How It works

Have questions about how the Nutanix Platform works? Looking to get started - start here!

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Albert Mendoza
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Albert Mendoza
started this topic

New KB Articles Published on Week Ending July 22, 2023

Below are new knowledge base articles published on the week of July 16-22, 2023.KB 14262 - Alert - A200614 - FNSVersionMisMatch KB 14552 - P...
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Albert Mendoza
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Albert Mendoza
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Top KB Articles for June 2023

Below are the top knowledge base articles for the month of June 2023.KB 1540 - AOS Only - What to do when /home partition or /home/nutanix d...
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Alona
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Alona
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Help us help you! Assign Support Contact to your Nutanix assets.

We know you care about your infrastructure. Every time and auto support ticket is created for one of Nutanix clusters a Support Engineer con...
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1298 Topics

R
Nutanix Employee
raajiNutanix Employee
posted in How It works

Self-Service restore (SSR)

Self Service restore (SSR) lets you open and copy a previous version of a file. For SMB, you can use SSR to restore files. Enable or disable SSR through the Prism Web Console SSR for SMB does not restore streams or attributes in directories. Files does not support SSR at the root of distributed shares or exportsFiles take snapshots of the stored cluster data at the share/export level. Self-Service Restore (SSR) exposes these snapshots to the share or export. SSR lets you restore a file from any of the previous snapshots without an administrator. SSR is disabled by default, but you can enable it during or after share or export creation. By default, Files creates a snapshot every hour and retains the most recent 24 snapshots. By default, Files deletes the oldest SSR snapshot after exceeding the retention count for the snapshot type. The snapshot retention count corresponds to the retention period. SSR has the following retention periods: 24 hours of hourly snapshots. 7 days for daily s

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R
Nutanix Employee
2 years ago
N
Nutanix Employee
nirmal.ravirajan-57912Nutanix Employee
posted in How It works

Rolling Reboot for CVM/Hosts

While maintaining your Nutanix environment, there is a need to apply patches to keep everything running smoothly. Some of these patches require reboot of the CVM or Hosts to take effect.For example, rebooting all hosts in a cluster means manually putting the host in maintenance mode, evacuating the VMs, turning off the CVM, rebooting the host, waiting for the CVM and host to boot up, and confirming the cluster data resiliency is OK before proceeding to the next host. As you can see, there is a lot of manual work involved.However, there is a simpler solution: leveraging the rolling reboot script. The script utilizes our shutdown token feature to ensure that the node is up and running before proceeding to the next node. If you are using AHV, the script will be available in Prism. For ESXi hypervisors and for more robust options (even for AHV), there is a command line option found in KB 4723More information about the prerequisites (please read this before using) and execution can be found

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Nutanix Employee
3 years ago
N
Nutanix_guestAdventurer
asked in How It works

NCLI command line

What are the commands to shutdown and delete guest VMs?

5
Sergei Ivanov
Nutanix Employee
3 years ago
Bender555
Bender555Adventurer
asked in How It works

v3 - vms/list - How to get full list of VMs?

Hello. I faced with limitation of number VMs in API reply. There is option “length” which can be added to request, but max value is 500 (I got it into experiments). We have around 1000 VMs in our environment. Is there solution?

2
Bender555
3 years ago
frsbeckum
frsbeckumTrailblazer
posted in How It works

MONITORING Part 3/4 Metrics and Prometheus and Grafana

Beside the “classical” Monitoring with snmp or agent based version now we are talking about Metrics and the Monitorng of LiveData with the OpenSource Project Prometheus. The Virtualization is made with the powerfull Tool of Grafana.The access to the Data will be made with so called “Node-Exporter” which could we found under GitHUB. One is present for Nutanix! My Testcase in the homelab is build with the following items:NutanixCluster <- Prometheus <- Grafana192.168.10.80 192.168.10.123 192.168.10.100Nutanix CE Ubuntu 18.04 LTS Ubuntu 18.04 LTSPrometheus 2.2.1 Grafana 7.0.4GO 1.10RequirementsCreate NEW User in Nutanix Prism Central with VIEWER Rights2. Installation of Prometheus on Ubuntu 18.04 LTS with running GO!Good Sourcse will be available here or here.3. Installation ofvon Grafana 7.x on a second Ubuntun 18.04 LTSGood Source are found here. Start of Connection to NutanixWe download the GO Binary for the Nutanix Exporter to the Prometheus VM in the folder of GO/BINWe will tes

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J
2 years ago
N
Nutanix Employee
NashmaNutanix Employee
posted in How It works

Quick Start Guide to Nutanix Upgrades

Planning to upgrade the entire Nutanix environment? Here are a few tips and tricks to plan and perform the activity in a smooth manner.   If you are new to Nutanix upgrades, don't hesitate to check this KB out to understand the overview of upgrades at Nutanix.   When confused which component to upgrade first, below listed generic order can be of help.   Step Component Target Reboots On the fly Quick links 1 NCC on Prism Central NCC framework Health service on PC Yes NCC 3.9 2 Prism Central PCVM Prism Central VM No PC 5.17 3 NCC on Cluster NCC framework Health service on all CVMs Yes NCC 3.9 4 AOS CVM All CVMs, one at a time No AOS 5.15 5 LCM Inv

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N
Nutanix Employee
3 years ago
Alona
Nutanix Employee
AlonaNutanix Employee
posted in How It works

Curator scans types and frequency or where is our free space?

When expecting to witness changes in storage utilisation performance, increase in free space in particular, please be aware that the change may not take effect immediately.There are two main types of Curator scans:Scheduled Scans Curator Full Scan — in 6 hrs after the last Full Scan Curator Partial Scan — in 1 hour after the last Partial Scan. Triggered Scans  — as a response to a situation in the cluster where Curator is urgently required.For more information:KB-2101, KB-2924.Posts here in NEXT community curator task type list or a search.Nutanix University video on Curator.Nutanix Bible on monitoring Curator tasks Application Mobility Fabric (AMF)

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Alona
Nutanix Employee
4 years ago
AarthiKam
Nutanix Employee
AarthiKamNutanix Employee
posted in How It works

Deleted a VM by accident? Don’t sweat it. Nutanix Recycle Bin to the rescue!

Introduced in AOS 5.18 is a feature known as the Recycle Bin, which is enabled by default and allows a 24-hour hold on VM files that were deleted and need to be recovered, unless the cluster free storage space reaches critical thresholds.This feature was introduced to simplify the recovery procedure for accidentally deleted storage entities (Virtual Machines, Volume Groups, or individual disks). You can disable and enable the recycle bin or clear its contents.To restore an entity, you MUST contact Nutanix Support.To learn more about the limitations and how to manage the recycle bin, click here.

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AarthiKam
Nutanix Employee
1 year ago
JeremyJ
Nutanix Employee
JeremyJNutanix Employee
posted in How It works

What to do with Prism Element / Prism Central connectivity alerts

You may have encountered an alert about PE-PC Connection Failure, or regarding IDF db to db sync. It’s possible that you had a visible issue with Prism Central’s management and monitoring of clusters, but also possible that you didn’t.   What are these alerts for? How do we know if there’s really a problem? What can we do to fix it? I would like to answer these questions for you.   Prism Element and Prism Central need two-way communication for a number of reasons. Manageability, forecasting, alert visibility, and reporting in Prism Central all depend on periodic syncing of data from PE to PC. Prism Central’s VM and infrastructure management, image creation, DR orchestration, and other enhanced features like Calm require API communication from PC to PE.   PE-PC Connection Failure alerts indicate communication failure. This could be a short-lived issue and even an expected one, like when PC is rebooted during an upgrade, or it could reflect a more prolonged connection loss.    Seeing the

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JeremyJ
Nutanix Employee
3 years ago
P
PatWAdventurer
asked in How It works

Getting UUID's to pass to Ansible

Hi all, I’m very new to Nutanix, and pretty new to Ansible. I’ve been tasked with updating / installing guest tools on any machines that need them, and they’d prefer to do it via Ansible. I’d like to be able to have Ansible use the uri module to grab the UUID of a given VM, or grab a list of UUID’s and the associated VM; however I’m having a lot of trouble parsing this information out in a way that Ansible can actually use it. Does anyone have experience with this? Or at least can tell me that there’s a better way to be doing this? Thanks!

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P
3 years ago
Jubran
Nutanix Employee
JubranNutanix Employee
posted in How It works

Life Cycle Management (LCM)

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

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Jubran
Nutanix Employee
3 years ago
J
JasonStenack
asked in How It works

Get Dell iSM & PTAgent Versions with PowerShell?

I need to get the iSM and PTAgent versions from AHV clusters running on the Dell XC platform using PowerShell cmdlets. Does anyone know if this is possible? I can’t figure it out and do not think it is possible at this point.

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J
3 years ago
Jubran
Nutanix Employee
JubranNutanix Employee
posted in How It works

Aged third-party backup snapshots present

What are the 3rd party snapshots? Third-Party snapshots are generated by a third-party backup tool over API calls to our storage. The Nutanix system does not manage this type of snapshots and will keep the snapshots until it receives a deletion instruction from the third-party tool.   The NCC health check aged_third_party_backup_snapshot_check checks the cluster for dangling third-party backup snapshots that may be present for a protection domain. If a third-party backup snapshot has existed in the system for longer than the specified period, this check will raise an alert. These backup snapshots are snapshots that are generated from 3rd party backups (Veeam, Commvault, Rubrik, HYCU, etc.).    The check passes if third-party backup snapshots are not present in the cluster longer than the configured threshold. The default threshold is 7 days, but this threshold value can be modified. The threshold can range from 1 day to 365 days. For more information, examples and solution check out K

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C
3 years ago
Kiran Surya
Nutanix Employee
Kiran SuryaNutanix Employee
posted in How It works

Intricate NTP commands rarely used but very handy

NTP i.e. Network Time Protocol is a critical component of the Nutanix cluster and is crucial in keeping up hardware, processes, services and applications running with time synchronization across one another.  Inconsistencies in time synchronization could lead to undesirable consequences, not to mention the potential disastrous impact it could have on databases and real time applications through operational failures.  The downside of a poor NTP scenario could be data loss, hard to detect security breaches, even leading to legal liabilities, and loss of credibility.  NTP alerts are generated when you run the NCC Health checks, and are typically shown as below:Detailed information for check_ntp:Node 172.24.0.143:FAIL: The hypervisor is not synchronizing with any NTP server. This might occur if none of the configured NTP servers are available or you are currently experiencing network instability determined by the high offset/high jitter.Node 172.24.0.144:FAIL: NTP leader is not synchronizi

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Kiran Surya
Nutanix Employee
3 years ago
Shaurya
Nutanix Employee
ShauryaNutanix Employee
posted in How It works

Is your VM booting from UEFI or Legacy BIOS mode?

Ever thought a lot about advantages of UEFI over legacy BIOS? No? Who does that anyway?   To start with, UEFI firmware is a successor to legacy BIOS firmware that supports larger hard drives, faster boot time and provides more security features. Creating and starting VMs with UEFI firmware provides the following advantages. Faster boot time Avoid legacy option ROM address constraints Include robust reliability and fault management Use UEFI drivers   AOS 5.11 onwards we have a functionality to see the Boot Configuration from Prism UI by following the steps below:-   Navigate to the VM page -> select your VM. Click on Update. Under boot configuration, you can see if its Legacy BIOS or UEFI.   Want to know more about UEFI Support for VM in Nutanix, click here   Have any questions? Drop a comment and let us start discussing.

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Shaurya
Nutanix Employee
3 years ago
Jubran
Nutanix Employee
JubranNutanix Employee
posted in How It works

CVM shutdown error

Let's say you want to shut down a CVM for maintenance, firmware upgrade or any other reason, and when you run "cvm_shutdown -P" you get this error: "StandardError: Cannot connect to genesis to check node configuration status" If you have an older version of AOS (5.5.x or 5.6.x) then the shutdown script on your CVM might need a small modification, you can contact Nutanix support and an engineer will edit the file on the spot, or you can upgrade the AOS to a newer version which has the fix. If you have a newer version and you want to shutdown a node in the cluster, make sure that you follow the correct shutdown process depending on your hypervisor, here are the instructions for each: AHV, ESXi, hyper-v or Citrix. You can also check out KB-3270 for the cvm_shutdown script.

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A
2 years ago
S
SeanGAdventurer
asked in How It works

W2k19 Image and cloning it for sysprep - patch monthly

I have a W2k19 VM I created as a patched image. Idea is to patch it monthly. Shut it down and clone it. Then sysprep the clone and copy the disk to the Image Service. Then I can create VM’s off of it. I will repeat the colne after patching the ~master image monthly in order to keep a patched disk ready to spin up VM’s from. We are using AHV, version 5.10. Mt question is the “CLONE” a full, independant copy of the VM ? TIA -S

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E
3 years ago
N
nfrederickxVoyager
asked in How It works

List current snapshots via a script

Hi, I`m very new to Nutanix and have a question. Does anyone know if there is a way to list all current snapshots via a script? I`d like to find out if there are any lingering snapshots that should be removed. Thanks for any advice you might have.

2
andymlloyd
4 years ago
D
DPTPBWayfarer
posted in How It works

Unofficial DPTPB Dynamic Nutanix Visio Shapes

Hello All, Sami here, the 3rd party developer responsible for the current official Nutanix Visio stencils. I’ve been playing with few ideas how to make them better and came up with Dynamic Nutanix Visio stencils.    Why DPTPB Dynamic Nutanix Visio shapes?   Let's be frank: Documenting can be boring, all the exciting and fun stuff has been done and now you have to document what you've done or plan to do. The harder the tools used for documenting are to use, the less likely you are to produce quality documentation. My aim with the Nutanix Dynamic Visio shapes is to have ability to produce more detailed and accurate drawings of Nutanix environments in less time. This is accomplished by using intent based workflow and to have built-in automation to populate the drawing with desired elements based on your intent.   What are DPTPB Dynamic Nutanix Front and Rear View Shapes?   DTPPB Nutanix Dynamic Front & Rear View Shapes are Nutanix NX appliance product images / shapes in Microsoft Visi

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D
3 years ago
I
InfomilAdventurer
asked in How It works

Storage summary

Hi Nutanix Community, We often wonder what is the real storage capacity available on a Nutanix cluster. We have a three node cluster, in RF2. In Prism Element main page, under "Storage Summary", I see : 20.87TiB free (logical) of 22.37 TiB [img]data:image/png;base64,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Alona
Nutanix Employee
2 years ago
M
micmaher001Adventurer
asked in How It works

REST API to Convert IDE Disks to SCSI

Hi Folks,   I have a few machines I would like to convert from IDE to SCSI.   I understand this can be done with acli. The procedure is to clone the ide disk and replace it for the VM.   nutanix@cvm$ acli vm.disk_create <vm_name> clone_from_vmdisk=<vmdisk_UUID> bus=scsi   However, I’d like to do this in PowerShell given I’ve already started developing down that track. I have PowerShell cmdlets to snapshot and shutdown the VM which are recommended steps before performing this task.   I didn’t see a cmdlet to perform the clone and replacement, so I turned to the REST API. I am fairly new to Nutanix to I wanted to get some feedback on whether this is the right approach or at least that its not going to break anything other than my test VM. $uri = "https://$ntxCluster/api/nutanix/v2.0/vms/$($vm.vmid)/disks/attach"$body = '{"uuid":"abcdefg-08h3-4i44-95j0-kl44m82no758","vm_disks":[{"vm_disk_clone":{"disk_address":{"device_bus":"SCSI","device_index":123}}}]}'$headers=@{}$headers.A

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M
3 years ago
H
Nutanix Employee
Haritha AndalNutanix Employee
posted in How It works

Cluster management-useful commands

Although Prism is user friendly, it will be nice to know some commands that are useful for cluster management.   Cluster status The cluster status or “cs | grep -v UP” command gives the status(up or down ) of all the CVMs and their services. Running this command is helpful when there are alerts in the prism about services being down on certain CVMs.   Metadata ring The command “nodetool -h0 ring” shows if all the CVMs are a part of the metadata ring. Being in a metadata ring is essential for the CVM to be an active part of the cluster and handle its designated responsibilities. It is essential to run this command after every hardware replacement to make sure the node is back sharing responsibilities of the cluster.  Health check Most of the problems in the cluster are easily diagnosed by the health check command “ncc health_checks run_all” At the end of every WARN/INFO/ERR/FAIL plug in we see a KB to further troubleshoot the issue. This check is essential to make sure if the cluster he

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H
Nutanix Employee
2 years ago
AarthiKam
Nutanix Employee
AarthiKamNutanix Employee
posted in How It works

Understanding Fault Domains and Rack Awareness

What is Fault Tolerance (FT)?FT is how the system ensures that both user VM data and cluster infrastructure data is protected from failure. What are Fault Domains?Failure scenarios can be thought of in terms of fault domains.  There are four fault domains in a Nutanix cluster:Disk Node Block RackThis article focusses on Rack Awareness. Rack failure can occur in the following situations:All power supplies fail within a rack Top-of-rack (TOR) switch fails Network partition; where one of the racks becomes inaccessible from other racksWhen rack fault tolerance is enabled, the cluster has rack awareness and the guest VMs can continue to run with failure of one rack (RF2) or two racks (RF3). The redundant copies of guest VM data and metadata exist on other racks when one rack fails.Note – Rack fault tolerance has to be configured manually. Requirements and configuration of Rack Fault Tolerance can be found here.To learn more about Rack Fault tolerance on Nutanix Clusters click here.Now, Rack

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AarthiKam
Nutanix Employee
3 years ago
D
dhiru2889Voyager
asked in How It works

Powershell CMdlets script

Hello Team, Do we have script which we can run to get the cluster details from Prism Central. Like Total CPU and usage CPU ,Total Memory and usage memory and same for storage, and also want to schedule that report in email. Please help me with script to get the details

5
D
3 years ago
M
Nutanix Employee
MutahirNutanix Employee
posted in How It works

AHV - Shutting down the cluster​ - Maintenance or Re-location

Nutanix offers a distributed data and control plane, so it’s fairly easy to start, stop and graceful shutdown a cluster. Even, in abnormal / dirty shutdowns, Nutanix cluster has powerful self-healing capabilities - as all data & meta-data is distributed across the cluster which significantly reduces the chances for data corruption or data-loss. However, as a Nutanix Cluster hosts business critical data and applications, it is important to ensure all services stop in a graceful manner and all data + meta-data is consistent. This allows the cluster to be restarted in a healthy - usable state later.There can be several reasons to gracefully shutdown a running Nutanix AHV & AOS Cluster. When shutting down a Nutanix Cluster, following order needs to be followed:User VMs Shutdown AOS Shutdown - Data services / Cluster components CVM Shutdown Hypervisor ShutdownIn this post, we will focus on the shutdown process for a Nutanix Cluster running with AHV (Acropolis Hypervisor).Points to C

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M
Nutanix Employee
4 years ago

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