Cisco Cisco HyperFlex HX220c M4 Node White Paper

Page 8 of 31

VMware vCenter Server provides a scalable and extensible platform that forms the foundation for virtualization

management for the vSphere cluster. vCenter manages all vSphere hosts and their virtual machines.

Cisco HyperFlex HX Data Platform

In a Cisco HyperFlex System, the data platform requires a minimum of three Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series

converged nodes for the default three-way mirroring of data. To create a highly available cluster with N+1

resiliency, the solution considers a minimum of four hyperconverged nodes per cluster. Each node includes a

Cisco HyperFlex HX Data Platform controller that implements the distributed file system using internal flash-based

SSD drives and high-capacity HDDs to store data. The controllers communicate with each other over 10 Gigabit

Ethernet to present a single pool of storage that spans the nodes in the cluster. Individual nodes access data

through a data layer using file, block, object, or API plug-ins. As nodes are added, the cluster scales to deliver

computing, storage capacity, and I/O performance.

In the VMware vSphere environment, the controller occupies a virtual machine with a dedicated number of

processor cores and memory, allowing it to deliver consistent performance and not affect the performance of the

other virtual machines in the cluster. The controller can access all storage resources without hypervisor

intervention through the VMware VMDirectPath feature. It uses the node's memory and SSD drives as part of a

distributed caching layer, and it uses the node's HDDs for distributed capacity storage. The controller integrates the

data platform into VMware software through the use of two preinstalled VMware ESXi vSphere Installation Bundles

(VIBs):

●

IO Visor: This VIB provides a network file system (NFS) mount point so that the ESXi hypervisor can

access the virtual disk drives that are attached to individual virtual machines. From the hypervisor's

perspective, it is simply attached to a network file system.

●

vStorage API for Array Integration (VAAI): This storage offload API mechanism is used by vSphere to

request advanced file system operations related to snapshots and cloning from the underlying storage

subsystem. The controller causes these operations to occur by manipulating the metadata rather than

actually copying data, providing rapid response and thus rapid deployment of new application environments.