Deployment Success

The Nutanix cluster in Vcenter must be configured according to Nutanix best practices.    A quick checklist for the recommended settings review is as follows:   vSphere HA Settings   Enable host monitoring   Enable admission control and use the percentage-based policy with a value based on the number of nodes in the cluster.   Set the VM Restart Priority of all Controller VMs to Disabled.   Set the Host Isolation Response of the cluster to Power Off.   Set the Host Isolation Response of all Controller VMs to Disabled.   Set the VM Monitoring for all Controller VMs to Disabled.   Enable Datastore Heartbeating by clicking Select only from my preferred datastores and choosing the Nutanix NFS datastore. If the cluster has only one datastore, add an advanced option named das.ignoreInsufficientHbDatastore with Value of true.   vSphere DRS Settings   Set the Automation Level on all Controller VMs to Disabled.   Leave power management disabled

Hi, I'd like to change Cluster External IP Address but CVM IP Address is NOT change. Do I have to stop the cluster ?  or Do I change that online? Regards,

Hi everyone, I’m trying to clone a vm with a cloud-init customization but i don’t know how to put the cloud-init in the userdata string. Thanks for you help

Below are new knowledge base articles published on the week of July 12-18, 2020. KB 9419 - Pre-Upgrade check: test_xenserver_eol KB 9539 - How to clear BIOS password KB 9588 - LCM: Firewall rules for connected site KB 9649 - After Scale-Out, pcvm_same_disk_size_check reports "Disk sizes of Cassandra partitions are not the same on Prism Central VM" KB 9670 - LCM: Inventory on Prism Central fails if any of the PE registered has LCM issues. KB 9673 - AHV | Putting host into maintenance mode may fail with "Unable to map backing store for guest RAM: Cannot allocate memory" error KB 9692 - Reclaim space from unused protection domain with referenced snapshot KB 9710 - LCM: Failed to update entity after inventory Note: You may need to log in to the Support Portal to view some of these articles.

Disk structure of a CVMThe CVM is the core of the AOS clusters, but have ever wondered how disk layout exists within them?I provide a brief overview of its structure in the following post.The main thing that most of you are familiar with already, is that the LSI controller is passed directly to the CVM in order for it to have direct access to the disks in the node. When combining all the disks space from all the CVMs within the cluster it provides the unified software define storage pool used to store your data.That’s why when you run “df -h” in the CVMs you will see the data disks mounted in the following mount point:/home/nutanix/data/stargate-storage/disks/<disk serial_number>However, the CVM also needs to have space for itself in order work, so a portion of SSDs and HHD is reserved for that purpose.In single SSDs system you will get the following partition layout:   sda1: ‘/ ‘ root partition sda2: standby root partition used for upgrades  sda3: /home partition

Acropolis Operating System upgrades happen across the cluster, one CVM at a time. Here is the next installation of the Upgrade Series as promised to provide you quick tips and tricks to plan and execute your upgrade activities with ease.   In simple words, AOS is the Operating System running on the Controller VMs(CVM) in the cluster and is critical in handling the data I/O from the user VMs in the cluster. AOS can be called the core of Nutanix Hyper-converged infrastructure.   As reference documents, you can check the below Guides: AOS Advanced Administration Guide Prism Web Console Guide Acropolis Upgrade Guide 2 Node Cluster Upgrade Reference Guide Note: The above listed documents are for the latest LTS release - 5.15.x (as of 17th July,2020). For version specific documents, navigate to the Documents Section in the Support Portal and check the Prism and AOS Guides by filtering the versions.   Note: AOS upgrades through One click method consists of a graceful reboot of the C

You must be familiar with some of the techniques you can use to migrate VM’s onto AHV from other hypervisors. These include our popular Move solution, if you wished to move away from ESXi or Hyper-V. Another way is to add the VM’s into a Protection Domain and migrate the PD itself. Of course, this is only compatible with Nutanix clusters being the source and destination cluster.   As much as we would not want you to, there could arise situations where you may need to transfer VM(s) back to a different hypervisor. Currently, Move does not apply to this use-case. The quickest way would be to set up a Protection Domain as described above. However, this is complicated if the VM’s are already being protected and replicated onto other clusters. You would not wish to remove them and affect the processes in place.   What do you do then?   This document should assist you in the process. On a high level, it includes  Powering off the VM Using the qemu utility to convert the vdisk 

We would like to hear about your automation preferences and features that you would like to see. This uber brief (3 questions) survey asks about things that are important for you when automating routine tasks as well as big projects. We are eager to hear from you! Nutanix Automation Survey

Dear Sir/ Madam, I am working on a further Nutanix project and I have installed 8 x NX8155 servers. Each server has 6 x 10g TwinX cables and 2 x CAT6 copper connections. I am again trying to find any suitable cable manager due to the amount of physical cabling for each device. Can someone please advise if there are any cable managers that Nutanix is aware of or via a third party as I am struggling to locate any. Thanks in advance. Simon.

Looking for get-ntnxvm -SearchAttributeList syntax. Since the get-help doesn’t provide any information besides:  “Search attribute list, only searches on few attributes. For accurate search, provide field names” Can someone provide an example of how to use this parameter? Most examples seem to use -searchstring.  I would like to search for vmname.  I know I can use a where clause and filter that way but curious if -SearchAttributeList could also do it.

Hi all, the import SSL certificate form allows me to choose between key’s format. I have RSA2048, ECDSA384 along with other ECDSAs.   I am pretty sure I sumbitted a ECDSA384 key with secp384r1 curve. I can safely paste my key here because it’s now revoked: -----BEGIN EC PRIVATE KEY----- MIGkAgEBBDAzjnBwsncbnlR643ngw7M8/urUzuSVNNGjB84kTxgCyplXsbSuKzyl gxiijfhY3vOgBwYFK4EEACKhZANiAAS5DDtPOWrgYA/XKxzNEM1E3TER7Ol70njH JsQC+WU8lMH4d0s9G9MfIzQ1qHB7PukydkpdwMV2MYpaKpmQyrNO75zeRr/Jle/M 76vLL7FbZP9lzvwVTnJVXttXhBctM0o= -----END EC PRIVATE KEY-----   Please can anyone explain me what’s wrong? Thank you so much! francescm

  I did a node remove operation, but it seems to be completed in the task, but there is no log. Can I know where the task log is recorded in cvm?

Is there a document that guides on how to use Move migration via command line interface?  I know that there is a web GUI tool.  But, I am wondering if there is another way thru CLI.

Hi folks, I have done a successfull VM migration using Nutanix Move 3.5.2 from ESXI 6.5 to AHV 20191030.415. All migration process is validated and fine, the VM can be migrated from ESXI to AHV but it failed when I try to boot in from AHV console as this picture :   

We often ask ourselves, what do these various Upgrades entail and what actually happens during an upgrade. Here is a high-level description of what happens during the various Nutanix core software upgrade processes. I have assumed it is a minimum 3-node cluster and you have already determined the Upgrade version.  Note for all the Upgrade below, it is important to perform health checks before upgrading any component (check KB 2852).   1. NCC: When : If health checks show no issues,  the NCC upgrade can proceed. It is recommended to upgrade to the latest NCC version shown.  How : The upgrade process copies NCC software to each Controller VM or Prism Central VM. What Happens : The cluster_health service, which is responsible for health monitoring and the logic underlying cluster alerts, restarts on each node.  Caution Level :  No services involved in the data path restart hence it is non-intrusive.  NCC version does not depend on any other Nutanix component and can be upgraded re

AHV uses Open vSwitch (OVS) to connect the CVM, the hypervisor, and guest VMs to each other and to the physical network.    Open vSwitch: OVS is an open source software switch implemented in the Linux kernel and designed to work in a multiserver virtualization environment. By default, OVS behaves like a layer-2 learning switch that maintains a MAC address table.  Bridges Bridges act as virtual switches to manage network traffic between physical and virtual network interfaces. The default AHV configuration includes an OVS bridge called br0 and a native Linux bridge called virbr0 Ports Ports are logical constructs created in a bridge that represent connectivity to the virtual switch BondsBonded ports aggregate the physical interfaces on the AHV host. By default, a bond named br0-up is created in bridge br0   VLANs for AHV Hosts and CVMs     The recommended VLAN configuration is to place the CVM and AHV in the default “untagged” (or native) VLAN, as shown belo

All services are Up and running. Other CVMs can ping PCVM. Firefox browser loads with Error Message "Secure Connection Failed" and the Code "PR_END_OF_FILE_ERROR".     Solution Try one of the 2 methods to resolve this: 1)Try to make new profile via `about:profiles` and set it to default. If it is working, export your bookmarks from the old profile and import them to the new profile. 2) Simply restart the existing profile.       Solution reference from community Mozilla support:https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/1267074

Acropolis Dynamic Scheduling (ADS) is responsible to examine the load on various components for hotspots and calculate what migrations can be done to balance the load without causing additional hotspots. Lazan is the dynamic scheduling service for AHV.   Lazan monitors the following resources:   Total CPU usage of each of the guest VMs. Storage controller (stargate) CPU usage per VM or iSCSI target.   Lazan does NOT monitor the following:   Memory. Apart from ensuring its migration tasks are within memory limits ( including HA), Lazan does not load balance based on memory usage. Networking.   Overview of how Lazan works: The Lazan manager gathers stats from the components it monitors. The Lazan solver (runner) checks the stats for potential anomalies and determines how to resolve them, if possible. The Lazan manager invokes the tasks (e.g. VM migrations) to resolve the situation.     When is a HOTSPOT detected by Lazan?   Lazan runs every 1

if the ipmi vlan option is disabled and i configured the switch side ports to a specific vlan, Will i be able to reach the ipmi if i connect my workstation to an interface in the switch with same vlan or do i need to enable the vlan option in nutanix and put the vlan tag as well.?

Hello I have a cluster with 3 nodes and AOS 5.10.10 and need upgrade to 5.15 but the nodes not have access to Internet. I upload the AOS 5.15 and show me in the Prism Console the versionm but not permit run the upgrade to new version. Need to know if is possible run the upgrade directly through cli to update the cluster. Thanks for your comments

Did you know you can secure your IMPI Web Interface with an SSL Certificate?   Securing the IPMI Web interface is recommended to help reduce susceptibility to attacks. You can further enhance security by installing your own customized certificate or a CA-signed certificate. Nutanix recommends strong keys and signature algorithms. The IPMI module supports SHA2 and RSA 2048 bit SSL. Avoid long certificate chains or large certificates. If the IPMI module shows the default or previously-installed certificate after you install a new one, or you are unable to log in to the IPMI web interface, the chain is too long (chain length longer than one) or certificate too large. As a test, create a simple self-signed certificate and install it to ensure the IPMI is working correctly before attempting to install larger certificates.  You can use openssl or keytool to generate keys, certificates, and signing requests. Similarly to any other certificate deployment, the process consists of two steps

Hello good afternoon, I have a Nodes with black screen and blinking cursor, I want to see if there is a way to reset it or to show me the normal console again. If someone can help me, I really appreciate it, I already tried to generate the Phoenix iso and boot it in ubs and connect it to the node and start but send: udhcpc sending discover Thank you for your cooperation      

Hi team, it’s a question about architecture : ROBO Site customer has two rooms (another one for the witness is possible) customers would like a node in each room  hypervisor : ESXi According to the docs, there's no reason not to do it ? is this architecture supported or not, and better is there somewhere a documentation about this design ? Many thank for your help.

You may get an alert from NCC stating that the deduplication fingerprinting has been disabled, but it is enabled on a container: WARN: Fingerprinting is disabled by stargate, but configured on Storage Container(s) As we know, Stargate is the service that is managing storage on a Nutanix cluster, so Stargate has some conditions on which it will automatically disable deduplication. If the metadata usage is higher than 250Gb on a node. If the metadata usage is higher than 50% of the total metadata space on a node. The second condition is common on small size clusters, for example NX-1000 series, with single-SSD nodes if the SSD size is small. The metadata is located on the SSDs and the total metadata size on the node is equal to the capacity of: One SSD in single-SSD nodes Two SSDs in double-SSD nodes Four SSDs in all-flash nodes So, for example, if you have a node with 1 SSD which is 480Gb in size, 50% of the metadata capacity will be 240Gb (in fact it will b

How long does LVM inventory take?  We have a 7 node cluster and it takes a very very long time to inventory.  There are 202 tasks.  It started an hour and 20 minutes ago and its only on task 63 out of 202.  Is this normal? We are running LCM 2.3.1.3.18618.