Deployment Success

Migrating a Nutanix cluster between vCenter servers is one of those tasks that are not executed that often but when they are it is vital that everything goes as smooth as possible. Ensure the cluster is in excellent health by executing NCC health check. Presence of a distributed vSwitch must be addressed in advance.From there it is relatively straightforward:Create a new vSphere cluster in the new vCenter Server. Set the vSphere cluster settings on the new vCenter Server to the Nutanix recommended configuration (Configuring HA, DRS, and EVC). Unregister the Nutanix cluster from the old vCenter Server.

Let’s say you are running AOS version 5.10.7, and want to upgrade to a different Nutanix Files version or confused regarding which Prism Central version you should install or upgrade to?Nutanix gives you a feature, Software Product Interoperability, to easily identify the compatible versions between software like Prism Central and Nutanix files with the AOS.All we need to do is first select the Software Type(AOS, Nutanix Files or Prism Central) and then the target software type and then we can find the AOS version compatible.Points to be taken into consideration Prism Central does not follow the Long Term Support Release (LTS) and Short Term Support Release (STS) tracks. Nutanix Files (formerly known as AFS) does not follow the Long Term Support Release (LTS) and Short Term Support Release (STS) tracks.

Nutanix Move is a cross-hypervisor migration solution to migrate VMs with minimal downtime supporting three types of sources for migration: migration of VMs running on an ESXi hypervisor managed by vCenter; migration of EBS backed EC2 instances running on AWS; migration of VMs running on a Hyper-V hypervisor. Nutanix Move also supports the migration of AWS EC2 VMs to AHV on the Nutanix cluster. You can perform the following operations with Nutanix Move. Migrate powered on or powered off VMs. Note: For AWS, the migration takes place in powered on state. For ESXi, the powered state is retained. Pause and resume migration Schedule migration Schedule data-seeding for the virtual machines in advance and cut over to a new AHV cluster Manage VM migrations between multiple clusters from a single management interface Sort and group VMs for easy migration Monitor details

Let's say that you have 25 Gbps SFP+ Network card in your host and have created a Windows Virtual Machine with a 1 Gbps Nic card and now confused regarding the bandwidth for the virtual machine and how the Virtual Nic of the VM is different than the Host Nic when it comes to bandwidth and functionality. vNic is the software NIC emulation in the VM and is just a driver and in latest VMs the NIC is para-virtualised, which means that the NIC and Operating System is aware of the Host Physical NIC capability and understands that the vNic is just a driver. So what basically is this driver supposed to do? The vNic driver is really an API between the guest and the hypervisor so the vNic bandwidth is totally disconnected from any physical hardware. So what is the Physical NIC card then? Physical Nic is the physical network adapter connected to your physical switch and is responsible for th

Let say for example you're running ESXi 6.5 U1 and want to upgrade to the latest ESXi version but confused whether the current hardware and AOS will support the latest ESXi version.Nutanix gives you a feature to identify the compatability of different Hypervisors with NX environment easily using the Compatibility Matrix. You just need to visit the compatibility matrix page, filter by using your hardware and AOS and you will see the hypervisors which are supported.Still confused before the hypervisor upgrade?Refer the following document regarding general guidelines before the hypervisor upgrade.Hypervisor-upgrade-guidelines

What can be encrypted? What configuration is supported? At which layer the data is encrypted? Which layer encryption is more secure?Nutanix offers three options of data encryption:Data-at-Rest Encryption - Self Encrypted Drives (SEDs) - cluster's native or external KMS for software-only encryption. If the Controller VM cannot get the correct keys from the key management server (KMS), it cannot access data on the drives. If a drive is re-seated, it becomes locked. If a drive is stolen, the data is inaccessible without the KEK (key-encrypting-key) (which cannot be obtained from the drive). If a node is stolen, the key management server can revoke the node certificates to ensure they cannot be used to access data on any of the drives. Data-at-Rest Encryption - Software Only

Looking to strengthen security of your HCL cluster? Consider keeping only necessary ports open. Following is the list of firewall ports that must be kept open to successfully access the Nutanix cluster. Prism web console: 9440, 80 SSH to both CVM and Hypervisor: 22 Cluster remote support: 80, 8443 vCenter remote console: 443, 902, 903 from both the user host and vCenter vCenter from Prism web console: 443, 80 Citrix MCS: virtual IP, Port 9440 (TCP) Xtract for VMs (Move): ESXi hosts (TCP 443, 902); AHV (TCP and UDP 2049, 111) Following is the list of ports that must be kept open for the 1-Click upgrade. *.compute-*.amazonaws.com:80,443 release-api.nutanix.com:80 ntnx-portal.s3.amazonaws.com and s3*.amazonaws.com Information above is extracted from KB-14

Nutanix provides customer support services in several ways:The Pulse feature sends diagnostic data from customer clusters to Nutanix Support on a regular schedule. This enables Nutanix to deliver proactive, context-aware support to customers, monitor customer clusters and provide assistance when, or even before, a problem occurs. This data collection is anonymized, securely transmitted, has no effect on system performance and only basic system-level data needed to monitor the health and status of the cluster are collected. The Pulse framework also allows Nutanix Support Engineers to remotely collect logs from customer clusters on demand with customer approval but without needing assistance from the customer. This saves time in the data gathering stage of the troubleshooting process. Instead of asking the customer to run commands and send the output, which could go back and forth several times, the Support Engineers can just collect the logs themselves via the

Hii am trying to move from Esxi to Esxi but it gave this error Could not connect to ‘IP_Address’. Error : ’Get https://‘IP_Address’/PrismGateway/services/rest/v2.0/cluster/: dial tcp ‘IP_Address’: connect: connection refusedany ideas please

We have below script which is changing VM's project from default to some other project but after we execute invoke-webrequest, we notice that it will change Vm's "spec_version" to different number than it's in out $body variable. That's the reason why invoke-webrequest is given below error. Just before we run invoke-webrequest, we checked that vm's configuration metadata "spec_version" is same than in $body that we are trying invoke. So it seems that invoke-webrequest is somehow first changing the vm's spec_version in vm's configuration data (in our case to 18) and after that trying to invoke spec_version = 16 on top of that. But because the version should be same, it's failing. Same error occured when you are trying the same in REST Explorer - "vms". SCRIPT: Import-Module d:\temp\PSNutanixPrismCentral.psm1 Invoke-NutanixPrismCentralLogin -Username "username@xxx.local" -Uri "https://prismcentral.xxxx.local:9440" # Get non default project

Not every environment opts for VMware DRS license. While LCM upgrades rely on resource scheduler it is still possible to achieve success in hypervisor upgrades without DRS feature.Things to consider as part of preparation for the upgrade:Compatibility matrix. Redundancy factor (must be at least RF-2 for a non-disruptive upgrade). Third party applications dependencies. For example, where Zerto Z-VRAs are present, additional tasks may be necessary to avoid disruption to live replication.Refer to vSphere Admini

Nutanix Era provides Database as a Service (DBaaS) that simplifies database provisioning and management. Nutanix Era automates and simplifies the operations such as provisioning of databases and copy data management.An administator may wish to decommission Era. Essential workflow would be:Remove all DB’s from Era from Databases page. Remove all Database Servers from Era. Delete all Software Profiles from Era. Wait for all the database and database server removal operations to finish. From Prism, delete the Era VM from the cluster.More detailed instructions are outlined in Era Uninstallation Guide.More about Era can be found in Era User Guide.Coffee reading

Are the MAC addresses assigned to a VM at creation static - as with other hypervisors the MAC address can be changed at reboot.

If you have a 3 node cluster and your data resiliency is okay, you can handle a failure of 1 node, this is termed as FT-1 (Fault Tolerance), or alternatively RF-2. RF-2 is Redundancy Factor - 2, which states that all data in your NX environment has another copy distributed in your cluster, which makes it possible for the cluster to sustain a single component failure and is the default fault tolerance configuration for your cluster. What if you're handling a larger cluster and your workload is extremely critical? Redundancy factor 3 is a configurable option that allows a Nutanix cluster to withstand the simultaneous failure of two components by saving 2 copies of all your data in two different nodes in your NX environment. The requirements for RF-3 are as follows- Minimum number of Nodes in your environment should be 5 and the storage containers should be RF-3. Want to know more abou

Below are new knowledge base articles published on the week of October 6-12, 2019. KB 8046 - Set Up Frame Admin user with Domain Joined Instances KB 8076 - Sysprep fails on Windows 10 due to AppX packages not being installed for all users KB 8098 - Renewal of licenses/Buying new licenses KB 8101 - Licensing Steps to License Capacity Based Starter License KB 8149 - NCC Health Check: check_dvs_esxi_version_compatibilty

Prior to AOS version 5.1.2 memory_reserved had not been populated at the time of VM creation. Once the VM was powered on the memory_reserved field was populated and the value remained persistent even when the VM was powered off. The issue was fixed in version 5.1.5 and 5.5 and above. It is important to remember that there is no over-provisioning of memory in AHV. The "total provisioned memory" amounts to all the memory configured on all VMs regardless of power state. The "total reserved memory" is memory configured to all Powered on VMs only.

Hi, We have several Hyper-V servers. We intend to implement Nutanix to replace those Hyper-V servers. We have been given Nutanix Collector win32 v2 to run collecting the information of the Hyper-V servers to estimate what Nutanix to buy. However, I don't know how to run it. Has any one run this before ? Is there any guide document ? Thank you very much for your help.

Once you complete firmware upgrade start prepping for another one. Eternal compatibility matrix checks, arguments with vendors on a version that is supported by both compute and hypervisor, forgetting to include plugins into upgrade and the list just goes on and on. Sounds familiar? There is a way out. Developed as the second generation of one-click upgrade LCM simplifies this problem for Nutanix environments. LCM provides a single process in Prism that identifies and qualifies upgrade paths against tested and validated versions, then uses a nondisruptive one-click process to complete the upgrade. LCM can perform firmware upgrades on the following server platforms: Nutanix NX appliances. Dell XC and XC Core appliances. Lenovo HX and HX Core appliances. When you upgrade firmware, we recommend that you use the latest versions of AOS, Foundation, and LCM. Quick snapshot of LCM workflow:

Occasionally you need to temporarily power off your cluster hardware for maintenance, relocation or any other necessary task. To do this you will need to stop your cluster and then start it back after the required task was done. But you will need to perform the following tasks before and after the cluster stop/start commands: 1- Disable any “Protection Domains” in the cluster and make sure there is no ongoing replication occurring. 2- Make sure no “Fail” message appears when performing the ncc health check on the cluster 3- Power off all the Vms running in the cluster 4- Stop “Files” (previously AFS) if you are using it in the cluster 5- Run "cluster stop" command 6- power off all CVM 7- Put all hypervisors in maintenance mode 8- Power off the hardware After the maintenance and powering on the hardware, you will need to undo the above steps. Put nodes out of maintenance mode and make s

Hello I'm new to Nutanix and setting up a small 3 node cluster with ESXi. Just wanted to know whether there is any automatic migration from Nutanix side in case of resource contention on 1 node. One such example: if there are too many VM hosted on a single node and causing storage contention, is there any option on Nutanix to automatically migrate some VM to other nodes (similar to what VMware DRS does - but this time, for storage) Thanks

I'm curious to find out how folks have been implementing departmental shared folders in nutanix files. We are currently running SMB files from a NetApp filer which has the ability to setup Qtrees/quotas for subfolders of the top level share. Is this possible in nutanix files as I'm not seeing anything in the documentation around it.

Hey all, Does anyone have, by any chance, a disk descriptor file for the new CE image file? I am installing CE as a single node and when performing the upgrade by uploading the binaries it fails constantly. Most likely due to NTP restrictions because my lab admin has NTP blocked on this network. I also don't have access to VMFS on the hosts to make a descriptor file. Hopefully someone out there has one similar to the last version. Thanks

if you are trying to set “Enhanced vMotion capabilities” (EVC) on a running cluster, you may see a pop up Error Window saying: “… Powered-on or suspended Virtual machines on the host may be using cpu feature hidden by that mode” You can create a new cluster in vSphere and set the EVC on it first with no hypervisor, and then move the nodes and Vms from the old cluster to the new cluster. Please follow the link “Unable to Set Enhanced vMotion Capability (EVC) on a Newly-created Cluster” for detailed instructions.

Can anybody provide detailed steps or some info on how to deploy Nutanix AHV on cisco UCS in domain mode. Im getting multiple errors, some of errors: https://pastebin.com/JjYm3pqy I have FI setup as recommended in field installation guide for cisco ucs.

Hello, What are the pros and cons of these two series? What workloads are better suited to which series? Why would you choose an 8k block over a 3k block and conversely? Thanks