Deploying Nutanix Files on a 3 nodes (AHV)

Hi ​@Daniel Martinez ,

for a Files cluster with 3 FSVMs, you should plan the following IP addresses:

Client Network

Used by SMB/NFS clients and directory services (AD, DNS, etc.).

• 1 × Virtual IP (VIP)
  Floating Files service VIP that clients use as the primary access address.
• 3 × FSVM client IPs
  One client IP per FSVM for data access and communication with client-side services.

Backend Network

Used for storage and internal traffic between FSVMs and the Nutanix cluster.
Optional: Could be same as Client LAN for test or demo environments to simplify setup.

• 1 × Data Services IP (if not already configured on your Nutanix Cluster)
  Nutanix Data Services IP is required for storage services (iSCSI/NFS) from the Nutanix cluster and is used by Files to access its backing storage if not already configured.
• 3 × FSVM backend IPs
  One backend IP per FSVM to connect to the Nutanix storage over iSCSI (Files uses volume groups underneath).

Hope this gives a bit more clarification on the IP requirements and shows that the idea is to separate Client and Storage network but you can see that it is possible also setup a Fileserver environment with all in one Subnet. But most customers separate for several reasons Client and Storage LANs of course.

Hope that helps?

Sebastian

nutanix files, you will have two network (interfaces),client and storage,
now lets say you have N nodes (number of FSVM) in your file server cluster
1-storage:keep the IPs in same subnet as CVMs subnet, you will need N+1 IPs 
2- Client: you will need N IPs for your cluster.

for the part of recommendation, as FSVM will be directly communicating to CVMs , they are always recommended to be in same vlan as CVM (matter a fact, there is a NCC test for this).and client side is recommended to be on separate VLAN as that is a VLAN that you like to be access by end users.(better VLAN and security management)

 Thanks for your detailed explanation, it really helped clarify the architecture. Let me summarize to confirm I understood it correctly:

From what you described, Nutanix Files essentially has two “zones”:

• Frontend: the client/SMB/NFS side

• Backend: internal communication with the Nutanix cluster (CVMs, storage, etc.)

Everything can run on the same subnet, but it’s generally recommended to keep the frontend traffic on a separate VLAN so that end-users don’t have direct visibility into the backend/CVM network.

In this case the customer only has a single default VLAN for everything (small environment), so I’m not sure if it’s worth creating a dedicated VLAN just for Files, but I can certainly suggest it as a best practice 😅

Just to double-check one last thing:

According to your explanation, the Data Services IP required by Nutanix Files is the same Data Services IP that I previously configured on the cluster when deploying Prism Central.

Is that correct?

Thanks again!

I think when you are trying to deploy Nutanix files, it will show you “data service IP “ as a prerequisites.
whenever something needs to be access by ISCSI/NFS from outside of Nutanix, it should go through DSIP.

Nutanix Files is good at the same time it has its own limitation when you go deep inside it :)
for example, for SMB share, there must be an active directory, and it must be joined to it, again on DC if you have superclass reversed IP, it will give you some trouble.

anyway good luck with your deployment.

Thanks for the answer but my question is if that dataservice IP that you mentioned as a preprequisites is the same one I already configured on the cluster as a prerequisite some days ago when I deployed Prism Central.
I need to know if I have to ask for a new IP for dataservice or if it is the same one already configured.

as I have mentioned in above, it will be mentioned as prerequisite, so you don't have to request a new one as this done on cluster level.
when you want to deploy a file server, you will have pre-check like below screenshot (depending on your environment it could be different) but DSIP is one of pre-checks :)