Nimble DHCI brownfield installation

[giladzzz]

Hi

I have a vmware cluster with 3 X DL360 Gen10 and one ML350 Gen10. It is a production cluster I am going to install a Nimble DHCI into the cluster.  because the ML350 is not supported by DHCI it will be removed from the cluster but we are short on resources mainly memory so I would like to use the ML350.

If I add 4 Network cards of 10GB to the ML350 can I add it to the cluster after installation and share the datastores from the Nimble.

Any suggestions would be appreciated.

Regards

[Thomas_Lam_HK]

dHCI has checking rule in place which only allows DL server being part of the dHCI cluster.  Therefore the ML server can't be part of the dHCI cluster.  However, dHCI array itself does disk provisioning and connectivty to other host, in your case will be ML server running ESXI, still accessable to array without under dHCi management plane and fallback to traditional management style, managing via array GUI as an example.

[giladzzz]

Hi

thanks for your answer.

Do you think after I finish setting up the DHCI that I can add the ML350 back into the cluster not through the DHCI but in the vcenter and I can share the same datastores.

Regards

[Mahesh202]

Hi giladzzz

I am afraid to say that it is not possible to add back to the cluster, You should be able to manage the server outside the dhci cluster

Regards
Mahesh

[mamatadesaiNim · Accepted solution]

> Do you think after I finish setting up the DHCI that I can add the ML350 back into the cluster not through the DHCI but in the vcenter and I can share the same datastores.

Yes: a server can be added into the same host cluster on vCenter,  and it can share the same datastores.  You will need to manually setup vmknics, vSwitches, iSCSI storage and have it use the Nimble array.  You won't be able to lifecyle-manage any updates on the ML via dHCI plugin.