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HasanHasib
Copper Contributor
Jul 20, 2023
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Guidance on Network Configurations for Azure Stack HCI Cluster

Hello All,   I am going to deploy my very first Azure Stack HCI cluster.   I need guidance on how to assign the IP addresses to the NICs, what should be IP address scheme, and best practices. De...
  • Hi HasanHasib,

    I would recommend reaching out to a partner that can help you setup the cluster. If you bought a new solution the vendor can definitely help you. Also Windows Admin Center helps out when new to Azure Stack HCI and configures the right settings for you such as SET switch.

    (1) How to assign the IP addresses? since it's my first time with the black screen.

    You can assign IP adresses using the 'sconfig' screen. When you login, you will end up on that screen automatically and then you type '8' to go to the networking config screen.

    (2) How to configure SET for the NICs to be used for virtualization/compute step-by-step?

    You can specify creating a SET switch when executing the 'New-VMSwitch' cmdlet, see New-VMSwitch (Hyper-V) | Microsoft Learn


    (3) I know that I don't need to configure SET (Switch Embedded Teaming) for the Storage NICs, but what should I do for the Mgmt NICs? Should I configure SET for them OR should 1 NIC be enough for the Mgmt?

    Based on your requirements (bandwidth etc) you can go either way. For production I prefer to use two.


    (4) How to configure SET step-by-step?

    Same answer as (2).

     

    (5) What is the recommendation for the IP address scheming for all the NICs? Let's say I'm assigning 10.4.8.x to the Mgmt NICs, should I use the same IP address scheme for Storage and Compute NICs as well, or should I assign some different IP schemes like 172.x.x.x

    You can set it up as you wish depending on your network architecture. Can you stay in the same 'scheme' so that everything is in 10.4.x.x range. So for example:
    Management: 10.4.8.x
    Storage1: 10.4.9.x
    Storage2: 10.4.10.x

    Or you can use smaller subnets to save IP addresses.

    (6) There are 2 NICs for Storage and we are not configuring SET for them... So, just to confirm, will I need to assign 2 IP addresses for Storage on each server?

    Yes.

    (7) How to enable the iWARP RDMA for the Storage NICs? I'm thinking to use iWARP RDMA as I read MSFT engineers recommend/prefer iWARP over RoCE. Please confirm my understanding.

    This is a setting you enable on the physical network card. Depending on the brand you can set it using Set-NetAdapterAdvancedProperty

    (8) For the Mgmt NIC, first I will configure the SET then I will assign the IP address to the SET NIC, just like we used to with the conventional NIC Teaming in Windows Server 2012 R2.


    Correct.

     

    --
    Darryl van der Peijl
    Splitbrain

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