Image your AOS and AHV with Foundation | Nutanix Community
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For a node to join a Nutanix cluster, it must have a hypervisor and AOS combination that Nutanix supports. AOS is the operating system of the Nutanix Controller VM, which is a VM that must be running in the hypervisor to provide Nutanix-specific functionality. Find the complete list of supported hypervisor/AOS combinations at https://portal.nutanix.com/page/documents/compatibility-matrix

Foundation is the official deployment software of Nutanix. Foundation allows you to configure a pre-imaged node, or image a node with a hypervisor and an AOS of your choice. Foundation also allows you to form a cluster out of nodes whose hypervisor and AOS versions are the same, with or without re-imaging. Foundation is available for download at https://portal.nutanix.com/#/page/Foundation.

If you already have a running cluster and want to add nodes to it, you must use the Expand Cluster option in Prism, instead of using Foundation

Network requirements

When configuring a Nutanix block a set of IP addresses is required to be allocated to the cluster. Ensure that chosen IP addresses do not overlap with any hosts or services within the environment. You will also need to make sure to open the software ports that are used to manage cluster components and to enable communication between components such as the Controller VM, Web console, Prism Central, hypervisor, and the Nutanix hardware. Nutanix recommends that you specify information such as a DNS server and NTP server even if the cluster is not connected to the Internet or runs in a non-production environment.

Each node in a Nutanix cluster requires three IP addresses, one for each of the following components:

  • IPMI interface

  • Hypervisor host

  • Nutanix Controller VM

Several ways one can foundation to image would be a foundation applet, a foundation VM, CVM foundation.

Things to consider while imaging bare metal nodes: Considerations for Bare-Metal Imaging

For a windows/linux VM which wants to be used as a workstation, the workstation must have at least 3 GB of memory (Foundation VM size plus 1 GB), 80 GB of disk space (preferably SSD), and a physical (wired) network adapter.

To enable IPv6 on the network to which the nodes are connected and ensure that IPv6 multicast is supported.

The VMware hypervisor must be fetched from the VMware website and the Hyper-V must be fetched from Microsoft.

The foundation UI gives out the logs and can be reviewed for tracking imaging progress.

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