Deployment Success

When expecting to witness changes in storage utilisation performance, increase in free space in particular, please be aware that the change may not take effect immediately.There are two main types of Curator scans:Scheduled Scans Curator Full Scan — in 6 hrs after the last Full Scan Curator Partial Scan — in 1 hour after the last Partial Scan. Triggered Scans  — as a response to a situation in the cluster where Curator is urgently required.For more information:KB-2101, KB-2924.Posts here in NEXT community curator task type list or a search.Nutanix University video on Curator.Nutanix Bible on monitoring Curator tasks Application Mobility Fabric (AMF)

Suppose you have Erasure Coding (EC-X) enabled on all of your containers. Over time you find that workload structure and type has changed and is no longer suitable for EC-X. What do you do?Since migrating VMs between containers is a disruptive task alternative approach would be to disable EC-X on a container.In preparation for the task there are a couple of factors we recommend are taken into consideration:There will be increased I/O at the storage layer. Once EC-X is disabled on a container additional data will be written to the container and replicated. The influx of the data can be estimated by reversing EC-X gains. Expect temporary increase of storage utilisation in addition to calculations above. Parity data will not be removed immediately. Parity data size can be reverse calculated based on the same EC-X gains estimates.    There are no guardrails in terms of storage utilisation once EC-X is disabled. Please make sure there is sufficient space for the decoded data to be written —

Below are new knowledge base articles published on the week of October 13-19, 2019.KB 8018 - NCC Health Check: ns_proto_consistency_check KB 8094 - NCC Health Check: disk_status_check KB 8148 - NCC Health Check: cpu_avx_check KB 8315 - Files: chmod/chown on TLD fails on first mount with CentOS 6 KB 8356 - [Nutanix Objects] Objects 1.0.1 is missing from LCM Inventory KB 8358 - [Nutanix Objects] Unable to download access keys in browsers like Mozilla Firefox KB 8360 - LCM pre-check test_esx_ha_enabled failed but HA is actually enabled on vCenter KB 8362 - Alert - A130209 - IO failures to a data source in an external repository KB 8364 - Windows prompts for restart after migrating vms on a VDI cluster to a node with a different CPU generation KB 8366 - AHV | Guest VM running CentOS 7 may hang when CPU is hot added KB 8367 - AHV | VM may be restarted unexpectedly due to memory corruption KB 8371 - Nutanix Move - Upgrading using the offline bundle may show an unexpected error KB 8379 - AHV

I'm running 3 node cluster, based on 5.10 version (2019-02-11) There are some alerts for each node: Detected Incompatible AHV Version Detected older AHV Version I've checked the Settings-Upgrade menu - there it nothing available to upgrade for AHV and AOS.

You have a Nutanix cluster with ESXi as a hypervisor, configured with Virtual Distributed Switch and you have a need to configure restriction on bandwidth for different network types, like vMotion, Management, iSCSI etc in the event of contention. VMware provides a feature known as Network I/O Control(NIOC).Want to know more about NIOC and how it works in our environment? NIOC Guide in Nutanix So how many versions of NIOC are there and which is compatible with Nutanix?There are two versions of NIOCVersion 2 Version 3 NIOC version 2 was introduced after vSphere 5.5.VMware vSphere version 6.x introduced.NIOC v3, which provided additional features like artificial features limits and reservation on system traffic. In vSphere 6.0x, we recommend using NIOC v2 with vDS, instead of NIOC v3  due to CPU overhead and some abnormal behaviour during our internal testing and evaluation.  In vSphere 6.5 Update 1, Nutanix fully supports vDS in combination with NIOC v3.Want to know in-depth about our c

Should there be a need to change IP address settings of an existing vCenter Server registered with Prism Element or Prism Central, the goal can be achieved in three steps:Unregister the vCenter Server from the cluster before changing the IP address of the vCenter Server. After you change the IP address of the vCenter Sever, you should register the vCenter Server again with the new IP address with the cluster. Instructions for Prism Element Instructions for Prism Central Change vCenter Server IP address settings. Register your cluster with the new vCenter Server following instructions below: Managing vCenter Server Registration Changes in Prism Element Managing vCenter Server Registration Changes in Prism Central Optional steps:run NCC Health Check: check_vcenter_connection troubleshoot if necessary following KB-4492

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. Move the hosts from the old vCenter Server to the new vCenter Server. Register the Nutanix cluster to the new vCenter Server.For more details please see KB-4876.

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. Refer to the following link to know more about LTS and STS tracksLTS/STS InformationInterested to know more?How upgrades happen in Nutanix environment  Let’s learn about upgrades Prism

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 of migration plan execution even at the individual VM level Cancel in-progress migration for individual VMs Migrate all AHV c

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 the transfer of packets in your environment. So how Para virtualised vNic is better, does it have any advanta

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 For AHV, the data can be encrypted on a cluster level. This is applicable to an empty cluster or a cluster with existing data. For ESXi and Hyper-V, the data can be encrypted on a cluster or container level. The c

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-1478 which also explains what to do when configuring the entire range of IP address for AWS is not acceptable and using FQDN wildcards is not an option supported by the firewall the environment. KB-1202 Lists port number

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 connection provided by Pul

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 projects $Projects = Get-NutanixPrismCentralProje

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 Administration Guide for Acropolis (using vSphere FLEX Client): ESXi Host Upgrade Process  for detailed process guide.

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 Tech Note: Nutanix Era Time Machine: Under the Hood.Nutanix University has entire playlist of educational videos on Nutanix Era.

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 about how RF-3 works? Redundancy Factor 3 So what if you created a storage container with RF-2 and

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 KB 8151 - Saml authentication using ADFS unable to login KB 8229 - Alert Email Digest gets delayed within 30 minutes in AOS 5.10.5 or later KB 8237 - Kubernetes Dashboard deployment fails due to incompatible version with Kubernetes cluster. KB 8249 - LCM Pre-check : test_node_uuid_validity KB 8282 - Poor thread load balancing within RHEL/CentOS guests constraints guest IO performance KB 8304 - Era Server displays incorrect time after reboot KB 8312 - VMs not getting IP address from IPAM KB 8313 - AHV | Kernel debugging of Windows VM via network (KDNET) KB 83

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: Interested? Start with LCM glossary. Coffee read on LCM: Nutanix Upgrades: Life Cycle Manager

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 sure all Cvm are powered on, to run the command “cluster start”; you could then go ahead with st