AHV Virtualization

Let’s say you have a new NX Hyper-converged architecture and want to use Hyper-V as a hypervisor, but now you are confused regarding the initial configuration and what all are required.Questions which are hovering your mind right now !!! What are the requirements to create a Nutanix cluster with Hyper-V? How can I image the nodes with Hyper-V and install AOS? How can I manage my Hyper-V host? How can I create a failover cluster and update Hyper-V settings? How can I create and manage VMs, especially HA VMs? Do we provide a documentation which can help you answer all these queries? Yes, absolutely Give this following documentation a read to easily get started with Hyper-V.

Hi   Would like to check if there is any tool which help in Migration from On premise physical workload directly to Nutanix Xi in AWS.   Let me know if it is technically feasible to do this.   On Premises server → Nutanix Xi in AWS (P-V Migration)

Can I get official documents / links from nutanix that PCI DSS is compliance with.

Let's say you're running a huge infrastructure of 10 pretty big SQL VMs and just shifted your infrastructure to Nutanix. You must be bewildered and confused regarding the best practices of SQL in Nutanix and how can you improve the performance. For most SQL server databases, there is nothing that needs to be done in order to successfully run on Nutanix.  SQL servers with small DBs are normal and okay but what about larger workloads?Do we have some best practices guide that can help us improve our performance?Yes, we have some general recommendation for running SQL workloads. Try giving the following Knowledgebase articles a read to understand the configuration and recommended settings to improve performance of SQL workloads.KB-3532

I am trying to implement SLB, or LACP, rather than A-B. To do this seems to require using either the manage_ovs show_bridges or list port {br0 | bond0} command. Other then the Command_Ref-AOS and AHV_Admin-Guid, where can more information be found ? I am getting a `ERROR kvm.py:488 failed to execute ....` error.

Hi All,   One of my customer doing POC Nutanix right now. They create VM with application that use for Exam Online. So they set Public IP on that VM where their student can access for Exam from outside. Suddenly for 2 days the VM active, they found on their router that VM consume almost 500 Mbps internet bandwith usage. They already have that application on non-Nutanix server and not find any issue related.   Is there any application or service or something on Nutanix platform consume internet bandwith that we don’t know?

Hi !I want to make an image of a windows server on the ABS disk. How can I copy the file to images on CVM to start migrate the Fysical server to Virtual. WinSCP is so slow so it will take 6-7 hours. To write it to ABS iSCSI it is fast but only problem to copy it to AOS. File system is NTFS.thanks!-Kim W-

HiI am new in Nutanix , would you please explain for me the below stats , and what its performance in VMs performance , the cache stats screen i got it while the backup is running ?  

In our previous posts, we briefly explored some basics of vdisk management on AHV via Acropolis cli (acli). You can explore further namespaces in acli by logging on to any CVM and entering the acli shell.In some scenarios you may need to move disk from IDE to SCSI bus or vice versa. Sample scenarios including but not limited to:VM does not boot due to missing SCSI driver.  In such scenario disk can be converted to IDE to install missing driver and then move back to SCSI. Wrong disk type was used during VM creation. Disk index should be changed due to application requirements.From the AHV Best Practices Guide:Nutanix recommends using SCSI-based disks wherever possible for maximum performance. 

Is there an option to remove/detach a drive from a virtual machine? Cant seem to find it or look it up anywhere neither gui nor cli 😕

Understanding and knowing where a Virtual Machine stores its vDisk is important for Admins. In our previous post we explored a couple of ways, we can use to find where Virtual Machine vDisks are stored on a AHV / AOS Cluster. Quick Recap:VM Disks (vDisks) are stored in a Container on AOS Cluster Acropolis service is responsible for all VM Operations Acropolis service offers a powerful interface called acli acli offers TAB Completion acli can be executed from any CVM in the cluster, for VM info operationsIn this post we will first find the vDisk of a given virtual machine and then use WinSCP to connect to the cluster and download the vDisk.Su

Hi I’m trying to find out if anyone has tried or is running SAS Grid on Nutanix? We have a SAS consultant working with us but they have no experience of running SAS on a Nutanix cluster. Any information would be gratefully received 😃

We are in the process of setting up a new fileserver using AHV and Windows 2019. Our current physical server has one larger 2TB drive letter for all file storage with 3-4 various shares. My question is would it make any difference to keep this same setup with AHV, 2TB drive attached to the VM for storage for files, or would it be better to have 2-3 smaller attached storage drives?

Nutanix offers compatibility with all major hypervisors (Hyper-V, ESXi, XEN) to be able to host virtual machines on it and leverage the benefits of a truly distributed scale out storage fabric.Nutanix qualifies all releases of 3rd Party hypervisors in order to ensure smooth operations for customers using the respective hypervisors.From the Nutanix Support FAQs:For hypervisor releases:For Major/Minor hypervisor releases (eg ESXi 6.5, Windows Server 2016 Build 14393) the goal is to qualify within 90 days of the software GA release date. Nutanix may qualify the latest hypervisor Major/Minor release in conjunction with the latest (or upcoming) AOS release first. Nutanix advises customers to wait until any Major/Minor release is qualified by Nutanix prior to deployment.Please make sure to visit the following link in

 Physical Windows Server to Virtual conversion (P2V for AHV) Depending on the number of physical servers in your environment, you might want to convert them tovirtual servers and migrate over to Nutanix AHV.  Nutanix Image Service supports VHD, VMDK, vDISK, IMG, qcow formats for disk images. Summary:1) Prepare the Physical Windows Server - Install Virtio Drivers from:    Nutanix Portal > Downloads >  Tools & Firmware > Virtio2) Download Disk2VHD from Microsoft site:(https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/downloads/disk2vhd)3) Convert the Disk or Disks (Make sure to select "bootable" for the appropriate disk)4) Upload the Converted Disk to Nutanix Cluster via Image service Uploading VHD to the Cluster via Image Service:1) You can upload via the browser or2) Image service also allo

Running virtual machines inside another virtual machine (also known as Nested Virtualization) is not presently supported in Nutanix AHV.  This is documented in the KB titled “Configuring VM to run nested hypervisor”

I have been trying to create a Windows Server VM. whenever I create the VM I can't see a drive where I can install the windows server. has anyone else experienced this?

We have a dozen or so VMs/appliances that do not support AHV and thus cannot be migrated over to our new AHV cluster that runs 95% of our servers. We would like to expose a container/Volume Group from Nutanix to the VMware hosts as NFS datastores to build these VMs/Appliances on. Our goal is to then replicate that Container/Volume Group to our DR Nutanix cluster and then connect our DR VMware cluster for the same VMs/Appliances to then use as well incase of failover. We have gotten conflicting information from all parties and wanted to know if anyone was already doing this and what your results are? These VMs/Appliances would have fairly high IO.

Hi, I'm currently installing ubuntu on a VM. I notice the installation process is extremely slow. The downloading of files is going fast, but the actual installing isn't. Is this common when installing ubuntu on a nutanix VM? I tried different version, but they are all very slow. Thanks!

I am migrating from ESX 6.0 to AHV 5.1.2I have successfully mounted the container from VMware and migrated a disk. When trying to start the image from the vmdk file in Prism Console than I get the following error: Booting from Hard Disk... in the boot dos screen. Regards, Onder Avcu

Hi, When using AHV, is there a way to set the black (pre-boot) screen in the VM duration longer. I was trying to press the F8 key, to get into directory restore mode/safe mode, but the black (pre-boot) screen raced by... Thanks G

Hi all, I am new to Nutanix and am looking for best practices around swap space on Nutanix AHV VMs. Having SSD drives it is understood swap (writes) will decrease hardware life. Can swap be allocated only to HDD drives only and/or is it best to use a low swappiness value to lower the amount of swaps? Thanks,

@joshodgers has posted an interesting blog on his site on a new AHV feature -- Compute Only nodes. The concept of Compute Only node will enable infra teams to give their application and DB admin counterparts more CPU/Memory per node. Nutanix clusters can now be made up of compute only and storage only nodes minimizing if not eliminating any licensing concerns they had in the past for workloads like Oracle, SQL Server etc. Best practices for setting high performance databases will be coming soon. Reply back in this thread to let our Database SMEs know if you have specific questions you'd like them to address in their best practices. Excerpts from his blog -- http://www.joshodgers.com/2019/02/20/solving-oracle-sql-licensing-challenges-with-nutanix/ >> Compute only nodes compliment the traditional HCI nodes (Compute+Storage) as well as our unique

Hello everybody, let's assume we have one Nutanix block with 3 nodes. In each node we only have 1 CPU socket with 10 Cores. A VM can only run on one node. So, in this case, wouldn't it make more sense to let a VM with 4 CPUs run on 1 VCPU and 4 Cores, instead of 4 VCPUs with 1 core, as each node has only 1 CPU socket? Or does Nutanix always recommend to use only 1 Core per VCPU not matter how much CPU sockets are available in a node? Best regards, Didi7

So how much do you run your cluster memory usage? Currently we are at 50% usage but still adding VM's. My boss wants to run this to 100% and doesn't understand why I keep telling him this is a bad idea. I am trying to keep it at 2/3 to 3/4 usage of capacity. Am I right or wrong on this? I am doing a bad job of explaining this to my boss who doesn't seem to believe me so do you guys have any resources that can help me explain this? Right now we are running application servers and no core functions but we are looking to migrate our DHCP servers. We have 1.1 TB of memory capacity running at 51% usage. CPU usage is not a problem running at about 12%. Storage is also fine. We are running 6x Dell 740XC if that helps.