Design considerations for the hypervisor cluster

Before you use HPE OneView to import hypervisor clusters, consider the configuration settings and recommendations in this topic. Following these guidelines and recommendations will enable effective management of your cluster and prevent inconsistencies.

The hypervisor cluster profile is designed to manage a hypervisor cluster whose cluster members share a workload. The cluster design comprises of all cluster members having common compute, network, and storage configurations. A cluster profile member represents a hypervisor and the server hardware on which the hypervisor runs. For the cluster member to be effective, both the server hardware and the hypervisor must be configured with a consistent networking and storage configurations. The templates help you in defining a consistent configuration for both physical server and the hypervisor that runs on it.

The template configurations are defined in the hypervisor cluster profile and the associated server profile template.

  • Server profile template - Defines template configurations for the physical server hardware in the hypervisor cluster. The server profiles apply the configurations on the physical server hardware using the configurations defined in the server profile template.

  • Hypervisor cluster profile - Defines template configurations for the hypervisors in the hypervisor cluster. These configurations are derived from the template configurations defined for the physical server hardware. The hypervisor profiles apply the configurations on the hypervisors using the configurations defined in the hypervisor cluster profile.

    The hypervisor cluster profile allows you to define cluster private volumes, and these volumes are attached in all the member server profiles and the hypervisor profiles.

For more information about the consistency checking configuration that must be used in the server profile template, see Server profile template consistency check for hypervisor cluster profiles.

Configuration

Description

Where to specify the configuration
Compute

Physical server configurations:

Identify and define the wanted server hardware, firmware versions, local storage, BIOS, boot, and other configurations based on the business requirements.

Server profile template.

Hypervisor OS configurations:

Identify and define the hypervisor operating system, its version, and OS configurations based on the business requirements.

The hypervisors are deployed using external tools that are not integrated in HPE OneView, and these configurations are not defined in HPE OneView and are managed externally.

Network

Physical server configurations:

Define the network topology by designing the networks that will be enabled on server network ports, their virtual LANs, subnets, and networking requirements for high availability configurations.

Server profile template.

Based on the network design, define connections to networks in the server profile template.

Hypervisor configurations:

Identify the virtual switch networking requirements such as virtual switch and port group names, type of virtual switch to be used is Distributed type or Standard type virtual switch, distributed virtual switch version, IP address allocation for VMkernel ports, and the wanted virtual switch layout.

Hypervisor cluster profile.

Define the virtual switch type and Multi-NIC vMotion configurations in the hypervisor settings of the hypervisor cluster profile.

If the Manage vSwitches option is enabled in the hypervisor cluster profile, the hypervisor cluster profile generates the virtual switch layout automatically. It generates the virtual switch layout based on the connection configurations in the server profile template and hypervisor settings in the hypervisor cluster profile. Because the virtual switch layout is built based on the connection configurations defined for the server hardware, the network configuration for both physical server and the hypervisor are defined to be consistent with each other.

For more information, see Considerations for network configurations.

Storage

Physical server configurations:

Define the shared storage design for the hypervisor cluster. The physical server configurations for this design include number of SAN storage volumes, storage capacity, and so on.

Server profile template or hypervisor cluster profile.

Volumes defined in the server profile template are available to all hypervisor cluster profiles that use the server profile template. Volumes defined in a hypervisor cluster profile cannot be shared with other hypervisor cluster profiles.

Hypervisor configurations:

Identify and define the configurations such as file system type for the storage volumes, and so on.

Hypervisor cluster profile.

The volumes defined in the server profile template are automatically added in the hypervisor cluster profile and cannot be removed. You can add additional volumes in the hypervisor cluster profile.

Configure Virtual Machine File System (VMFS) formatting for these volumes in the hypervisor cluster profile. If any other file system type is wanted, specify this as not managed.

For more information, see Considerations for storage configurations.

Cluster

Define the hypervisor cluster configurations such as hypervisor cluster name, features enabled, and their configurations.

Hypervisor cluster profile.

Using the hypervisor cluster profile, you can define the name of the hypervisor cluster, and enable or disable High Availability (HA) and Distributed Resource Scheduler (DRS) features. The software configurations for these cluster features must be configured using tools external to HPE OneView.

IMPORTANT:

The hypervisor cluster profile is not designed to manage all the software configurations on the cluster or cluster members, but it is designed to keep the configuration of the server nodes and hypervisors consistent. It also enables some of key features in the cluster but does not control the software configurations under those features. For example, you can enable or disable HA or DRS using the hypervisor cluster profile, but the HA or DRS configurations must be set using VMware vCenter server or tools external to HPE OneView.

Considerations for network configurations

The network topology that you design for the hypervisor cluster drives the template network configurations for the physical server and the hypervisor. The physical server network configurations are defined using connections in the server profile template; whereas, the hypervisor network configurations are generated by the hypervisor cluster profile. This helps you define a consistent configuration across server hardware and the hypervisor that runs on it.

The server profile configures the networking for the server hardware and is created based on the server profile template; whereas, the hypervisor profile configures the networking for the hypervisor and is created based on the template configurations in the hypervisor cluster profile. The networking configured by the server profile helps you to enable specific networks on the server ports, its connection properties, and so on. The hypervisor profile configures the virtual switches, port groups, network VLANs on the port groups, uplinks, and teaming. The other networking settings and software policies supported by the hypervisor manager must be configured using tools external to HPE OneView.

NOTE:

The server profile template must have a configured connection to the hypervisor management network for the template to be valid for use by a hypervisor cluster profile.

The following points help you to quickly understand the configurations.

  • To define a virtual switch in the hypervisor, create a connection in the server profile template.

  • One or more port groups are configured in the virtual switch based on whether connection is associated to a network or to a network set. One port group for each network is created.

  • If the purpose is set to General for a network defined in HPE OneView, a VM port group is created. If it is not set to General, the VMkernel port is created for the network. The purpose defined in the network in HPE OneView is then used to guide the features to be enabled on the VMkernel port such as management, VM migration, and so on.

  • To define NIC teaming for a virtual switch, create two or more connections in the server profile template that are connecting to same networks or network sets or to networks or network sets with same identity.

  • The virtual switch type can be defined as either Standard type or Distributed type by using the hypervisor setting in the hypervisor cluster profile. For Distributed type virtual switch, you can choose either all the virtual switches to be of distributed virtual switch type or only the general-purpose production networks to be on the distributed virtual switch.

For more details about the network configuration, see About networking in hypervisor cluster profile.

Considerations for storage configurations

The shared storage design for a hypervisor cluster drives the template storage configurations for the physical server and the hypervisor. The shared storage configurations for a physical server are defined using SAN storage volumes in the server profile template, and the hypervisor storage configurations for these are generated by the hypervisor cluster profile. In addition to SAN storage volumes defined in the server profile template, add additional shared volumes for each hypervisor in the hypervisor cluster profile.

The server profile configures the SAN storage for the server hardware giving it access to the storage space on a storage system. The hypervisor profile configures the storage adapters and the datastores in the hypervisor, and allows you to format it with VMFS.

The following points help you to quickly understand the configurations.

  • To define a datastore in the hypervisor, add a SAN volume in the server profile template or add the volume in the hypervisor cluster profile.

  • To access the storage space on the storage system, define the connections to the SAN in the server profile template that provides the storage path for the server hardware.

For more details about the storage configurations, see About hypervisor cluster volumes.