The main function of the storage area network is to ensure communication between the disks that form the virtual storage across different nodes. It is used for synchronizing replica data of virtual storage. If the storage communication network is not functioning properly, it may lead to file corruption or inconsistencies, which could cause abnormal behavior in virtual machines.

Requirements for the storage area network:

1. Virtual storage is based on networked distributed storage, and it is necessary to connect all hosts via an IP network (Layer 2, multicast) to establish the storage communication network.
2. Latency should not exceed 5ms, with no packet loss.
3. Sufficient Bandwidth: Starting from the standard version HCI 5.8.8, HCI devices require the storage private network to use 10GbE (10 Gigabit Ethernet) interfaces when setting up virtual storage. 10GbE networks ensure higher storage performance for the upper layers, as well as faster data reconstruction and data balancing speeds.

Specify interface mode:

There are two modes you can select, one is dedicated mode the other one is share mode.

Both dedicated mode and shared mode require a minimum network speed of 10G.

Dedicated Mode (Recommended): Use a physical interface exclusively as the storage network interface to achieve more stable bandwidth and better performance for virtual storage.

Shared Mode: The virtual storage network and other networks, such as the management network, VXLAN network, or business network, multiple use the same physical aggregated port for logical isolation. when number of physical interfaces are insufficient. The following are the Requirements for shared mode:

1. The multi-network integration port must be a 10-Gigabit network port and at least 2 ports are required. A single network port does not support multi-network integration. The maximum supported configuration is 4 physical network ports aggregated for multi-network integration.
2. It must configure VLANs for network isolation on each network plane. The management, VXLAN, and storage networks should configure VLAN sub-interfaces, while the business network does not support VLAN sub-interfaces. The business VLAN can only be configured through the port group of the virtual network.
3. It must configure VLANs for network isolation on each network plane. The switch ports connecting to hyper-converged hosts should be pre-configured as Trunk All and allow the relevant VLANs to pass through.
4. It is recommended to use IP-based load balancing for aggregation; the active-passive mode is not recommended.
5. In scenarios where the business network and VXLAN network are reused, transparent mode for any NFV (Network Function Virtualization) devices is prohibited in the virtual network.
6. Currently, multi-network integration (four-in-one) only supports network cards from the Intel X710 and X722 series, as well as Mellanox-3, Mellanox-4, and Mellanox-5 series.