Networking Guide for Lenovo Converged HX Series Nutanix Appliances (ENOS Switch Firmware)

Lenovo® Converged HX Series Nutanix Appliances are designed to help you simplify IT infrastructure, reduce costs, and accelerate time to value. These hyperconverged appliances from Lenovo combine industry-leading hyperconvergence software from Nutanix with Lenovo enterprise platforms.

This paper is a best practice guideline of how to interconnect HX Series appliances running VMware vSphere using Lenovo RackSwitch™ networking switches running the original ENOS Enterprise firmware. It also recommends how to connect the completed cluster up to a client external network. The paper is not intended to be a detailed guide for all possible configurations, but rather will describe the most common configuration covering the majority of installations, with further information on selected variants in the appendices.

This paper is for anyone involved in installation and implementation of HX nodes and in possession of basic networking skills, including Lenovo technical colleagues, business partners and customers.

Introduction
Preparing the switches
Configuring the switches as VLAG peers
Connect the VLAG to your existing core network
Appendix A: VLANs and TCP Port reference
Appendix B: Acropolis Hypervisor considerations
Appendix C: VMware Virtual Distributed Switch considerations
References and further reading

Changes in the January 9 update:

• Clarified that the Acropolis hypervisor is AHV and not KVM (AHV is based on KVM, however).
• Minor grammar corrections

Related product families

Product families related to this document are the following:

• 10 Gb Ethernet Connectivity
• Hyperconverged Infrastructure
• Nutanix Alliance
• ThinkAgile HX Series for Nutanix