Deployment Success

Do I need to arrange for a downtime for an upgrade? How long does the process takes? If you are planning for an upcoming upgrade and have these questions, look no more:At Nutanix, upgrades are always designed to be done without needing any downtime for User VMs. Before every upgraded it is recommended to go through the Prerequisitesto avoid any issues in upgrades. This document is intended to explain a bit about how each upgrade work and to share some useful best practices for administrators.Is downtime required?No. Is there performance impact?Nutanix recommends performing upgrades during your scheduled maintenance window or outside your normal business hours. Otherwise, users might experience latency during the upgrade process. This latency may be especially noticeable for clusters that use only 1GB-speed network uplinks due to the limited bandwidth available on this configuration.How long does it take?From 15 minutes to one hour depending on number of nodes and type of upgrade For in

Hi allI use the v2 Prism Elements API to clone a VM from a Protection Domain Snapshot.It seems to work and the VM is created (cloned) correctly.However: The new VM always has the Prefix “Nutanix-Clone-”.The values i pass via vg_name_prefix and vm_name_prefix are simply ignored. In the Web UI (using the v1 API internally) it works fine.Please see the attached screenshots of the Web UI and the API call. Thanks in advance!

In Nutanix Hardware, the IPMI (BMC) keeps track of hardware-related events using the Event Log/System Management Feature. If there is a hardware event that needs to be dealt with, Prism will create an alert and send you an email if Alert Email Configuration is set up. However, there are still other events in IPMI that can be useful.For example, a power button assertion, a chassis intrusion, shutdown related events, or session audits (failed login attempts) will be logged by the IPMI events logs and can be forwarded via email using SMTP.If you may be interested in this functionality, check out KB 2581 to find more information on configuring SMTP in the Nutanix IPMI.

Team,I have a NUTANIX cluster running on the Dell Hardware with 11 Dell XC6320-6 model servers. I have spare Dell XC630-10 server and want to  check can i re purpose that server to the existing Cluster which is running with  Dell XC6320-6  hardware ?

You have just configured the ESXi hypervisor in a Nutanix cluster, and now wondering about the recommended configuration?Below are the configurations which shouldn’t be altered in Nutanix HCI. NFS settings VM swapfile location VM startup/shutdown order iSCSI software adapter settings vSwitchNutanix standard virtual switch vmk0 interface in port group "Management Network" SSH enabled Host firewall ports that are open Wondering how to change the ESXi hostname and is it even supported?Absolutely yes, you can change the ESXi hostname  Follow the KB Mentioned below Changing ESXi Hostname  Interested to know more? Give the following articles a coffee read  How to Configure ESXi Host Networking  Changing CVM Memory configuration in ESXi  VSPHERE ADMINISTRATION GUIDE FOR ACROPOLIS 

Collector Portal is the cloud version of the Collector desktop version offering a lot more in terms of features and capabilities.Collector Portal is an online repository for storing collections, creating projects for viewing, analyzing the collected data, and eventually sizing the collected data in the SIzer. The portal also allows for collaboration/sharing of the data/analysis between stakeholders for more informed sizing. You can also revisit/track old sizings/collections and regenerate the analysis/graphs for the data at a later point in time. Collector Portal Navigation Login Open collector.nutanix.com in your browser. Click My Nutanix Login to logon to the application. You can use your Nutanix login to connect with the application.  Sidebar After a successful login, you will see the sidebar on the right side of the Collector Portal dashboard . The sidebar has important information such as the number of projects and collections associated with the user who is logged in. The sidebar

I find that the simplest things in life are the most complicated. Snapshot is one of those things, I believe. It is something we, administrators, do not hesitate to use and yet, not many undersand what it is or how it works. Below are a few things out of many. What is a snapshot? A snapshot is a difference. When a snapshot is created its initial size is zero. That is because initially there is no change to capture. Original data is locked. It can be read but it can’t be altered. All the changes are written to the snapshot. That is why and how you can recover the data before the snapshot - because it is still there and is still intact. What is a VM snapshot for? It is a recovery point that is meant to be kept for a brief period of time as opposed to backups that can be stored for months, years or even decades. Why does a VM snapshot file grow in size? Because the changes to the original data keep coming in. Files on the VM are edited or deleted, new files are created. The longer the

Hello team, I hope that someone can explain to me why, looking to sizer’s recommandations about hybrid configuations, SSD/HDD ratio is not size dependent but form factor dependent. Basically if you select 2 SSD and 3.5”HDD then a minimum 1:1 ratio is possible (SSDx2 + HDDx2) but if you have have SSDx2 and 2.5” HDD then the minimum ratio is 1:2 (SSDx2 + HDDx4). Is it because 3.5” HDD SAS or SATA are usually faster than 2.5”? It’s not about size or hardware vendor, recommandations seems to changes according to the disks form factor only

STARTING A NODE IN A CLUSTER (AHV)   Basic workflow on how to start an AHV node-    Log on to AHV host with SSH. Find the name of Controller VM (cvm) Determine if CVM is running. If the CVM is shut off, start it. If the node is in maintenance mode, Log on to the CVM of this host and take the node out of the maintenance mode. Log on to another CVM of this cluster with SSH and check if all services are up on all the CVMs.   For the commands and outputs of the above steps, please refer to the AHV Portal Guide:   https://portal.nutanix.com/page/documents/details?targetId=AHV-Admin-Guide-v5_17:ahv-node-start-ahv-t.html   PERFORMING POWER OPERATIONS ON VMS   You can initiate safe and graceful power operations such as soft shutdown and restart of the VMs running on the AHV hosts by using the aCLI. The soft shutdown and restart operations are initiated and performed by Nutanix Guest Tools (NGT) within the VM thereby ensuring a safe and graceful shutdow

How to migrate ESX VM with independent disks and PCIE to AHV

I have a VM UUID 33ac3949-beba-401e-a114-6ccd48ebf237 I use POST to /vms/{uuid}/nics/ to create a NIC. The successful task returns UUID 46e8ac39-5dba-460a-afb6-f65bf1b7b43c { "uuid": "46e8ac39-5dba-460a-afb6-f65bf1b7b43c", "meta_request": { "method_name": "VmNicCreate" }, "meta_response": { "error_code": 0 }, "create_time_usecs": 1596037035354721, "start_time_usecs": 1596037035378557, "complete_time_usecs": 1596037035579435, "last_updated_time_usecs": 1596037035579435, "entity_list": [ { "entity_id": "33ac3949-beba-401e-a114-6ccd48ebf237", "entity_type": "VM", "entity_name": null } ], "operation_type": "kVmNicCreate", "message": "", "percentage_complete": 100, "progress_status": "Succeeded", "parent_task_uuid": "3b61a2df-4fe4-46aa-bd18-a9f87086f723", "cluster_uuid": "0005883b-67db-3e76-0000-000000015db3"} Notice that the entity list refers back to the VM, not to the newly created NIC.  I would expect the operation to return the ‘nic_uuid’

Hello,   Is it possible to provide for a group of VMs a Metro-Availability (stretched cluster) solution using ESXi (since this feature for AHV isn’t available yet) to obtain 24x7 availability and downtime+disaster avoidance capabilities for certain services) and also provide for the VMs in the stretched cluster or a subset of those VMs async replication to a 3rd site (DR site)?   Understanding that the stretched containers are sync replicated at the container level, would that 3rd site async replication be based at the container or VM level?   Thanks!

Hi all, I have almost 200 Virtual machine in my AHV environment . Is there anyway to summary operating system in each virtual machine, Does it have any tool like rvtool in vmware ?

I’m receiving a 401 Unauthorized error when trying to access our cluster to retrieve snapstop information. I’m passing a valid VM UUID and have used credentials from one of our local user accounts which has both cluster and admin roles assigned. I can access most other methods of the API using these credentials, but not this one. What am I doing wrong?https://{prism_element_ip}:9440/api/nutanix/v2.0/flr/{vm_uuid}/snapshots

This article's purpose is to shed some light on the rarely discussed, yet a crucial alert that you may come across on the cluster, that is, the HardwareClockFailure alert. Let us not confuse it with the system time. The system time is maintained by the OS (For example, Linux, Microsoft Windows etc.). The initial value of the system clock is typically retrieved from the real-time clock at power up or is set by the user. The hardware time is maintained by a real clock powered by a battery, which means it will persist a reboot.  The alert is generated when the hardware clock time differs from the system clock time. This check is scheduled to run every 10 minutes, by default.   To learn more about what causes a hardware clock to fail and how to resolve it, head over to this KB article: KB 4120 in the Nutanix Support Portal.

This is one of the questions that do not exist on AHV. It is, however, a moderately important one for ESXi environment Nutanix or not. Why it is so and what does work best for ESXi on Nutanix – this is what I intend to unfold if you care to read. Without going into nitty-gritty details but still explaining the essential differences between the formats provisioning types for VM disks define how the storage space is allocated for the VM disk. The tree options ESXi provides are: Allocate space when required. No guarantees for the space available on the datastore for the data of the disk to grow to the extent of the disk size configured. This is a Thin Provisioned disk. Location of data on physical storage is written in fragments. Accessing these fragments when reading and allocating space for new data is what may create additional latency for sensitive applications such as databases, for example. Allocate storage section for the entire VM disk file contiguously. Guarantee space availab

Hello team, We used Nutanix sizer to configure a 3 node cluster, if hybrid mode is selected the smaller suggested option for cold data is a 4 X 2Tb SAS disks set when we choose 2 x 960Gb SSD for hot data. Is it possible to get support and buy a license if we configure the node with 2 x 2Tb disks? It's a small environment and we don't need all that extra space. Every hardware component is in the supported compatibility matrix of the vendor, just not sure Nutanix can fully support a custom configuration

To enable VM management feature we can install NGT on user VM’s  To use the NGT feature, you must do the following: Enable the NGT feature for a VM in the Prism Element web console.  When you enable NGT for a VM, Prism Element prepares the VM so that NGT can be successfully installed and used in that VM.               Mount the NGT installer (ISO disk file) in a VM. Install NGT in a user VM. Few requirements we need to take care of: The following ports must be open between the Controller VMs and guest VMs on which NGT is installed: Controller VM: 2074. TCP port 2074 must be open in the Controller VM, so that user VMs can communicate with the Controller VM. User VM: TCP port 23578 if you want to use the VSS service.   For further details about NGT and its working please refer following links https://next.nutanix.com/how-it-works-22/nutanix-guest-tools-37346 https://portal.nutanix.com/page/documents/details?targetId=Web-Console-Guide-Prism-v55:m

Hello All, Seeking for you kind assistance, Does anyone of you tried to install or generate a SSL certificate of IPMI?  ​​​​​​ This is a CVM, my Infosec detects High Risk on it. Hoping for a positive revert on this Thank you. 

Below are new knowledge base articles published on the week of July 19-25, 2020. KB 9064 - NCC Health Check: hpe_bootdrive_raid_check KB 9261 - NCC Health Check: dimm_size_reduction_check KB 9627 - AHV | VM IP address may be intermittently shown on VM page KB 9653 - [Performance] Benchmarking storage with Microsoft Diskspd KB 9657 - LCM: LCM 2.3.2 and later does not support AOS upgrade for AOS version 5.5.x KB 9684 - Prism Central stops generating reports at random times KB 9685 - Users added to a Role on Prism Central RBAC unable to view Prism Element cluster alerts KB 9688 - X-Ray Reset Local Secret Store Passphrase KB 9694 - Upgrade stuck due to Genesis not able to start services after Cassandra service KB 9715 - LCM: Satadom upgrade fails with "Update failed with error: ['unicode' object has no attribute 'tell']" KB 9734 - AHV | NIC speed has incorrect values on Prism and ovs-ofctl for 25 Gbps / 40 Gbps cards KB 9738 - How to wget a release bundle from Portal directly t

I have a Dell PowerEdge Server R620 with 64G of Ram and 2T of HD Space. I am wondering what version of CE is supported on this older server. I downloaded the latest one and the install errored out.  Thank you,

Hi! I’m trying to find a way to create automatically expiring snapshots via API. I know I can use v2 api to create normal snapshots, and with Playbooks I can create snaphots which have an expiry time. Is there a way to create recovery points (on-demand) or run playbooks via API? Thanks!  

When you replace the NIC cards in the Nutanix AHV cluster, it is possible that the new NIC card interfaces are recognised as additional interfaces and are numbered after the existing interfaces. So, for example, in the current AHV node you have 4 interfaces - eth0, eth1, eth2 and eth3 and you replace the NIC card and you see additional interfaces - eth0, eth1, eth2, eth3, eth4 and eth5.  Also, if your host was connected earlier on the replaced NIC card, you will lose the host connectivity. We now have the script in AOS 5.10.10 and AOS 5.15 to get the NIC interfaces re-numbered correctly. If you are running older versions or unable to run the script for any reason, you can use the annual method. Please check the Nutanix portal page here and KB3261 for the exact script and the manual method steps.

How to get SATADOM firmware Version on Nutanix AHV Hosts. We are planning to upgrade Hardware Firmware and need to upgrade SATADOM firmware before that. Also, it;s not showing under LCM. We are using AOS 5.15.1 and having latest NCC, Foundation installed.

I am trying to find out the User who took the snapshot on AHV Cluster. I did not find the same in Tasks/Events in Prism or through below Command.  acli snapshot.get <SnapshotUUID>