I have created a step by step video of VXRAIL initial configuration, which will help you with the initial configuration of the VXRAIL Appliance, however, before you proceed with the initial configuration of your new VxRail appliance, make sure the TOR (top of rack switch is properly configured to support VXRAIL installation requirements).
It is critical to an efficient, successful installation to completely capture and confirm all network elements, IP, ToR Switch details, VLAN information as described in the Pre-Installation Checklist.
Also make sure to have a NTP, DNS and Active Directory (optional) in place before starting the installation. I have configured the NTP, DNS and Active directory on single VMware workstation machine for the demo purpose. You will not be able to configure the appliance in case appliance not able to reach the NTP server.
Plan the network configuration in advance and configure the switch prior to configuring the appliance. You have two option here, either use a flat network (not recommended) in which your management traffic, vMotion traffic and VSAN traffic use the same native VLAN or define the VLAN on your switch for Management, vMotion and, VSAN and any other traffic type you want to isolate with VLANs.
I have used the following VLANs on my VXRAIL appliance:
- Management VLAN 10
- vMotion VLAN 20
- VSAN VLAN 30
It’s also imperative to configure all the ports connected from the VXRAIL appliance to the TOR switch as trunks and define all the VLANS to each trunk interface. The tagging and untagging will happen on the virtual switch level.
You need to reserve static IP address for the below components.
- 4 continuous IP address for ESXi hosts (for 1 appliance)
- 4 continuous IP address for vMotion Network (for 1 appliance)
- 4 continuous IP address for VSAN network (for 1 appliance)
- 1 IP address for vCenter Server Appliance
- 1 IP address for vRealize Log insight
- 1 IP address for VXRAIL Manager
- 1 IP address for VXRAIL Manager Extension
- IP address of NTP , AD and DNS Servers
Now, you can start the VXRAIL installation referring to the steps below:
- Configure the PC, you are using to perform the configuration from, to connect to an address on the same subnet as the VxRail appliance (default is 192.168.10.x).
- Connect your PC to a port on the TOR switch integrated with the VxRail appliance.
- Confirm that you can ping the VxRail initial IP address (default is 192.168.10.200). Make sure you use either Google chrome or Mozilla Firefox. IE will not able to reach the default 192.168.10.200 IP address
- Confirm that the gateway is reachable.
- Confirm that the DNS server(s) are reachable (unless you are in an isolated environment).
- Connect to VxRail Manager, as follows, referring to the Pre-Installation Site Checklist:
- Launch a browser on your PC.
- Browse to the VxRail Manager IP address: https://192.168.10.200.
The VxRail Welcome screen is displayed. From there onwards please refer to the below video to complete the installation of VXRAIL.
I will be publishing some more videos regarding initial configuration in coming weeks .
Saurav Issar 