Deployment Success

There are various scenarios in which you may need to unregister a cluster from PC, and it is important to do it correctly.  Whether you are decommissioning a Prism Element (PE) cluster which was registered to Prism Central (PC), or you already have decommissioned a cluster but it is still linked to a PC, or you have a cluster that is registered with one PC instance but would like to re-register it with a different PC instance for the benefit of localized management or to configure availability groups using Leap. All    What does "correctly" look like? Done properly, unregistration of a cluster from PC involves a remove-from-multicluster step followed by clean-up of associated metadata. This metadata clean-up must be allowed to complete prior to attempting to re-register the cluster to a PC, otherwise, registration could be blocked.   How to do it? There is no GUI method to unregister a cluster from Prism Central, so the process requires SSH access to the PC VM as well as to a CVM of th

What is LCM? The Life Cycle Manager (LCM) tracks software and firmware versions of all entities in the cluster, integrated both on Prism Element and Prism Central. LCM Structure: LCM consists of a framework and a set of modules for inventory and update. LCM supports software updates for all platforms that use Nutanix software. LCM supports firmware updates for a specific platforms. From Prism Element you can use LCM to update AHV, NCC, Foundation, BIOS, BMC, DATA Drives, HBA Controllers, SATADOMs and M.2 Drives (G6 and later). From Prism Central, you can update Calm, Epsilon, Karbon, and Objects.   When you run a firmware upgrade on multiple nodes, the LCM updates one node at a time to prevent any down time in your cluster. Before the upgrade starts, all the VMs on that node are migrated to another host and the node enters maintenance mode. Always make sure that your cluster can tolerate a node failure by having the data resiliency status as “OK” in Prism Element.   For more informati

Dear all, I need to provide some reporting for my management. I'm using REST API & Python, to extract values. I managed to get hosts information (cpu, ram) and physical storage without any problem. Now I need to get the logical storage summary and I can't find the values via the REST Api. (same values as we get on the PRISM homepage on Storage Summary part) It's probably a calculation but I can't find the right one. May I ask you to provide me the values and calculations. Thank you for your help. Best regards Cedric

What is Nutanix Guest Tool (NGT)? Nutanix Guest Tools (NGT) is a software based in-guest agent framework which enables advanced VM management functionality through the Nutanix Platform. The solution is composed of the NGT installer which is installed on the VMs and the Guest Tools Framework which is used for coordination between the agent and Nutanix platform. The NGT installer contains the following components: Guest Agent Service Self-service Restore (SSR) aka File-level Restore (FLR) CLI VM Mobility Drivers (VirtIO drivers for AHV) VSS Agent and Hardware Provider for Windows VMs App Consistent snapshot support for Linux VMs (via scripts to quiesce) This framework is composed of a few high-level components: Guest Tools Service Guest Agent The figure shows the high-level mapping of the components:    Important notes:  NGT uses TCP/IP network connectivity secured with SSL. The installation includes identifiers unique to the VM and the cluster, but you can pre-install NGT on a clone ba

Hi,I have a customer with multiple clusters running hyper-V 2016. We are noticing dropped RX packets in the clusters. There was to an extent where there was a RX dropped packets alert generated in one of the clusters. So we proceeded to upgrade the Intel NIC firmware as recommended by support, after this, we notice the alert does not happen anymore. But we still see dropped packets.Is this normal or okay for a cluster/NIC to have rx dropped packets?

Below are the top knowledge base articles for the month of March 2020. KB 4116 - Alert - A1187, A1188 - ECCErrorsLast1Day, ECCErrorsLast10Days KB 7503 - G6, G7 platforms with BIOS 41.002 and higher - DIMM Error handling and replacement policy KB 4141 - Alert - A1046 - PowerSupplyDown KB 1540 - What to do when /home partition or /home/nutanix directory is full KB 1113 - HDD/SSD Troubleshooting KB 4158 - Alert - A1104 - PhysicalDiskBad KB 4188 - Alert - A1050, A1008 - IPMIError KB 2090 - AHV | Host and Guest Networking KB 4519 - NCC Health Check: check_ntp KB 4409 - LCM: (LifeCycle Manager) Troubleshooting Guide KB 8792 - NCC checks: same_hypervisor_version_check, duplicate_cvm_ip_check, same_timezone_check, esx_sioc_status_check, power_supply_check, orphan_vm_snapshot_check giving ERR KB 4541 - Alert - A101055 - MetadataDiskMountedCheck KB 2486 - NCC Health Check: cvm_mtu_check KB 2473 - NCC Health Check: cvm_memory_usage_check KB 3357 - NCC Health Check: ipmi_sel_cecc_check KB 4494 - N

Below are new knowledge base articles published on the week of March 22-28, 2020. KB 8864 - LCM Pre-check test_hyperv_2019_support KB 8940 - LCM on HPE - SPP update compatibility matrix KB 8999 - NCC Health Check: copyupblockissue_check KB 9007 - LCM Darksite: Inventory success but fails to list the available KB versions. KB 9014 - How to Create a Mapped or Network Drive from your Sandbox to a Utility Server KB 9122 - download for AOS Bundles or any large files from Prism and Portal fails for specific customers KB 9132 - Alert - A1305 - Node is in degraded state KB 9137 - Overview of Memory related enhancements introduced in BIOS: 42.300 and BMC: 7.07 for Nutanix NX-G6 and NX-G7 systems KB 9138 - LCM on INSPUR - BIOS-BMC Compatibility matrix Note: You may need to log in to the Support Portal to view some of these articles.

What is Foundation? Foundation is a Nutanix provided tool leveraged for bootstrapping, imaging and deployment of Nutanix clusters. The imaging process will install the desired version of the AOS software as well as the hypervisor of choice.   By default Nutanix nodes ship with AHV pre-installed (depending on your country), to leverage a different hypervisor type you must use foundation to re-image the nodes with the desired hypervisor. NOTE: Some OEMs will ship directly from the factory with the desired hypervisor.   The figure shows a high level view of the Foundation architecture:     To use a different hypervisor (ESXi or Hyper-V) on factory nodes or to use any hypervisor on bare metal nodes, the nodes must be imaged in the field. Foundation service is included on CVMs and can be accessed at port 8000 on a running CVM that is not in a cluster, or if the CVM IP address is not yet configured the Foundation Portable software can automatically discover the nodes. Check out the prism web

SAS is the leader in analytics and Nutanix is the leader in invisible infrastructure. Nutanix has thousands of customers and many of them already have SAS software running in their organization. They have experienced the benefits of invisible infrastructure and are moving more of their applications (including SAS) to Nutanix. It’s easy to deploy and manage SAS 9.4 and SAS Viya on Nutanix Today, SAS 9.4 helps discover insights, manage data and make analytics approachable. SAS 9.4 has been tested on Nutanix NX Models – both as a hyper-converged infrastructure (HCI), as well as using Nutanix as back-end storage only, for external hosts. Nutanix AHV clusters perform well in both scenarios. SAS software makes great demands of IT infrastructure, so you must get the design right to ensure a successful deployment. Evaluating the SAS I/O requirements accurately is pivotal. Nutanix encourages involvement of Nutanix engineers to determine the back-end service requirements as well as optimal imple

For most maintenance tasks and upgrades we can keep the cluster up and VMs running, but in some cases the whole cluster will need to be shut down. If you just need to power off a single node, a cluster of three or more nodes won’t need to stop.  To stop a single-node cluster please see the section “Shutting Down a Single-node Cluster” in the NX and SX series hardware administration guide. To stop a single node in a larger cluster see the section “Shutting Down a Node in a Cluster (AHV)”  If there's going to be a site power outage, a full network outage, or physical relocation of the whole cluster you're going to want to gracefully shut down the whole cluster. The full procedure is covered in the article Shutting Down an AHV Cluster for Maintenance or Relocation.   In summary the procedure will be as follows: Update NCC and perform a health check, then address any items of concern. Shut down all the user VMs. Stop any Nutanix Files cluster, if applicable. At this point no VMs other than

Regardless of the reason to destroy the cluster whether it is to relocate and reuse an existing kit or switch to a different hypervisor, to build something new often means to destroy something that already exists and Nutanix has a process for it. Migrate all user VMs off the cluster. Reclaim licenses. Ensure there are no errors displayed.  Stop the cluster. Destroy the cluster. Not too bad, right?   Some things to keep in mind is that cluster destruction does not affect either: IPMI configuration. Which is convenient if you wish to re-use the settings in the new environment.  Installed hypervisor. Nodes would have to be re-imaged should a different hypervisor be required. Migrate all workloads off the cluser prior to executing the cluster destroy. Cluster destroy clears all metadata and data on the storage.   Useful links: KB-3716 Reclaiming Cluster License Acropolis Advanced Administration Guide: Destroying a Cluster Field Installation Guide

Hi, I’ve configured a Nutanix device running Prism 5.10 with SNMP - I’ve set a transport for UDP on port 161 and made sure there’s a tick in Enable for Nutanix objects.  But when I try to run an SNMPWalk or SNMPGet from a device on the same subnet to start building a custom service in Solarwinds NCentral I get no response from the device.  To confirm the issue isn’t on the server I’m running the query from I’ve done the same thing to another windows server and that works fine, so I’m fairly confident I’ve got the local firewall configured, I’m just not getting a response from the Nutanix device? I configured a trap on the Nutanix device and pointed that at the same server and that worked, it just doesn’t seem to be responding to incoming SNMP requests?  Any suggestions as to what I may have missed would be gratefully accepted!

Let say that you have updated your IPMI IP address or moved it to another subnet, after you finish the update you are not able to log back in to the IPMI. This happens as a result of not restarting the genesis service on the local node which people tend to forget, after you make the change you must restart the services on the same node’s CVM by running “genesis restart”. If the restart is successful, output similar to the following is displayed: Stopping Genesis pids [1933, 30217, 30218, 30219, 30241] Genesis started on pids [30378, 30379, 30380, 30381, 30403]   You can change the network configuration of your IPMI using one of the following methods: Configuring the Remote Console IP Address (IPMI Web Interface) Configuring the Remote Console IP Address (Command Line) Configuring the Remote Console IP Address (BIOS) For the full documentation check out this page.

Let’s say that you ran the health checks on your cluster and received a failure under the component “cvm_name_check”, what does it mean and how do you fix it?   The NCC health check cvm_name_check ensures that any renamed CVMs (Controller VMs) conform to the correct naming convention to avoid issues with certain operations that depend on identifying the CVM from UVMs on the same host.   The default Controller VM naming is NTNX-<block_serial>-<position-in-block>-CVM. The display name of the Controller VM must always: Start with "NTNX-"; and End with "-CVM" For more information check out: https://portal.nutanix.com/#/page/kbs/details?targetId=kA00e000000XfCMCA0   To see how to modify the hostname of the Controller VM check out: https://portal.nutanix.com/#/page/kbs/details?targetId=kA032000000TUjkCAG   You followed the naming convention and the check is still showing a failure? This might be a false-positive alert depending on your AOS, contact Nutanix support for verificatio

You may have noticed when adding disks to the node or replacing disks with larger capacity ones, utilisation distribution between the disks does not occur immediately. You check on the cluster sometime later and notice that newly added disks still show minimal usage, much lower than expected.   By default, the aim is to bring disks utilisation within +/-7.5% spread of the tier utilisation. There are some things to consider when expecting a certain outcome: Disk balancing is not triggered unless the tier usage is at least 35%.  Only 1 GB of data is moved during a Curator scan per node.  Even if the tier usage is below 35% should any disk usage across the cluster reach 70%, disk balancing takes place.   Disk Balancing:  Disk balancing ensures data is evenly distributed across all disks in a cluster. In disk balancing, data is moved within the same tier to balance out the disk utilization. This is different from ILM (Information Lifecycle Management), where data is moved between dif

There are a number of reasons you might want to migrate a VM manually in or out of a Nutanix AHV cluster. You could be working with a situation not supported by Move, such as stand-alone ESXi without vCenter or no network path from the old hypervisor to the Nutanix cluster. Possibly you want to save a VM's disks to portable storage media and physically transport them rather than push them across the WAN. If you're wanting to move VM data in or out of AHV, the methods have been provided in this article "Transferring Virtual Disks to an AHV Cluster". If you're just looking to migrate current, working VMs from an ESXi or Hyper-V cluster Nutanix highly recommends using Nutanix Move to migrate VMs to AHV. The manual migration methods require attention to detail and generally involve a larger time investment and more downtime to complete the move. I won't go into full detail on the steps, that's already done in the article I linked, but I will highlight that for any VM you’ll need VirtIO

Is there a way to execute a script (or PowerShell script/command) inside a newly created AHV VM which does not have an IP address yet?  The VM has Nutanix Guest Tools installed. I’m looking for automating the creation of a new VM. In VMware, I use the Invoke-VMScript command.  I didn’t know if Nutanix had something similar? Thanks! -TimG

Sometimes it is very boring to install the PrismCentral VM on AHV after your Cluster runs but it gets buggy. So here are some tips to solve problems there Deploy a Network in your new AHV Environment first Deploy the new VM via Prism Element Homepage Often you get an error with ssl and httpd could not start! Login via ssh to ip of your fresh deployed Prism Central Server Login via nutanix / nutanix/4u sudo -i service httpd status (mostly not started) service httpd start (ignore the ssl errors in the output) Now the new PrismCentral Website should arrive after a while under https://ip-of-prismcentral Login not possible with admin / admin or admin / nutanix/4u? Login again via ssh and nutanix / nutanix/4u to prismcentral sudo -i passwd admin set your admin password and repeat it reboot wait a while login to prismcental and admin / your password  Register your cluster in prism element 

When a Nutanix / vSphere cluster is deployed by Foundation the recommended drivers are installed, but after some time you may want to check if there is a newer driver recommended.   From the Nutanix perspective, we have covered this with an NCC Health Check: esx_driver_compatibility_check so if you update NCC and run a health check, this check should tell you whether there is a later driver version qualified by Nutanix. To run the check from the CLI use “ncc health_checks hypervisor_checks esx_driver_compatibility_check” from any CVM in the cluster.  You may see a newer driver listed for your NIC hardware and ESXi version. A newer driver may not have been qualified yet by Nutanix and in some cases could cause issues for the cluster, so generally we recommend staying with the recommended drivers as identified by NCC.

Hi,   I’m new to nutanix and this is my first post :)  I’ve started to create a cluster in a lab environment and it seems to work fine. I created two bridges with 2x10G and 2x1G for user VM traffic.  For the next step I tried to use the network segmentation to separate management and backplane traffic. Therefore an eth2 interface is required for the CVMs. Problem is, that there’s no eth2 available, just eth0 and eth1:   When I start the segmentation process I got the particular error message:     Did I miss something?   Thanks Benjamin

Q. Does Nutanix support inline encryption? Inline encryption is not currently supported on the Nutanix platform. However Data At Rest Encryption (DARE) of two kinds is supported: Using Self Encrypted Drives (SED) is supported Security Guide v5.16: Preparing for Data-at-Rest Encryption (SEDs) Security Guide v5.16: Configuring Data-at-Rest Encryption (SEDs) Software Only Data Encryption  Security Guide: Data-at-Rest-Encryption (Software Only)   Q. How do I know that the data is encrypted? More details around the encryption status and logs can be viewed via the nCLI, using REST APIs or PowerShell cmdlets. KB-7846 How to verify that data is encrypted with Nutanix data-at-rest encryption   Q. Is it possible to monitor the encryption? Monitoring of the encryption state is done via our Nutanix Cluster Checks (NCC) that generate an alert on any issue detected within the cluster. Please keep in mind that enabling encryption is a cluster-scope setting.    Q. What is recommended sizing of the CV

Below are new knowledge base articles published on the week of March 15-21, 2020. KB 8885 - Alert - A15039 - IPMI SEL UECC Check KB 9009 - AHV | No Intel Turbo Boost frequencies shown in the output of "cpupower frequency-info" command KB 9070 - [CSI] PVC Volumes Stuck in Pending State | Error: Secret value is not encoded using '<prism-ip>:<prism-port>:<user>:<password>' format KB 9071 - Configuring hypervisor after satadom replacement fails with phoenix 4.5.2 KB 9085 - [Objects 2.0] Error creating the object store at the deploy step. KB 9095 - Nutanix Files- FSVM expansion may file with error IP already in use KB 9102 - How to identify plugged-in SFP module hardware details KB 9103 - WARN: Could not use proxy. URL Error <urlopen error [SSL: TLSV1_ALERT_INTERNAL_ERROR] Note: You may need to log in to the Support Portal to view some of these articles.

In a Nutanix AHV cluster the image service is used to index and manage ISO and virtual disk images for cloning to new VM disks or mounting to the virtual CDROM. With the addition of Prism Central 5.5 or later, this adds a global image service to manage these files across multiple clusters. When managing images from Prism Central we sometimes will see an image show up on a cluster as "inactive". This means the metadata for the image exists but the file does not exist locally on that cluster.   The article "Prism Central: Adding Images to Prism Central" gives a few options to remediate this condition when an image is needed on a certain cluster but is inactive. These methods are useful with Prism Central 5.5 and 5.10 versions.   In Prism Central 5.11 we have added image placement methods to control where your images will be available. During image upload you can choose to select individual clusters where the image should reside, or you can apply a category to the image to utilize an imag

Hello, does anybody have experiences with a container OS like RancherOS on AHV? In the Compatibility Matrix of Nutanix I can see that RancherOS v1.5.5 is compatible with my AOS 5.10, but I don’t know which image of RancherOS I should use. The are some images for a specific cloud provider and some for a specific hypervisor, but no one for Nutanix, AHV or KVM.   I tought then I simply have to use the rancheros.iso, but there a some contradictions that I don’t understand. The good news is that the VM is working as expected, but RancherOS everytime enables the hyperv-vm-tools on startup and the container os-hypervvmtools is restarted every few seconds. The logs of this container are also empty. Does anybody know if there is something special to consider? For example do a need to enable the qemu-guest-tools or the kernel-extras?   Any information or tips are welcome.   Best regards H.Budde

2 of 3 nodes are fine and working. The 3nd CVM is up and i could ping it. Restart the Cluster with “allssh genesis stop cluster_health; cluster start” does not start these Cluster Partner. After Login in Prism i saw a “Disk degraded” for these 3rd node and now these disk is missing.    How to fix node Nr. 3 in a 3 Node Cluster?