After adding all ESXi hosts to the cluster, create a vSphere Distributed Switch to handle the SDDC traffic. You also create port groups to prepare your environment to migrate the vCenter Server instance to the distributed switch.

Procedure

  1. Log in to vCenter Server by using the vSphere Web Client.
    1. Open a Web browser and go to https://nyc01r01vc01.rainpole.local/vsphere-client.
    2. Log in using the following credentials.

      Setting

      Value

      User name

      administrator@vsphere.local

      Password

      vsphere_admin_password

  2. Create the vSphere Distributed Switch.
    1. In the Navigator, click Networking and expand the nyc01r01vc01.rainpole.local tree.
    2. Right-click the nyc01-r01dc data center, and select Distributed Switch > New Distributed Switch to start the New Distributed Switch wizard.
    3. On the Name and location page, enter nyc01-r01-vds01 as the name and click Next.
    4. On the Select version page, ensure the Distributed switch: 6.5.0 radio button is selected and click Next.
    5. On the Edit settings page, enter the following values and click Next.

      Setting

      Value

      Number of uplinks

      2

      Network I/O Control

      Enabled

      Create a default port group

      Deselected

    6. On the Ready to complete page, review your entries and click Finish.
  3. Edit the settings of the distributed switch.
    1. Right-click the nyc01-r01-vds01 distributed switch and select Settings > Edit Settings.
    2. Click the Advanced tab.
    3. Enter 9000 as MTU (Bytes) value and click OK.
  4. Create port groups in the distributed switch for the management traffic types.
    1. Right-click the nyc01-r01-vds01 distributed switch and select Distributed Port Group > New Distributed Port Group. 
    2. Create port groups with the following settings and click Next.

      Port Group Name

      Port Binding

      VLAN Type

      VLAN ID

      nyc01-r01-vds01-management

      Ephemeral - no binding

      VLAN

      1811

      nyc01-r01-vds01-vmotion

      Static binding

      VLAN

      1812

      nyc01-r01-vds01-vsan

      Static binding

      VLAN

      1813

      nyc01-r01-vds01-uplink01

      Static binding

      VLAN

      1816

      nyc01-r01-vds01-uplink02

      Static binding

      VLAN

      1817

      Note:

      The port group for VXLAN traffic is automatically created later during the configuration of the NSX Manager.

    3. On the Ready to complete page, review your entries and click Finish.
    4. Repeat this step for each port group.
  5. Change the port groups to use the Route Based on Physical NIC Load teaming algorithm.
    1. Right-click the nyc01-r01-vds01 distributed switch and select Distributed Port Group > Manage Distributed Port Groups.
    2. On the Select port group policies page, select Teaming and failover and click Next.
    3. Click the Select distributed port groups button, add all port groups except nyc01-r01-vds01-uplink01 and nyc01-r01-vds01-uplink02, click OK, and click Next.
    4. On the Teaming and failover page, select Route based on physical NIC load from the Load balancing drop-down menu and click Next.
    5. Click Finish.
  6. Configure the uplinks for the nyc01-r01-vds01-uplink01 and nyc01-r01-vds01-uplink02 port groups.
    1. Right click the nyc01-r01-vds01-uplink01 port group and click Edit Settings.
    2. Select Teaming and Failover.
    3. Move Uplink2 to Unused uplinks and click OK.
    4. Right click the nyc01-r01-vds01-uplink02 port group and click Edit Settings.
    5. Select Teaming and Failover.
    6. Move Uplink1 to Unused uplinks and click OK.
  7. Connect the ESXi host, nyc01r01esx01.rainpole.local, to the nyc01-r01-vds01 distributed switch by migrating its VMkernel network adapters.
    1. Right-click the nyc01-r01-vds01 distributed switch and click Add and Manage Hosts.
    2. On the Select task page, select Add hosts and click Next. 
    3. On the Select hosts page, click New hosts.
    4. In the Select new hosts dialog box, select nyc01r01esx01.rainpole.local and click OK.
    5. On the Select hosts page, click Next.
    6. On the Select network adapter tasks page, ensure that Manage physical adapters and Manage VMkernel adapters check boxes are selected and click Next.
    7. On the Manage physical network adapters page, click vmnic1 and click Assign uplink.
    8. In the Select an Uplink for vmnic1 dialog box, click Uplink2 and click OK.
    9. On the Manage physical network adapters page, click Next.
  8. Configure the VMkernel network adapters.
    1. On the Manage VMkernel network adapters page, select vmk0 and click Assign port group.
    2. Select nyc01-r01-vds01-management and click OK.
    3. On the Manage VMkernel network adapters page, click On this switch and click New adapter. 
    4. On the Add Networking page, click Select an existing network, select the nyc01-r01-vds01-vsan port group, click OK, and click Next.
    5. On the Port properties page, select the vSAN check box and click Next.
    6. On the IPv4 settings page, select Use static IPv4 settings, enter IP address 172.18.13.101, enter subnet 255.255.255.0, and click Next.
    7. Click Finish.
    8. On the Analyze impact page, click Next.
    9. On the Ready to complete page, review your entries and click Finish.
  9. Create the vMotion VMkernel adapter.
    1. In the Navigator, click Host and Clusters and expand the nyc01r01vc01.rainpole.local tree.
    2. Click nyc01r01esx01.rainpole.local.
    3. Click the Configure tab and select VMkernel adapters.
    4. Click the Add host networking icon, select VMkernel Network Adapter, and click Next.
    5. On the Add Networking page, click Select an existing network, select the nyc01-r01-vds01-vmotion port group, click OK, and click Next.
    6. On the Port properties page, select vMotion from the TCP/IP Stack drop-down menu and click Next.
    7. On the IPv4 settings page, select Use static IPv4 settings, enter IP address 172.18.12.101, enter subnet 255.255.255.0, and click Next.
    8. On the Ready to complete page, review the configuration and click Finish.
  10. Configure the MTU on the vMotion VMkernel adapter.
    1. Select the vMotion VMkernel adapter created in the previous step and click Edit Settings.
    2. Click the NIC Settings page.
    3. Enter 9000 for the MTU value and click OK.
  11. Configure the vMotion TCP/IP stack.
    1. Under Networking , click TCP/IP configuration.
    2. Select vMotion and click the Edit TCP/IP stack configuration icon.
    3. Click Routing, under VMkernel gateway enter 172.18.12.253, and click OK.
      Note:

      If the VMkernel gateway option is grayed out, make sure the vMotion VMkernel's TCP/IP Stack is properly configured in Step 9.

  12. Migrate the vCenter Server instance from the standard switch to the distributed switch.
    1. In the Navigator, click Networking and expand the nyc01r01vc01.rainpole.local tree.
    2. Right-click the nyc01-r01-vds01 distributed switch and click Migrate VMs to Another Network.
    3. On the Select source and destination networks page, browse the following networks and click Next.

      Setting

      Value

      Source network

      VM Network

      Destination network

      nyc01-r01-vds01-management

    4. On the Select VMs to migrate page, select nyc01r01vc01, and click Next.
    5. On the Ready to complete page, review your entries and click Finish.
  13. Define Network I/O Control shares for the different traffic types on the distributed switch.
    1. Click the nyc01-r01-vds01 distributed switch, click the Configure tab, and click Resource Allocation > System traffic.
    2. Under System Traffic, configure each of the following traffic types with the following values.

      Traffic Type

      Shares

      Fault Tolerance (FT) Traffic

      Low

      Management Traffic

      Normal

      NFS Traffic

      Low

      Virtual Machine Traffic

      High

      iSCSI Traffic

      Low

      vMotion Traffic

      Low

      vSAN Traffic

      High

      vSphere Data Protection Backup Traffic

      Low

      vSphere Replication (VR) Traffic

      Low

  14. Migrate the last physical adapter from the standard switch to the distributed switch.
    1. In the Navigator, click Networking and expand the nyc01r01vc01.rainpole.local tree.
    2. Right-click the nyc01-r01-vds01 distributed switch and select Add and Manage Hosts.
    3. On the Select task page, select Manage host networking and click Next.
    4. On the Select hosts page, click Attached hosts.
    5. In the Select member hosts dialog box, select nyc01r01esx01.rainpole.local, click OK, and click Next.
    6. On the Select network adapter tasks page, select Manage physical adapters only and click Next.
    7. On the Manage physical network adapters page, select vmnic0 and click Assign uplink.
    8. In the Select an Uplink for vmnic0 dialog box, select Uplink1, click OK, and click Next.
    9. On the Analyze Impact page, click Next.
    10. On the Ready to complete page, click Finish.
  15. Enable vSphere Distributed Switch Health Check.
    1. In the Navigator, click Networking and expand the nyc01r01vc01.rainpole.local tree.
    2. Select the nyc01-r01-vds01 distributed switch and click the Configure tab.
    3. In the Navigator, select Health check and click the Edit button.
    4. Select Enabled for VLAN and MTU and Teaming and failover and click OK.
  16. Delete the vSphere Standard Switch.
    1. In the Navigator, click Hosts and Clusters and expand the nyc01r01vc01.rainpole.local tree.
    2. Click nyc01r01esx01.rainpole.local and then click the Configure tab.
    3. On the Configure page, select Virtual switches, select vSwitch0, and click the Remove selected standard switch icon.
    4. In the Remove Standard Switch dialog box, click Yes to confirm the removal.