Deployment Success

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  

Hello, first time to use IPMI. Need to mount ISOt to re-install ESXi. So I’m trying to launch Direct Console from IPMI (note that I just reinstalled Java). but still not launching. Any idea? Nutanix Support wasn’t helpful.

Below are the top knowledge base articles for the month of February 2020 KB 4116 - Alert - A1187, A1188 - ECCErrorsLast1Day, ECCErrorsLast10Days KB 4141 - Alert - A1046 - PowerSupplyDown KB 7503 - G6, G7 platforms with BIOS 41.002 and higher - DIMM Error handling and replacement policy 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 4409 - LCM: (LifeCycle Manager) Troubleshooting Guide KB 4519 - NCC Health Check: check_ntp KB 4188 - Alert - A1050, A1008 - IPMIError KB 2090 - AHV | Host and Guest Networking KB 4541 - Alert - A101055 - MetadataDiskMountedCheck KB 1507 - Alert IPMI IP address on Controller VM {CVM-IP} was updated to ... without following the Nutanix IP Reconfiguration procedure, can be misleading KB 4273 - NCC Health Check: aged_third_party_backup_snapshot_check KB 8792 - NCC checks: same_hypervisor_version_check, duplicate_cvm_ip_check, same_timezone_check, esx_sio

There can be legitimate cases where access to external storage, such as massive tape libraries, massive disk archives is needed to some, but not all VMs running in a Nutanix cluster.  These VMs would be ideally under the AHV hypervisor, but is ESXi is an acceptable alternative.  These external storage systems would likely support 10GbE iSCSI (and faster) and/or 8 gbit fibre channel or faster. I understand that supporting such external access would make the VM “special” and would restrict VM mobility to other specific nodes that were configured for similar external access. The mobility issues are a later discussion, if external storage access is possible. If the external storage was a NAS device, running NFS and/or SMB, I believe it would be straigntforward … just define the external IP address in the VM, and access the data from the VM.  The same technique could be used for external iSCSI devices, for Ethernet iSCSi.   In many cases, if the external storage needed very high performance

Below are new knowledge base articles published on the week of February 23-29, 2020. KB 8900 - Prism Central Alert Manager and Cassandra Monitor services crashing, NCC health checks failing for same. KB 8909 - [Karbon] Airgap (dark site) FAQ and Troubleshooting Guide KB 8956 - AHV | How to get a list of virtual machines that were restarted due to an HA event KB 8976 - Nutanix Files Share might encounter mapping issue to macOS KB 8980 - VMs deleted via vCenter may fail to restore within 7 days of deletion KB 8988 - Calm - Calm UI is not accessible on PC 5.16 KB 8995 - Storage utilization on a Hyper-V cluster steadily increasing due to failed Hyper-V Replica replications KB 9005 - Nessus Plugin ID 33851 - Network daemons not managed by the package system KB 9029 - Changing LDAP port 389 authentication to Secure LDAP (LDAPS) ports 636 or 3269 Note: You may need to log in to the Support Portal to view some of these articles.

I have an opportunity to acquire some retired Nutanix memory.  The retired memory is  NX-1065-G5 nodes and our Cluster is NX-6035-G5.  From what I have been able to trace they appear to use the same memory modules.  Can anyone confirm this?

 Is there a way to create isolated networks within the nutanix cluster that would allow communication only for the VMs that has a NIC connected to that network? Find attached an example of what I mean if we were talking about ESXi Thanks in advance!

Can anyone let me know which steps are being involved when I expand Hyper-V cluster by using Prism? I have a Hyper-V cluster that being mixed by some AHV storage nodes and looks like I cannot use the Prism cluster expansion feature to add more nodes...

Hi, I am new in Nutanix Move can anyone help me to deploy it in PrismElement using QCOW2 disk file. Also I don’t have that disk file, please help to create it.

Dear All Is it mandatory to replace the node in a cluster with the same hardware? Can we replace it with a higher configuration(CPU)

If you have a Nutanix cluster on VMware vSphere which has been through some hypervisor upgrades, your CVM’s virtual hardware version may be a bit out of date. The main requirement from the Nutanix perspective is that CVM virtual hardware versions should be the same across the AOS cluster, and this is checked by NCC. Still, since newer virtual hardware versions include security updates and sometimes feature updates or improvements from VMware you may want to bring this up to date. If you have an AOS upgrade pending, completing that upgrade would be the easiest route to solution. If you don’t have any AOS upgrade needed, please note Nutanix does not recommend manually updating the VM hardware version for CVMs. The recommended method is to allow virtual hardware version to update during an AOS upgrade. Do be aware, if you manually updated the virtual hardware version to 13 or higher on ESXi 6.5 before Patch 4, or 6.7 before Update 3, this could cause the CVM to fail to boot. There is a kn

Lets say that you want to monitor or modify your cluster by utilizing some of our REST APIs.  To view Nutanix REST APIs, go to Prism > click on the username on the top right > REST API Explorer.  Automating the API calls can make your daily tasks easier and faster, it's a script that you write once and you can use it via bots on chat platforms like Slack and Google Hangouts.  For example, if you have multiple clusters and you wish to see the alerts on all of them, you have the option to automate a script that sends you the alerts by simply writing "<cluster name> alerts" as opposed to logging in to each cluster and inserting the credentials every time.  Here is my example snippet of a server-side automation with Node.js, the call is to show the alerts on a cluster named Prolix where you can send a basic Auth credentials to pass the login page, the parsed result will be printed in the console. It’s important to include the first line:  process.env['NODE_TLS_REJECT_UNAUTHORIZ

Let’s say you want to add a node to the cluster, now, the AOS version in the new node to be added should be the same for quick expansion. To do so, you need to use a phoenix image bundled with AOS or in some cases, AOS + AHV bundled image to perform imaging in one go.  Instead of creating a new case with support and save your time too, the fastest way would be to create one on your own. There are 2 ways to do so:- 1. Creating a Phoenix ISO via CVM 2. Creating an ISO by Using a Foundation VM (if option 1 cannot be performed) To know in detail regarding how to go about the above-mentioned ways, take a look at KB-3523.

You might receive an alert stating that “IP x.x.x.x is authenticating to the REST API with the admin user.” The cause of this alert is that an external client is configured to authenticate to REST API with the admin user.   The admin user will be disabled in a forthcoming release. REST API calls from the admin user will stop working. The resolution is to authenticate to the REST API with a different user that has administrative privileges.   To resolve the warning, create another user as per the below procedure. This user can authenticate to the REST API without an alert being raised.   To know how to do this, check out https://portal.nutanix.com/#/page/docs/details?targetId=Web-Console-Guide-Prism-v510:wc-user-management-wc-c.html   To know more about the alert, check out https://portal.nutanix.com/#/page/kbs/details?targetId=kA00e000000kAHyCAM

There can be many scenarios like PSU troubleshooting or upgrades where we might want to know the current BMC and BIOS version in the cluster. Let’s say for a tracking/planning sheet of firmware upgrades or sometimes its asked from the Nutanix support for an open case you have.   There are two ways to get this information. Using IPMI or cli to get the BIOS and BMC versions on individual nodes. Using NCC to determine the model, BIOS and BMC version for all nodes.   To know in detail about the above methods take a look at https://portal.nutanix.com/#/page/kbs/details?targetId=kA0600000008ZDeCAM   Planning to upgrade the firmware in your cluster? Take a look at https://portal.nutanix.com/#/page/docs/details?targetId=Acropolis-Upgrade-Guide-v5_16:upg-firmware-upgrades-c.html

Could some one help me to understand how to calculate CVM overheads? I mean witout using the Sizer. I'm prety sure that some time before I have seen something about that in the documentation but now is removed. Nutanix bible sows some infor Drive Breakdown section but I'm not sure that it is up to date. So my question is how I can calculate overheads for the below: SSD: Nutanix Home Ext4 Formatting Genesis Cassandra OpLog Content Cache HDD Ext4 Formatting Genesis Curator

Running the checks "CVM using default password", HOST using default password", IPMI using default password", I always get green status even if the CVM, HOSTS and IPMI passwords are the default ones. Why?

Hello, after new install single-node cluster, i dont change pass for root user. # passwd root bash: passwd: command not found what am I doing wrong?

Earlier we have discussed the Interoperability between the different software, we also discussed the compatibility between the different software solutions and Hardware-Software integration.   What about upgrading a specific software, what is the latest version you can upgrade to? In some cases if your software is too old, you can't directly upgrade it to the latest version since each version has some prerequisites. That's why we have the upgrade paths page. which works for AOS, Prism Central and Nutanix Files upgrades. You simply choose the component with your current version and you'll see the supported versions in green under the "Target Release Version" drop-down. For more information:  To view upgrade paths for old AOS releases, please visit here http://download.nutanix.com/alerts/upgradePaths.pdf To view AOS EOL versions, please visit here http://download.nutanix.com/misc/AOS_EOL/AOS_EOL.pdf To view Prism Central EOL versions, please click here http://download.nutanix.com/misc/P

Let’s say you recently acquired a brand new Nutanix Cluster that will allow your business-critical applications like Oracle to take full advantage of low-latency storage performance and linear scalability, high availability, and simplified management.   By shifting their workloads to Nutanix, DBAs and system administrators can achieve a lower TCO and eliminate the complexity of constantly managing and optimizing their underlying compute and storage in a multitier architecture.   With the RMAN TO PLATFORM feature, you can migrate your Oracle database across platforms, making it easier than ever to get started on Nutanix.   I hope that this note empowers you to begin moving Oracle user tablespaces from Solaris to Linux on Nutanix.   See the specific details on Step by Step Migration Instructions document to get the steps for converting user tablespaces from Solaris to Linux.   Also you can consult : The complete Oracle Database Migration from Solaris to Linux technical note. The Oracle o