Expanding Cisco Hyperflex 1.8 Cluster

Expanding a Cisco Hyperflex cluster (Hyper Converged Infrastructure) with a Cisco HX Server is very, very easy !

Make sure that you export the JSON file after the Hyperflex installation. This will makes life way easier ! Just use that file, fill in some credentials and wait about 30 minutes. That’s basically it ! You don’t have to configure UCS Manager and VMWare ESXi is pre-installed. This will save you some minutes.

Here is a 5 minute video on howto expand the Hyperflex 1.8 cluster.

[embedyt] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=apROsqW2RjA[/embedyt]

During the creation of the video, I got some error messages !

The installer didn’t find any cluster.

This is a bug in HX 1.8 software and will be fixed in newer releases. If there is an IP Address at the Cluster field, then it’s okay. If it’s empty, you will have to put it manually in the box.

VLAN Already used

It’s an error which was shown in the video. I don’t know why it’s there, because it’s normal behavior that a VLAN exists when there is already a Hyperflex cluster configured.

Errors found during Deploy

The server is was using for this demo, was a server which was part of an other Hyperflex cluster. That’s why I got this error message. The solution of this error was to check the box : Clean up Disk Partitions

Before you can expand a Hyperflex cluster, make sure you have a cluster. 😉 Here is a blog on the installation of a Hyperflex 1.8 cluster