Configuration on DELL I/O Module switch- ACI VMware integration.

[Fabio Bustamante]

Hi

This must be an easy question, but I really need to confirm because I'm quite confused. I appreciate if someone can guide me a little.

We're connecting a DELL solution to our ACI infrastructure. It is a DELL PowerEdge FX2, that includes FN410S switches, that I think are quite analog to IOM on UCS B Series because they connect the servers through a midplane and have uplink SPF ports. We're adding ESX hosts that belong to that DELL chassis to VCenter and integrating VCenter with APIC. My question is:

We create a dynamic range of vlans (VLAN POOL) for the VMM integration on ACI. Integration works fine and I can see that APIC created a DVS on VCenter and portgroups are created as we associate the domain to each EPG. Do we have to create that same range of vlans on the DELL I/O Module Switch? I understand the servers in the chassis connect internally to the FN410S switch (there are actually 2 switches on that chassis), and this switch has uplinks to ACI Leafs, something similar to UCS B solution, but without Fabric Interconnect (i guess...). Do we need to create the same range of vlans there and tag them on the ports that go to ACI?

I think that must be the case, since I can see that a Portgroup is indeed assigned a vlan from that dynamic pool, and Leaf expects to receive the packets tagged with that vlan in order to associate that traffic to the corresponding EPG. Is that right? DELL administrators haven't configured anything on their side, and I suppose we need to configure a VPC to their switches (VTL on DELL) and those switches need to be configured properly(vlans, lldp, lacp)..

Thanks!

Fabio

[aleccham · Accepted solution]

Hi Fabio,

As part of the configuration you will need to create the entire dynamic VLAN range on both Dell switches to get this to work. Then apply the VLANs on the ports going to ACI leaves.

Let me know if you have any additional questions.

Regards,

Alec

[Fabio Bustamante]

Thanks a lot aleccham. So, it means that my analysis is right?:

VDS tags a packet for a portgroup with VLAN X (assigned from the dynamic vlan pool) and sends it to the IOM switch (of course a ESX host vnic is added to the VDS). This switch needs to maintain the vlan tagging until the packet reaches the Leaf, so It needs to have Vlan X created, and configured on uplink and downstream ports. When the packet reaches the Leaf, ACI recognizes it as member of EPG X due to being tagged with VLAN X. Correct?

Is that the same that we would do if we had Fabric Interconnect and I/O Modules on UCS B?

[tigelane]

Yes.  The configuration is the same for UCS when using fabric interconnects.  It’s also the same when you have something like a vblock, but with a vblock (or any l2 switch between the leaf and servers) you will lose CDP/LLDP between the leaf and esx server. To correct use Pre-provision on the vmm switch for the EPGs  (this seems to be the default now).