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Tutorial - Dell Sonic Enterprise and Dell servers in a spine-leaf configuration

This tutorial walks you through the steps required to register and use a setup that uses the following physical configuration:

  1. 3 x Dell Enterprise SONiC 4.0.2
  2. 2 x Dell R250 servers

This tutorial also assumes you have completed the configuration part of MetalSoft. Follow the Deploying MetalSoft using OVAs for more details on how to configure deploy MetalSoft.

Cabling

Section titled “Cabling”
# management links


ESXi server, port 01 <---> OOB switch, port 15


leaf01, port MGMT <---> OOB switch, port 01
leaf02, port MGMT <---> OOB switch, port02
spine01, port MGMT <---> OOB switch, port03


#spine-leaf links
leaf01, port 11 <---> spine01, port 01
leaf02, port 11 <---> spine01, port 02


# server links leaf1
leaf01, port 01 <---> server01, port01
leaf01, port 02 <---> server01, port02


leaf01, port 03 <---> server02, port01
leaf01, port 04 <---> server02, port02




# server management ports
server01, port iDRAC <---> OOB switch, port 11
server02, port iDRAC <---> OOB switch, port 12

Registering switches

Section titled “Registering switches”

Pre-requisites:

  1. Deploy Dell Enterprise Sonic 4.x on the switches
  2. Configure a management IP reachable from the Site Controller
  3. RESTCONF is enabled on the switch
  4. The BGP underlay configuration is done between the switches.

Note that MetalSoft can provision servers via ZTP but tht process is not covered in this tutorial.

To register the 3 switches, for each switch go to Switches > Add Switch

  1. From the Driver dropbox select sonic_enterprise
  2. From the Switch role dropbox select Leaf for leaf switches other for spine
  3. From the Management protocol dropbox select RESTCONF
  4. From the Management address textbox input the IP of the switch management port
  5. From the Management username textbox input the username of the switch
  6. From the Management password textbox input the password of the switch

All other fields can stay the same.

At the end of the process the switches should all show as Active.

Note that it is normal for them not to show any network connections as those will be populated as we add servers.

Registering servers

Section titled “Registering servers”

Pre-requisites:

  1. The servers have an IP on the iDRAC interface reachable from the Site Controller VM.

To register the 2 servers go to Servers > Add Server

  1. Select Vendor Dell
  2. Select Type Server
  3. IPMI Host -> input the ip of the server
  4. IPMI username -> input the IPMI username
  5. IPMI password -> input the IPMI password
  6. Click Add Server

Note that the IPMI protocol should not necessarily be activated as this mechanism uses Redfish instead.

This process can take up to 30 min depending on the type of drives and NICs.

At the end of this process you should be able to use the servers in the infrastructure designer as usual.

For more information consult: Consult the following for more information: