This post is my personal technical note HP SimpliVity Hyperconverged Solution drafted during my personal knowledge update.  This post is not intended to cover all the part of the solution and some note is based on my own understanding of the solution. My intention to draft this note is to outline the key solution elements for quick readers.

The note is the second part of the whole note. The first post is per the below link:

HP SimpliVity Study Notes (Part 1)

Data Resiliency

Disk Level

• RAID protection
• withstand the loss of at least two HDDs in each node

 

Node Level

• maintains the complete set of data associated with a VM on two distinct OmniStack nodes within a SimpliVity Data Center
• Combine with disk level protection, SimpliVity Data Center can withstand the loss of at least two HDDs in every node while a node is in maintenance without losing a single VM.
• In the worst case of two nodes failure in same data centre, only some of the VMs will be disrupted based on the VM distribution.

 

Key Unique Operation Features

• Scheduled VM Backup – a plugin in vCenter to schedule the VM backup. (Frequency, retentions, destination, Backup Window/days/type)
• VM Backup Support application-consistent backup
• VM Restoration for Image/Folder/Files
• Copy VM Backup across vSphere Data Centers in the same federation.
• Move VM across vSphere Data Centers in the same federation

 

Network

General Rules

• Maintain a separate network for 10 Gb/s storage data traffic between HPE OmniStack hosts in a federation.
• Use existing networks if you have appropriate networks in your VMware environment.
• Use VLANs to separate management and virtual machine traffic. However, ensure that the Management network and HPE OmniStack hosts can route to each other through a common VLAN.
• Open TCP ports 9292 and 9299 on the Management network to deploy HPE OmniStack hosts. You can close these ports after a deployment is complete.
• To deploy a host with Deployment Manager, enable Service Location Protocol (SLP) for automatic host discovery.
• Set the MTU to 9000 for a 10 Gbps connection.

 

Network Requirement

The network requirement can be simply remembered as 5 interfaces within 3 port groups on 2 vSwitchs.

 

VSwitch0

• Management Network (VLAN A)
  • Virtual Controller Interface
  • HPE OmniStack ESXi mgmt VMkernel Interface

 

VSwitch1

• Storage Network (VLAN B)
  • Virtual Controller Interface
  • Storage VMkernel Port
• Federation Network (VLAN C)
  • Virtual Controller Interface

 

By default, the storage VMkernel port is also configured on vSwitch 1 to support vMotion, however a separate VMkernel can be created manually post deployment if required.

Deployment

1. Download SimpliVity software (Including Deployment Manager and Arbiter)
2. Install Deployment Manager on a Windows Machine (Recommended in same broadcast domain with ESXi host for auto discovery)
3. Install Arbiter on a Windows Machine outside the SimpliVity federation.
4. Confirm vCenter is deployed and accessible.
5. Launch HPE SimpliVity Deployment Manager
   1. Choose Hypervisor Type, vCenter hostname/IP, vCenter Login Details
   2. Choose Data center
   3. Choose new federation or join existing one.
   4. Choose XML config file if have
   5. Auto or manually discover the hosts
   6. Select Hypervisor version.
   7. Select 1*1Gb interface for mgmt and 1*10Gb interface for Storage and Federation. (NIC Teaming will be configured at post tasks)
   8. Input host(Hypervisor) password and OmniStack CLI password
   9. Input Management Network Details for Host and OVC
   10. Input Storage Network Details for Host and OVC
   11. Input Federation Network Details for OVC
   12. Input DNS Setting
   13. Input NTP Setting (NTP is important!)
   14. Review and start the setting test.
   15. Save the xml file if required for future deployment.
   16. Start the deployment.
6. Post Task
   1. VMware License
   2. Install SimpliVity Plugin
   3. Configure ESXi NIC teaming
   4. Setup time zone
   5. Setup datastore, backup policy and build VM.

 

Management Note

• SimpliVity GUI Plugin is provided for VMware vCenter, VMware vRealize Automation, Cisco UCS Director and etc.
• Support CLI and XML API.
• Automatically generate detailed diagnostic files and logs in response to system events
• SimpliVity’s “phone home” capability forwards critical alarms and event messages to SimpliVity’s customer support and a customer’s designated system administrators.