Hardware Compatibiltiy for Nutanix Foundation

Hi!

Some notes:

• The minimum supported capacity for SATA/SAS SSDs is 960GB.
• The maximum supported capacity for SATA SSDs is 3.84TB.
• The 960GB RI drives cannot be used as CVM boot drives and can only be used as data drives.
• The maximum supported capacity for HDDs is 22TB.

Now, for Hybrid nodes, use a rate of 1:2 SSD:HDD. i.e. 4 SSD/8 HDD os 6 SSD/12 HDD, 8 SSD/16HDD (or more in this case).

4, 6, or 8 x SATA/SAS SSDs, supported drives:

• Hynix SE5031, SE5130, SE5110
• Intel S4520, S4610, S4620
• Kioxia PM5-R, PM5-V, PM6, PM7, RM6
• Micron 5200 Max, 5200 Pro, 5300 Max, 5300 Pro, 5400, 5400 Max, 5400 Pro
• Samsung PM883, PM1633a, PM1635a, PM1643, PM1643a, PM1645, PM1645a, PM1653, PM1655, SM863, SM865, SM865a, SM883
• Seagate Cooper, Lange BP
• Toshiba KPM5XxUG, PX04SHB080, PX05SMB, PX05SVB, RM5
• Western Digital SS530, SS540, SSD1600MR

8, 12, 16, or 20 x SAS HDDs

• Any SAS HDDs supported on PowerEdge Servers

Cheers!

Please can yo explain a bit more why you need such a beast just to install foundation? Foundation is not that resource hungry and you can also install it in a virtual machine? 

Or do you mean Nutanix Community Edition? 

Foundation is a piece of software (really cool software) to install the official/commercial version Nutanix HCI stack. If you want to install a Nutanix cluster on not supported hardware for learning and your lab then you need to install Nutanix Community Edition. This cannot be done via Foundation. 

So lets assume you mean CE ;) Here you can find the hardware requirements: https://portal.nutanix.com/page/documents/details?targetId=Nutanix-Community-Edition-Getting-Started-v2_1:top-sysreqs-ce-r.html

to summarize your hardware:

AMD Epic (Nice) - will work

32GB Ram - This is the bare minimum, you can install CE though bu Prism Central will not work. Try to get more RAM in it. But you can always do this later. 

1x 800GB SSD - This will be your CVM drive - Perfect. 

2x 1.2TB HDD - These will be your DATA drivers - Perfect. 

Your drives should all be attached without the RAID controller in between, is this possible? If not then try to set the RAID controller in HBA/IT mode. This will passtrough the disks without doing some fancy hardware RAID thingies ;) 

Now you are just missing 1 thing. Your AHV boot drive. So try to get a smaller disk then 800GB to add to the machine. This will boot used for AHV boot. (the hypervisor boot disk) your server will boot from this disk. Can be a USB drive though. But this adds some extra complexity during upgrades, but it is possible. 

Thank you for your details respone please find my below comments.

Please can yo explain a bit more why you need such a beast just to install foundation? - I just want to deploy nutanix by using foundation VM. VM is already created in Virtual Box and is read to deploy foundation.

Foundation is not that resource hungry and you can also install it in a virtual machine? - I just want to deploy Nutanix using foundation VM.

Foundation is a piece of software (really cool software) to install the official/commercial version Nutanix HCI stack. If you want to install a Nutanix cluster on not supported hardware for learning and your lab then you need to install Nutanix Community Edition. This cannot be done via Foundation. - It is commercial as we have purchased license for nutanix. So we dont have any option to go with Community Edition of Nutanix.

All the hardware details mentioned by me is related to production edition not community edition.

I just want to know whether all the things are fine for Nutanix Foundation, not Community Edition. Shall I consider your comments are okay for Nutanix Foundation Deployment.

AMD Epic (Nice) - will work 

32GB Ram - This is the bare minimum, you can install CE though bu Prism Central will not work. Try to get more RAM in it. But you can always do this later. 

1x 800GB SSD - This will be your CVM drive - Perfect. 

2x 1.2TB HDD - These will be your DATA drivers - Perfect. 

Your drives should all be attached without the RAID controller in between, is this possible? If not then try to set the RAID controller in HBA/IT mode. This will passtrough the disks without doing some fancy hardware RAID thingies ;) 

Now you are just missing 1 thing. Your AHV boot drive. So try to get a smaller disk then 800GB to add to the machine. This will boot used for AHV boot. (the hypervisor boot disk) your server will boot from this disk. Can be a USB drive though. But this adds some extra complexity during upgrades, but it is possible. 

Ahh got it. Normal Nutanix nodes (ordered via a Nutanix partner who have access to Nutanix sizer) are always complete and correct specs. 

A Dell Nutanix node has 2x drives in the back (boss) in RAID 1 voor AHV boot. A minimum of 2x SSD in the front and rest can be SSD or HDD. But all drives need to be on the Nutanix HCL and you also need to keep the hybrid mode sizing correct (ssd/hdd percentage). 

Then a Dell node has an identity. If the identity is wrong you cannot run foundation against it. It will through in an error. You cannot change the identity and Dell needs to do this. 

I really, really encourage you to contact you Nutanix sales rep, or the team where you have bought the dell node, or the team where you have purchased the Nutanix licenses from to help with the node. Again a Nutanix node is HCL specific and you cannot just buy something and add the correct hardware. 

Actually we have an hardware which was compatible with vmware, just we moved from VMWare to nutanix and we are trying to make the model compatible with Nutanix. Any other information you can provide.