk requirements vary between converged nodes and compute-only nodes. To increase the available CPU and memory capacity, you can expand the existing cluster with compute-only nodes as needed. These compute-only nodes provide no increase to storage performance or storage capacity.

Alternatively, adding converged nodes increase storage performance and storage capacity alongside CPU and memory resources.

Servers with only Solid-State Disks (SSDs) are All-Flash servers. Servers with both SSDs and Hard Disk Drives (HDDs) are hybrid servers.

The following applies to all the disks in a HyperFlex cluster:

• All the disks in the storage cluster must have the same amount of storage capacity. All the nodes in the storage cluster must have the same number of disks.

• All SSDs must support TRIM and have TRIM enabled.

• All HDDs can be either SATA or SAS type. All SAS disks in the storage cluster must be in a pass-through mode.

• Disk partitions must be removed from SSDs and HDDs. Disks with partitions are ignored and not added to your HX storage cluster.

• Optionally, you can remove or backup existing data on disks. All existing data on a provided disk is overwritten.

  Note	New factory servers are shipped with appropriate disk partition settings. Do not remove disk partitions from new factory servers.

• Only the disks ordered directly from Cisco are supported.

• On servers with Self Encrypting Drives (SED), both the cache and persistent storage (capacity) drives must be SED capable. These servers support Data at Rest Encryption (DARE).

In addition to the disks listed in the table below, all M4 converged nodes have 2 x 64-GB SD FlexFlash cards in a mirrored configuration with ESX installed. All M5 converged nodes have M.2 SATA SSD with ESXi installed.

Note

Do not mix storage disks type or storage size on a server or across the storage cluster. Mixing storage disk types is not supported. When replacing cache or persistent disks, always use the same type and size as the original disk. Do not mix any of the persistent drives. Use all HDD or SSD and the same size drives in a server. Do not mix hybrid and All-Flash cache drive types. Use the hybrid cache device on hybrid servers and All-Flash cache devices on All-Flash servers. Do not mix encrypted and non-encrypted drive types. Use SED hybrid or SED All-Flash drives. On SED servers, both the cache and persistent drives must be SED type. All nodes must use same size and quantity of SSDs. Do not mix SSD types.

Please refer to the corresponding server model spec sheet for details of drives capacities and number of drives supported on the different servers.

For information on compatible PIDs when performing an expansion of existing cluster, please refer to the Cisco HyperFlex Drive Compatibility document.

Compute-Only Nodes

The following table lists the supported compute-only node configurations for compute-only functions. Storage on compute-only nodes is not included in the cache or capacity of storage clusters.

Note

When adding compute nodes to your HyperFlex cluster, the compute-only service profile template automatically configures it for booting from an SD card. If you are using another form of boot media, update the local disk configuration policy. See the Cisco UCS Manager Server Management Guide for server-related policies.

If your network is behind a firewall, in addition to the standard port requirements, VMware recommends ports for VMware ESXi and VMware vCenter.

• CIP-M is for the cluster management IP.

• SCVM is the management IP for the controller VM.

• ESXi is the management IP for the hypervisor.

Verify that the following firewall ports are open:

Time Server

HX Data Platform Installer

Mail Server

Optional for email subscription to cluster events.

Monitoring

Optional for monitoring UCS infrastructure.

Name Server

vCenter

User

SSO Server

Stretch Witness

Required only when deploying HyperFlex Stretched Cluster.

Replication

Required only when configuring native HX asynchronous cluster to cluster replication.

SED Cluster

UCSM

Miscellaneous

Best Practices

• Must use different subnets and VLANs for each network.

• Directly attach each host to a Cisco UCS fabric interconnect using a 10-Gbps cable.

• Do not use VLAN 1 which is the default VLAN as it can cause networking issues, especially if Disjoint Layer 2 configuration is used.

• Installer sets the VLANs as non-native by default. Ensure to configure the upstream switches to accommodate the non-native VLANs.

Each ESXi host needs the following networks.

• Management traffic network—From the vCenter, handles the hypervisor (ESXi server) management, and storage cluster management.

• Data traffic network—Handles the hypervisor and storage data traffic.

• vMotion network

• VM network

There are four vSwitches, each carrying a different network.

• vswitch-hx-inband-mgmt—Used for ESXi management and storage controller management.

• vswitch-hx-storage-data—Used for ESXi storage data and HX Data Platform replication.

  These two vSwitches are further divided in two port groups with assigned static IP addresses to handle traffic between the storage cluster and the ESXi host.

• vswitch-hx-vmotion—Used for VM and storage vMotion.

  This vSwitch, has one port group for management, defined through vSphere that connects to all the hosts in the vCenter cluster.

• vswitch-hx-vm-network—Used for VM data traffic.

  You can add or remove VLANs on the corresponding vNIC templates in Cisco UCS Manager. See Managing VLANs in Cisco UCS Manager and Managing vNIC templates in Cisco UCS Manager for the detailed steps. To create port groups on the vSwitch, refer to Adding Virtual Port Groups to VMware Standard vSwitch.

Note	The Cisco HX Data Platform Installer automatically creates the vSwitches. The following services in vSphere must be enabled after the HyperFlex storage cluster is created. DRS (Optional, if licensed) vMotion High Availability

Provide at least three VLAN IDs. All VLANs must be configured on the fabric interconnects during the installation.

The VLAN tagging with External Switch VLAN Tagging (EST) and vSwitch settings are applied using UCS Manager profiles. The HX Data Platform Installer, simplifies this process.

Note

Do not use VLAN 1 which is the default VLAN as it can cause networking issues, especially if Disjoint Layer 2 configuration is used. Use a different VLAN other than VLAN 1. Installer sets the VLANs as non-native by default. Configure the upstream switches to accommodate the non-native VLANs. Inband Management is not supported on VLAN 2 or VLAN 3.

Provide the listed content for the UCS Fabric Interconnect and UCS Manager when prompted.

Cisco UCS Fabric Interconnect Requirements

Cisco UCS Manager Requirements

Enter the IP address from the range of addresses that are available to the ESXi servers on the storage management network or storage data network through vCenter. Provide static IP addresses for all network addresses.

Note

Data and Management networks must be on different subnets. IP addresses cannot be changed after the storage cluster is created. Contact Cisco TAC for assistance. Though, not required by itself, if you are specifying DNS names, enable IP addresses forward and reverse DNS lookup. The installer IP address must be reachable from the management subnet used by the hypervisor and the storage controller VMs. The installer appliance must run on the ESXi host or on a VMware workstation that is not a part of the cluster to be installed.

Storage cluster is a component of the Cisco HX Data Platform which reduces storage complexity by providing a single datastore that is easily provisioned in the vSphere Web Client. Data is fully distributed across disks in all the servers that are in the storage cluster, to leverage controller resources and provide high availability.

A storage cluster is independent of the associated vCenter cluster. You can create a storage cluster using ESXi hosts that are in the vCenter cluster.

To define the storage cluster, provide the following parameters.

Provide administrator level account and password for vCenter. Ensure that you have an existing vCenter server. Ensure that the following vSphere services are operational.

• Enable Dynamic Resource Scheduler (DRS) [Optional, enable if licensed].

• Enable vMotion.

• Enable High availability (HA) [Required to define failover capacity and for expanding the datastore heartbeat].

• User VMs must be version 9 or later [Required to use HX Data Platform, Native Snapshots, and ReadyClones].

Before installing Cisco HX Data Platform, ensure that the following network connections and services are operational.

• DNS server

  Caution

  DNS servers should reside outside of the HX storage cluster. Nested DNS servers can cause a cluster to not start after entire cluster is shutdown, such as during DC power loss.

• NTP server

  Caution

  NTP servers should reside outside of the HX storage cluster. Nested NTP servers can cause a cluster to not start after entire cluster is shutdown, such as during DC power loss.

  Note

  Before configuring the storage cluster, manually verify that the NTP server is working and providing a reliable source for the time. Use the same NTP server for all nodes (both converged and compute) and all storage controller VMs. The NTP server must be stable, continuous (for the lifetime of the cluster), and reachable through a static IP address. If you are using Active Directory as an NTP server, please make sure that the NTP server is setup according to Microsoft best practices. For more information, see Windows Time Service Tools and Settings. Please note that if the NTP server is not set correctly, time sync may not work, and you may need to fix the time sync on the client-side. For more information, see Synchronizing ESXi/ESX time with a Microsoft Domain Controller.

• Time Zone

To configure Auto Support, you need the following information:

Note	Enabling Auto Support is strongly recommended because it provides historical hardware counters that are valuable in diagnosing future hardware issues, such as drive failure for a node.

The SSO URL is provided by vCenter. If it is not directly reachable from the controller VM, then configure the location explicitly using Installer Advanced Settings.