10 VxRail Best Practices

VxRail is a hyper-converged infrastructure appliance that integrates compute, storage, networking, and virtualization into a single system. VxRail is designed for easy deployment and management, and it delivers high performance and scalability.

In this article, we will discuss 10 VxRail best practices that you should follow to get the most out of your VxRail appliance.

1. Use the VxRail Manager to configure and manage your cluster.

The VxRail Manager is a centralized management platform that provides a single pane of glass for all aspects of your VxRail cluster. This includes configuration, monitoring, and support.

Using the VxRail Manager ensures that you have a consistent and reliable way to manage your VxRail cluster. It also helps to avoid any potential errors that could occur if you were to manage the cluster manually.

Additionally, the VxRail Manager provides valuable insights into your cluster’s performance and health. This information can be used to troubleshoot issues and prevent problems before they occur.

2. Use the vSphere Web Client for day-to-day management of your VMs.

The vSphere Web Client provides a single pane of glass for managing your entire vSphere environment, including your VxRail cluster. This means you can manage all of your VMs from a single interface, which is much more efficient than using the vSphere Client or other tools.

In addition, the vSphere Web Client provides many features and functions that are not available in the vSphere Client, such as the ability to create and manage VM templates, deploy OVF templates, and configure networking and storage for your VMs.

Using the vSphere Web Client will save you time and make it easier to manage your VxRail environment.

3. Use VMware Update Manager (VUM) to update ESXi hosts, virtual appliances, and drivers.

VUM provides a centralised way to manage updates and patching for your environment, which is important for keeping your system up-to-date and secure. It also allows you to automate the update process, which can save you time and effort in the long run.

Additionally, VUM can be used to create baseline images of your hosts and virtual appliances. These baseline images can be used to quickly roll back changes if necessary, which can be a lifesaver if you ever need to undo an update that caused problems in your environment.

4. Configure a dedicated VMkernel port group on each host for iSCSI traffic.

The iSCSI protocol is a block-level storage protocol that allows for the transport of data over an IP network. When configuring iSCSI on VxRail, it’s important to have a dedicated VMkernel port group for iSCSI traffic in order to ensure optimal performance and avoid potential security risks.

A VMkernel port group is a logical container that contains one or more VMkernel ports. Each VMkernel port represents a single connection to a physical network adapter. By creating a dedicated VMkernel port group for iSCSI traffic, you can ensure that all iSCSI traffic is isolated from other types of traffic on your network. This isolation helps to improve performance and also reduces the risk of potential security threats.

5. Enable Jumbo Frames on all network switches in the environment.

Jumbo Frames allow for larger packets of data to be sent across the network, which can improve performance by reducing overhead. When VxRail nodes are configured with Jumbo Frames, they can send and receive up to 9000 bytes of data per packet, rather than the standard 1500 bytes.

Enabling Jumbo Frames is a simple task that can be completed in the switch’s web interface. Once enabled, all VxRail nodes in the environment will need to be rebooted for the change to take effect.

While there are some potential drawbacks to using Jumbo Frames, such as increased CPU utilization on the VxRail nodes, the benefits typically outweigh the negatives. For most environments, enabling Jumbo Frames will result in improved performance with no negative impact.

6. Create separate NFS datastores for different workloads.

When you have different workloads running on the same datastore, they can end up fighting for resources. This can lead to performance issues and even data loss.

By creating separate datastores for each workload, you can ensure that each one has the resources it needs to run optimally. This will help avoid any conflicts and keep your data safe.

7. Use RAID 5 or 6 when possible.

RAID 5 provides protection against a single disk failure, while RAID 6 protects against two disk failures. This is important because if one of the disks in your VxRail cluster fails, you want to make sure that your data is still protected.

Using RAID 5 or 6 will help to ensure that your data is safe in the event of a disk failure.

8. Do not use RAID 0 unless you have a backup plan in place.

When you use RAID 0, you are essentially striping data across all of the disks in the array. This provides increased performance but no redundancy, which means that if one disk fails, all of the data on the array is lost.

While this may be acceptable for some workloads, it’s generally not a good idea to run production workloads on an array with no redundancy. If you do choose to use RAID 0, make sure you have a backup plan in place so that you can recover your data if something goes wrong.

9. Use SSDs as cache drives whenever possible.

SSDs offer a number of advantages over HDDs, including much higher data transfer rates, lower power consumption, and better reliability. When used as cache drives in a VxRail system, SSDs can significantly improve performance by reducing the amount of time needed to access data stored on the slower HDDs.

Of course, SSDs are more expensive than HDDs, so you’ll need to weigh the cost against the benefits before deciding whether or not to use them in your VxRail system. However, if performance is a priority, SSDs are definitely worth considering.

10. Use at least two NICs per node for iSCSI connectivity.

Using two NICs for iSCSI provides redundancy in the event of a hardware failure, and it also allows for more bandwidth since each NIC can be used for data traffic. This is especially important when using VxRail for mission-critical applications.

It’s also important to ensure that your switches are properly configured for iSCSI traffic. Make sure you’re using jumbo frames and that your switch ports are configured for trunking.