OMNI Archives - HCIdiver

Step 4: Virtualization engineer controls Day 2 Ops for the Full Stack

Network Admins calm down and look here.

The network admins are not usually in favor of anything that replaces their day to day jobs. If you can show them the finished solution, you may be able to sway them in favour. Make sure to give them a demo of the OMNI plugin running inside vSphere using VxRail SmartFabric enabled switches.

Click into the Omni dashboard.

The OMNI dashboard displays the current information on the VxRail SmartFabric enabled Switches. Here the Virtualization engineer has visibility to the OS10 version and the VLANS currently setup. That’s it? Not sure what NetAdmin Ned was expecting but there is no Network-Chaos-Now button!

Lets give Ned a use-case for SmartFabrics

You can describe a scenario to Ned that is common. It’s time to add a new host to the existing cluster. Normally you would ask Ned to prepare the host network ports. He would label them add all the required VLANS and to make sure the settings match with the existing host ports.

New Hosts detected with VxRail SmartFabric

With SmartFabrics no need to bother Ned

Adding hosts to HCI clusters are now done solely by the Virtualization Admin without any need to ask the NetAdmin to prepare host ports. It is all taken care of automatically by the VxRail SmartFabric services and the OMNI plugin.

Choose the discovered host.

Enter vCenter credentials.

Add the Ip address information.

Run validation.

Validation must pass first.

Once passed, host is added automatically.

new hosts added automatically to VxRail SmartFabric cluster

Watch quick Ned! Ports are configured.

hosts connected to VxRail SmartFabric are automatically configured

Hands free with VxRail SmartFabric services.

vSphere automation for VxRail SmartFabric

Step 1: Enable SmartFabric Services on the ToR Switch

Step 2: Deploy VxRail Cluster incl. ToR with VxRail Manager

Step 3: Deploy the SmartFabric OMNI plugin in VMware vSphere

EXTRA STEP Added Feb. 2020. See Below in yellow.

Next Blog : Step 4: Virtualization engineer controls Day 2 Ops for the Full Stack

Installing the SmartFabric OMNI plugin

At this point we have already run the first two steps to get SmartFabric installed, our Switches have SmartFabric services enabled and the VxRail Manager Gui deployment has automatically configured the switch and disabled the CLI. Now we will add the Open Manage Network Integration or SmartFabric OMNI plugin to vSphere, giving the virtualization engineer full visibility and control of the dedicated HCI switch fabric.

Download the OMNI plugin VM

We begin by deploying the OMNI VM ova, which is available from VMware Solution Exchange here. It seems to bounce you now to the Dell Support site where you can get the latest version here. As of June 2019 the latest version is 1.1.18.

Deploy the OVA

These steps are straightforward. Isn’t great that we can do the OVA deployment thru the HTML5 interface? Be sure to match up the source and destination networks correctly at Step 7 in the process. Later on we will configure an ipv4 address on vCenter network and enable ipv6 on the MGMT network.

Power on the VM and connect to a console on the OMNI vm. You need to establish a password here for the admin user. The default username and default password is setup as admin / admin.

Configure the OMNI appliance

Since this is a first run deployment, we are going to select option “0. Full Setup” at the Menu. As you can see you can re-run and do other admin tasks later if required from this interface.

Before we active the first connection, we will setup the Profile name “vCenter Server Network” and assign a valid ipv4 address for the OMNI VM here.

The second connection is for ipv6 discovery on the VxRail Management network, no ipv4 address needed here, set to disabled.

Set IPv6 Config to “Link-Local”.

EXTRA STEP Added Feb. 2020.

Navigate to Routing and select Edit. Select Add.

For “Destination/Prefix” enter “fde1:53ba:e9a0:cccc::/64”.

Leave “Next Hop” empty, Leave”Metric” default of 0. Click OK

Be sure to activate both networks on the last screen.

You will be prompted at the CLI again for NTP, SSL Cert, the appliance ip address, FQDN for VCSA, VC Username and Password, and finally the OMNI ip for REST and REST username and password.