Deployment Success

On your Nutanix and vSphere cluster you may have recently seen this alert stating “Storage Containers are not mounted on all nodes”. This may have started showing up after some cluster modifications or maintenance, or could have appeared after some recent upgrades.  You’re probably wanting to know, what is this alert for? How big of a problem is it and what do we need to do to fix it? I’d like to answer those questions for you. This alert is generated through a recurring NCC check “Storage Container Mount Configuration”. First off it’s useful to know that the main purpose of this check is to validate the configuration of  a Metro Availability pair of Nutanix/ESXi clusters. That’s why this check is categorized under the data protection checks. The command to run this check from the CVM CLI is “ncc health_checks data_protection_checks protection_domain_checks storage_container_mount_check”. As for the impact of the problem being reported I’d have to say it’s conditional. The briefest way

Can someone confirm the drive placement for SSD and the SATA drives in our Dell XC740xd servers?   On one cluster of servers, there are four SSD drives in bays 0-3 and in the other two clusters the SSDs are in the last four bays.    I have only seen the SSD drives in the first four drive bays.

Hi,Our metro cluster is running AOS5.10.8.1 (since yesterday’s update from AOS 5.10.8) on x8 NX-8035-G6. During an LCM update for bios and HDD, a node failed due to a bad DIMM. The node pair were eventually evicted from the meta data ring at which point support were supplying a replacement DIMM. After a lot of coaxing both nodes were back in the cluster and hosting vSphere6.5 without any apparent issue, however, since the outage we are being warned in PC\PE and NCC that the active and standby PDs are not mounted on all nodes, even after manually ensuring that the containers are available and connected correctly. Support have advised that this is a known NCC error and just wondered if anyone else in the community has experienced this issue? Thanks in advance

 There may come a time when you must expand your cluster storage capacity since you predict more data will be added to the cluster in the near future.Also, you are already short of space and cannot gain any more space by deleting the old snapshots and removing VM not needed any more, etc.In that situation, assuming you have empty slots in your hardware chassis and depending on the type of the drive you are adding you will need to follow the instruction in your nutanix portal document titled “Adding a Drive”.If you do not have any more disk slot on your hardware to, you may have to add a new node to your cluster altogether, so it can expand the capacity of your cluster. This has the benefit of adding memory and cpu resources as well.

Hi    I followed the steps in page to upgrade NCC. I can upgrade NCC by a single installer file (ncc_installer_filename.sh) successfully. But I cannot upgrade NCC by a compressed tar file (ncc_installer_filename.tar.gz). After extract the installation package, I type command to run the install script as below. It showed “Installation of ncc failed on node xx.xx.xx.xx” . I tired to run the script on each cluster, they generated the same error. How to troubleshoot the issue?   

is there any storage motion or container motion if i using ahv? and if not, how we move vm data from one container to another container?

Hi, I am trying to create a VM using the v3 API and have a question about creating the vdisks. I can specify the disk details (size, type, etc.) in the create VM call, but don't seem to be able to specify the storage container to use. Is this correct?  The only work around that I've found is to use the v1 API to create the vdisk, grab its UUID, and use that in the v3 call to create the VM. I can't see a call to create a vdisk in either v2 or v3. Darren.

First of all, let’s take a look at what all-flash and hybrid nodes mean. All-flash:- Nodes containing only SSD drives Hybrid nodes:- Nodes containing both HDD and SSD drives.   Is it possible to have both kinds of nodes within the same cluster? – Provided that the two conditions below are met, it is: The AOS version must be 5.1 or later. The minimum number of each node type (all-flash/hybrid) must be equal to the cluster redundancy factor. For example, clusters with a redundancy factor of 2 must have a minimum of 2 hybrid and 2 all-flash nodes.   To check for any issues with mixing these nodes, we have the NCC check, “all_flash_nodes_intermixed_check”.   This checks if there are any all-flash (only SSD drives) nodes in the same cluster that have hybrid (HDD and SSD drives) nodes. This check is scheduled to run every day, by default and will generate an alert after 1 failure.   To know more about the check and its behavior, take a look at https://portal.nutanix.com/#/page/kbs/detai

The Unified Extensible Firmware Interface (UEFI) is a specification that defines a software interface between an operating system and platform firmware. UEFI replaces the legacy Basic Input/Output System (BIOS) firmware interface originally present in all IBM PC-compatible personal computers,with most UEFI firmware implementations providing support for legacy BIOS services. UEFI can support remote diagnostics and repair of computers, even with no operating system installed.Advantages :The interface defined by the EFI specification includes data tables that contain platform information, and boot and runtime services that are available to the OS loader and OS. UEFI firmware provides several technical advantages over a traditional BIOS system: Ability to use large disks partitions (over 2 TB) with a GUID Partition Table (GPT) CPU-independent architecture CPU-independent drivers Flexible pre-OS environment, including network capability Modular design Backward and forward compatib

Hi All, is anyone can tell me if AMD processors are supported on Nutanix CE i want to get a server with AMD processors and want to install Nutanix CE 

You might receive an error of low free block count in your NCC report due to failed check sata_dom_fwv_check.   This plugin checks the SATA DOM SMART data and shows if anything is off from the expected result.   To free up blocks in the SATA DOM, we have a procedure called, “Trim Operation” which is effective and really quick. The trim operation consists of running a script called trim_satadom.sh which can be downloaded from the link provided in the below mentioned doc.   To get to know more about the NCC check and to see how the Trim operation works, take a look at- https://portal.nutanix.com/#/page/kbs/details?targetId=kA032000000PODRCA4

Oops, did you by mistake created a VM on SATA DOM? What will happen if a VM is intentionally created on SATA DOM?   For starters, it is not recommended to run VMs on the SATA DOM, as this accelerates the degradation. If by mistake you did it, how will you know?   The NCC health check sata_dom_uvm_check verifies if there are any VMs running on the SATA DOM, and reports a FAIL status if the check detects any VMs running on the SATA DOM.   Now as the check suggests that there is a VM running on SATA DOM, the only solution would be to take it out of there.   To know more about the check outputs and the solution, take a look at https://portal.nutanix.com/#/page/kbs/details?targetId=kA03200000098jUCAQ   Have any questions? Drop a comment and let’s start a discussion

IPMI version 2.0 is susceptible to exploitation that allows an attacker to obtain password hash information.   The vulnerability scan on the environment can give the below sample output:-  Synopsis :The remote host supports IPMI version 2.0.Description :The remote host supports IPMI v2.0. The Intelligent Platform Management Interface (IPMI) protocol is affected by an information disclosure vulnerability due to the support of RMCP+ Authenticated Key Exchange Protocol (RAKP) authentication. A remote attacker can obtain password hash information for valid user accounts via the HMAC from a RAKP message 2 response from a BMC.   To know the IPMI version on the host, login into the host, run the command for checking BMC version and you’ll get an output similar to:-  Device ID                 : 32Device Revision           : 1Firmware Revision         : 3.63IPMI Version              : 2.0 <<== IPMI versionManufacturer ID           : xxxxxManufacturer Name         : Supermicro   To know ho

If you are anything like me then you prefer to figure out things by yourself instead of asking for assistance. While this is arguably the most efficient method of achieving a positive outcome, knowing where to find the right information as well as knowing that it exists is crucial.   Also, networking is complicated. Being fundamental, a mistake often makes a profound impact on the environment. How to create a virtual bridge? How to use manage_ovs command? How to change VLAN on VM NIC? How to add or remove VLAN on CVM and AHV host? How to configure LACP? How to isolate 1G NICs from the rest of the NICs?   The answers to the above and more as well as useful links – all can be found in KB-2090 AHV | Host and Guest Networking   Care to read more? Check these: .NEXT AHV Networking | Configuring Load Balancing .NEXT AHV Networking | Enable, Disable and Verify LACP AHV Networking

Is it possible to share a disk between two or more Virtual Machines? Can we use the disk on the two VMs at the same time, for reading and writing?   The answer is Yes and No respectively.   Yes, Nutanix supports shared disk via Volume Group on AHV. This is supported on clustering solutions (Cluster at guest OS level) like My SQL etc.   You can use the disk on the two VMs at the same time for reading. However, two VMs writing at the same time is not allowed.    In a clustering solution, the master VM will write to the disk and all the other VMs in the cluster can read from the disk.    Take a look at the guide to have an overview of how storage management is done at Nutanix:- https://portal.nutanix.com/#/page/docs/details?targetId=Web-Console-Guide-Prism-v5_16:wc-storage-management-wc-c.html

Only applies to AOS 5.15 and earlier versionsShould you wish to add NIC cards to your nodes there are several steps to follow to ensure that the process is successful. Verify that NIC card model is compatible with the hardware. In case of an NX platform the best way would be to contact Nutanix account team. Look for the documentation describing the process. Nutanix portal has a Hardware replacement section for instructions on all hardware component replacements for all NX platforms.  Once the card is automatically detected the bond and uplinks configuration must be updated using manage_ovs command from CVM. Nutanix portal: Hardware Replacement DocumentationKB-2090 AHV | Host and Guest NetworkingAHV Guide v5.16: Host Network Management 

Hi A remote site on AWS has been configured earlier. The time sync drifted too far but that has been fixed. The remote site in Data Protection has this alert "Remote site connectivity not normal." It is an AWS instance. The remote CVM IP address is 10.162.10.115. The host ipaddress is unknown, the firewall rules are fully open and replication seems to be occuring. There is a site to site VPN specificaly for this instance It looks as though the aWS remote site was never configured with the local cluster as a remote site which is what most of the webinars and documentation suggest. The IP address will not open a web page on http or https, the only communication available to the AWS node is SSH. How does the configurationof the remote site get completed or how do I get rid of this alert ?? Prisim: 5.6.1 NCC Version: 3.5.2 LCM Version: 1.4.2381 Nutanix 20170830.124 (in cluster, standard AWS instance) Thanks

hi, my client want to migrate all their sles 12 vm's from AHV to their ESXi farm (SAP Hana), currently i'm using the vmware converter but not success, got error cannot query live Linux machine.. i did try this --> https://acropolis.ninja/export-a-vm-from-nutanix-ahv-to-vmware-esxi/ but process stuck in qemu-img convert, and my cvm will give an error "CVM Services Restarting Frequently".. any suggestion to make more easier? cheers, paLee

I have been getting the below error when i select image configuration. When i do image.list i could see the images in acli. image.list Image name Image type Image UUID Nuatnix Xtract kDiskImage f3b18c26-e461-44af-b3e1-bc295078fe40 Virto-Windows kIsoImage ffcbbf1d-7380-4803-af4c-fd16fa6795f3 Windows_2016 kIsoImage 15ec4036-703b-471d-9887-3cb6a569426e [h4]Error occurred while getting image list[/h4]

Let’s say you want to add a new node with a newer processor class than the existing nodes in the cluster. In this case you must enable EVC (Enhanced vMotion Compatibility) feature.   What is EVC?   EVC stands for Enhanced vMotion Compatibility which is a vCenter Server cluster-centric feature allowing virtual machines to vMotion or migrate across ESXi hosts equipped with dissimilar processors in the same cluster. VMware EVC Mode works by masking unsupported processor features thus presenting a homogeneous processor front to all the virtual machines in a cluster. This means that a VM can vMotion to any ESXi host in a cluster irrespective of the host’s micro-architecture examples of which include Intel’s Sandy Bridge and Haswell. One caveat to remember is that all the processor(s) must be from a single vendor i.e. either Intel or AMD. You simply cannot mix and match.   What are the benefits?   The main benefit is that you can add servers with the latest processors to your existing cluste

Out Database team has been using ERA to deploy lab and test VMs. I noticed they are reporting ridiculous usage. Some of the machines report used more than half the total cluster storage and 3 times allocated. Any ideas?

Are you wondering which alerts generate a support case with Nutanix Support and whom Nutanix contacts when a case is generated? There is a particular subset of alerts that have been identified as being important, so action can be taken on them. These alerts are called Alert cases. When the cluster is under a current support contract, alert cases are generated. Alert cases are handled by Nutanix Support, who reach out to the primary Support Contact (also referred to as the break/fix contact) associated with the node or cluster in question. For customers with a third-party providing front-line support, it is normal to have a representative from that company listed as the primary Support Contact. Most of the alert cases are created with a P4 priority level, which has a target response time of 24 hours. NodeDegraded and NodeAvgLoadAboveThreshold are created with a P2 priority level, which has a target response time of two hours. To know which alerts generate cases, and how to change the co

On a Nutanix cluster running VMware vSphere, you may be seeing this alert while there is no other sign of issue: Warning : Some storage containers have a high number of NFS files Impact          : High number of NFS files may cause vpxa services on esxi hosts to restart. Cause           : Number of files for respective storage containers has increased beyond 20K. This is expected with large VDI setups. Resolution      : Reduce the number of files if you observe vpxa instability. Why do we see this alert? What needs to be done about it? As is noted on the relevant KB article this alert is set to be deprecated in an upcoming release of NCC. As suggested by the Impact and Resolution information above, the alert is related to a problem encountered in vpxa. The alert was created for an issue in vSphere 5.x that caused instability for the vpxa service if the number of files in a single NFS datastore was too high. The issue was resolved by VMware some time ago so you do not need to worry abou

Life-cycle Manager has made the life of every Nutanix Admin easy by providing a 1-click approach to upgrade the firmware and in the latest version, the hypervisor seamlessly.     Let’s consider a scenario, where you went ahead with an LCM upgrade but noticed it failing as some pre-checks failed.     What are these pre-checks?     Before any upgrade, LCM runs a series of pre-checks to confirm the cluster stability and if all the prerequisites are fulfilled before  proceeding with the upgrade.   Do we have a document listing all the pre-checks and their resolution?    The following document lists all the pre-check, their description and resolution. This might come in handy if we are trying to troubleshoot as to why the LCM pre-checks have failed.   KB-4584   Want to know more about Life Cycle Manager and its features?  Give the following document a coffee read!    LCM Guide 

Hi everyone,   I m new to Nutanix and have just deployed my first cluster. I did all the updates I could find in Upgrade Software Settings. It brought the nodes up to 5.11.2.1 . I tried to run the checks again and it shows no available versions. I saw the notice for the release of 5.16 so I downloaded the manual update binary file and meta file.   When I try to update it says unsupported.  Edit:   NOT SUPPORTED Current version was released after the Target version was released. Upgrading to Target Release version is not supported in this case.     I check the support upgrade path wizard in My Nutanix and it says the 5.11.2.1 is newer then the 5.16 yet they were released the same day!? The Upgrade path shows that if I had the 5.11.2 I could update to 5.16 but not 5.11.2.1 ?? Will Nutanix have an update path for this? or am I stuck for a while?   thanks everyone.   Scott