VxRail 8 Cluster Expansion

In this post I will show how to expand the release 8 of VxRail Cluster. The expansion requires that the new node has been physically cabled to the cluster. When we power on a new node that is connected to the same network as the VxRail cluster, this node is automatically discovered by VxRail Manager. You can add the new node to the cluster through the wizard.

Remark: Only the first three nodes in a cluster need to be identical. Additionally, VxRail clusters must be All-Flash or Hybrid mode.

There are 3 VxRail nodes in this cluster and new node was discovered by VxRail Manager. Click Add to start the Add VxRail Hosts wizard.

Select the new node to be added. Click NEXT.

Enter the credentials for vCenter Server. Click NEXT.

Under Select NICs and VMNICs the selected configuration can be further customized by changing the VMNICs that are assigned to the Uplinks. Click NEXT.

You need to provide host configuration settings for the new host. Provide a hostname and IP address and provide credentials for the ESXi management account. Click NEXT.

Enter a Rack Name and Position (optional). Click NEXT.

You need to provide the vSAN and vSphere vMotion network addresses for the new node. Click NEXT.

Remark: When the cluster was deployed, there were four IP addresses assigned to each network, but only configured 3 hosts. If only three IP addresses had been provisioned, you would have to extend the IP pools for Management, vMotion and vSAN network first.

Click VALIDATE to perform a final validation of the node expansion process.

During the validation process the wizard shows a progress.

Once the validation is successfully finished. You have the option to select yes or no for placing the new node into maintenance mode.

Click FINISH.

After clicking finish it will build the node and add it to the VxRail cluster.

When the expansion is finished, it will display “The host was successfully added“. Now there are four nodes are running in this VxRail cluster.

Categories: Dell Technologies VMware vSAN VxRail

Victor Wu

Senior Solutions Architect, Storage & Virtualization, Author at Dell EMC Knowledge Sharing & Packt