Intelligent Operations

How may I find a VMs UUID in Prism Central?  I am using PC 5.16.1.2 Thanks in advance, GeoB

Hi, How can I change the date format on Prism & CLI  it's currently mm/dd/yyyy and i'd like to make it dd/mm/yyyy Thanks

3 node cluster running vCenter / ESXi6.7 Also running Files. Should the Files VM on the particular host to be patched be shut down or moved? I know the Controller VM should just be shut down. Also, I think I’ve seen mention that I could load the ESXi patches somewhere/somehow into Prism(Element, Starter, 5.10.9) and Prism would manage the moves and shutdown? Thanks  

I have a client that is running Version euphrates-5.5.9.5-stable LTS - Starter License They have cleaned up some disk space inside of a windows guest vm.  They would like to reclaim that storage space from the virtual disk. Shrink it from a 3Tb to a 2Tb virtual disk.  Is there a way to do this? Thanks

One of my CVMs is throwing this alert: CVM threshold of 98 Percent Disk IO exceeded I can’t find anything published on this alert anywhere…  would like some assistance understanding this and how to mitigate it..   Ran a complete NCC check and it came back clean, just 1 warning.      

This article describes how to rename the CVM entity in Prism within the AHV environment. This does not change the hostname of the CVM displayed in a console/SSH session as the hostname is a value configured within the CMV OS and is independent of the Controller VM name entity recorded in the Prism entity DB (Insights Data Fabric). It is the same name as in CVM’s XML definition on the AHV host. It can be checked by listing VMs on the host. The name displayed is the name that is shown in the Prism Wen console. Starting from AOS 5.10.10, 5.15 and 5.16, change_cvm_display_name script is available on CVM that can be used to change the display name.   Following is the overview of the rename procedure: Complete the pre-checks:  Name must start with NTNX- and end with -CVM. Only letters, numbers and "-" are supported in the name. CVM should be able to receive a shutdown token. Once CVM has shutdown token it will be turned off.  The script does not put CVM/host into maintenance mode, so

Nutanix guest tools (NGT) is a software bundle that you can install in a guest virtual machine (Microsoft Windows or Linux) to enable the advanced functionality provided by Nutanix.   To know more about NGT,its limitation and the requirements You can give the following document a read NGT Guide    There are situation where NGT communication between the User VM and the Controller VM would be at fault  Or You might face issues while installing/ upgrading NGT    Do we have a comprehensive troubleshooting guide which might help in isolating the issue and resolving the same?   The following knowledgebase article will help you to troubleshoot NGT issues face in the field    Nutanix Guest Tools Troubleshooting Guide

There might be a situation  after a Prism Central upgrade you'll notice the following alert:   Critical : IDF data from cluster {cluster_name} (uuid = 0005xxxxc-59xx-xx6x-0000-0000000x7xxx)is not up-to-date.    There might also be a connectivity issue between Prism Central and Prism Element.    You will also notice that your cluster is disconnected from Prism Central and the PE.    The following Knowledgebase article can help you to validate and isolate the issue.     Prism Element not reachable from Prism Central | IDF data not up to date after Prism Central upgrade  

For most of my vm’s that are in protection domains, the snapshot option is grayed out in Prism Centeral.  Hovering over the option I get a popup with message “One or more of selected VMs is protected via legacy DR feature.  Snapshots for these VMs can be taken from respective PE clusters only.”  This option is not grayed out for vms that are not in protection domains.  Why is that?  What are legacy DR features?

Let's say you encounter a situation where you want to unregister a cluster from Prism Central.  Unregistering a cluster through the Prism GUI is no longer available. This option was removed to reduce the risk of accidentally unregistering a cluster.   There could be different scenarios in which a cluster needs to be unregistered from a Prism Central like    Prism Central functionality is being evaluated but you do not plan to use the functionality. You manage your cluster or clusters using a different Prism Central instance. The Prism Central that your cluster was previously registered to has been destroyed or decommissioned. You might need to reconfigure the IP addresses of the Prism Central VMs in a PC cluster.   There could be multiple queries regarding cluster cleanup and unregistration workflow :     What happens if the unregistration workflow is not followed? What happens if the workflow is executed partially? What happens when you unregister and re-register without runn

Since managing the infrastrucute is a complicated process, our customers tend to customize the AHV hosts names for identification and a general order in the cluster. Let’s say there is a situation where you want to change the hostname of your AHV host from default to something local to your organization and demands.    Do we have a process or a documentation guide to help you with the task?     The following knowledge base article How to rename AHV hosts will help you.     The solution is also documented in our AHV Administration Guide    AHV Admin guide: Changing the Acropolis Host Name

Did you know that Prism Central allows you to create your own custom alert policy? Not only this, but you can modify existing alert policies too.   Here is an overview of the steps involved in creating custom alert policy:-   Open the Alert Policies page. Switch to User Created tab → ‘New alert policy’. ‘Create an alert policy’ tab will open and you can select the details of the alert. For example, Description, Entity, Impact, etc. Define the behavior and threshold for the alert Save the changes when you are done.   To take a detailed and pictorial look at the above-mentioned steps, take a look at: https://portal.nutanix.com/page/documents/details/?targetId=Prism-Central-Guide-Prism-v5_16:mul-alerts-creating-user-created-policies-pc-t.html   To see how to modify an existing alert policy, take a look at https://next.nutanix.com/discussion-forum-14/how-to-modify-system-alert-policies-prism-central-37375#post50230   Prism Central guide:  https://portal.nutanix.com/page/documents

Hi, I'd like to set configuration authentication to Active Directory. Do you know "Service Account User" 's  authority ? Should the user  belong to "Domain Admins"?   I don’t know “special user account”, what’s means? https://portal.nutanix.com/page/documents/details/?targetId=Web-Console-Guide-Prism-v55:wc-security-authentication-wc-t.html#task_84b_24f_85   Thank you for your care.  

If your Nutanix infrastructure resides in an environment that includes an HTTP proxy, you’ll need to understand the HTTP proxy and proxy whitelist configurations in Prism. This is especially important if your cluster is registered to Prism Central. If the proxy setting and proxy whitelist are configured incorrectly, communication between PE and PC could be unreliable or entirely unusable. A note of clarification: in this post we discuss network communication inside and outside an environment. To prevent any confusion, the “environment” refers to the internal network, either physical local LAN, VLAN, or VPN, which is separated from other systems and the internet by a firewall and proxy. Anything within the environment is “local” and anything past the firewall is “external”. So, why does this matter? If your environment has an HTTP proxy there is probably also a firewall rule blocking any HTTP(S) traffic that is not going through the proxy. Without proxy configuration in this kind of env

Did you know that you can modify alerts in Prism Central? For example, you can modify an alert rather than using the defaults provided by Nutanix, say, change the threshold for data disk space usage or have some alerts marked as auto resolved, etc.   Here is an overview of the steps involved:   Open the alert policy page. Search for the alert that you wish to modify and click on the pencil icon to edit. Change the global settings for the alert as per your requirement. You can also choose a cluster that you want to exclude from the policy in the exception section. Save the changes when you are done.   To take a detailed and pictorial look at the above mentioned steps, take a look at: https://portal.nutanix.com/page/documents/details/?targetId=Prism-Central-Guide-Prism-v5_16:mul-alert-policies-customize-system-pc-t.html   Prism central guide:  https://portal.nutanix.com/page/documents/details/?targetId=Prism-Central-Guide-Prism-v55:Prism-Central-Guide-Prism-v55

Dear SME’s, How do i migrate my Nutanix AHV cluster to a different domain? Here is the core future’s i am having now, it should be migrated. Prism Element  Acropolis File Server (We have enabled AFS replica between Primary and Secondar site) Async Protection Domain from Primary to Secondary ( For VM’s and AFS) Can you please someone help me to provide the best practice of doing these changes without or less production outage? Advance thanks. Thanks Thiruppathiraj  

So before we go ahead and take a look at the steps, let’s have a short introduction about prism central. Prism central can be used to monitor and manage clusters registered to it through a single web console. This is a centralized multi-cluster management tool that runs as a single VM or a cluster of VMs (scaled out Prism Central deployment). It provides features like single sign-on for multiple clusters, customizable dashboards, activity manager, etc.   If you do not have a prism central instance deployed, take a look at deployment instructions: https://support-portal.nutanix.com/page/documents/details/?targetId=Acropolis-Upgrade-Guide-v5_16:upg-pc-install-cluster-c.html   Once you have the PC VM deployed, here is how to register your cluster to it:   Open the prism web console for your cluster. On the Home dashboard, click Register or create new from the Prism Central widget. If you have a PC VM instance deployed, click on connect. If not, there will be another option to deploy

What are the advantages to having UEFI set on a VM?  UEFI firmware is a successor to legacy BIOS firmware that supports larger hard drives, faster boot time and provides more security features.  Creation and starting VMs with UEFI firmware provide the following advantages. Boot faster Avoid legacy option ROM address constraints Include robust reliability and fault management Use UEFI drivers   Are there disadvantages of enabling UEFI on a VM? Not per se however not all guest operating systems are compatible. For AHV Please always check compatibility matrix AHV Administration Guide: Compatibility Matrix for UEFI Supported VMs. Also keep in mind that cluster conversion and cross-cluster migrations might be affected by enabled UEFI: Ensure that you do not have VMs with UEFI boot firmware enabled when converting from ESXi to AHV. See Prism Web Console Guide v.5.16: In-Place Hypervisor Conversion. VMs with UEFI boot configuration do not boot after migration when migrating bet

Out of the box, Prism Element (PE) and Prism Central (PC) deploy with one local user configured, called ‘admin’. For initial setup this is useful but for the sake of security and auditing, it is strongly recommended to configure and use other accounts. For reference, User Management is covered in the Nutanix Security Guide. One option is to create individual local accounts in Prism. This is done from Settings – Local User Management. Whether on PE or PC (up to the current latest major release AOS 5.16), the role options for local users are: User Admin - allows the user to view information, perform any administrative task, and create or modify user accounts. Cluster Admin - allows the user to view information and perform any administrative task, but does not allow control of user accounts. Viewer – allows the user to view information only. The UI shows checkbox options for cluster admin and user admin. If user admin is checked, cluster admin is automatically checked also. If neither is

Managing infrastructure is a tough and complex task, especially when dealing with cluster-wide upgrades. Nutanix provides features such as Life Cycle Manager that can turn firmware and hypervisor upgrades into a 1-click process, making them slightly less complex.  Life Cycle Manager pulls the latest upgrade packages from the official pre-configured URL while performing inventory and then proceeds with the upgrade.    What if the cluster is isolated from the Web?   There is an option to set up a local webserver with the LCM offline bundle packages and use the server to perform inventory and complete the upgrade.      For detailed information on how to use LCM without web access, refer to the Life Cycle Manager Guide.   For some examples of setting up a Web server, you can consult the following document as a reference guide  KB-5901 Using Life Cycle Manager (LCM) Without Web Access   To know more about upgrades, try below: Nutanix upgrades FAQ: AOS, LCM, NCC, Hypervisors, Files .NEXT BMC

Is there any way to test API with basic authentication on the Test Drive? As I can't download the Prism Central Bits, so testing APIs just using instance ID that has been provided in demo is not enough. Please tell if there is some way to download Prism bits and test. or any other way.

The backbone of a hyper-converged infrastructure is good network connectivity in the solution. Troubleshooting networking issues can be daunting. To help you with the process we put together an article describing the most common failure scenarios together with remediation steps as well as general troubleshooting techniques and sequence. The article also answers some of the most common questions: What are the possible causes of NIC errors? How do I determine if a Nutanix node is experiencing NIC errors? Should I be concerned that my NIC port shows any NIC errors? How does the packet error handling between cut-through and traditional store-and-forward switches differ? Where to look for errors? How does an error manifest itself? Normally if there is a fault with a cable, an SFP module, a switch port or the NIC hardware we notice some errors in the packets received or transmitted can be observed in the interface stats.   KB-1381 NCC Health Check: host_nic_error_check Want to know more abou

Nutanix gives you a feature to send alert emails periodically to ease administrator work and keep you always updated about your cluster health. Alert emails are used to warn users of errors in their Nutanix system.   Q. How to configure alert emails?    The following Prism Web Console guide lists the steps to configure alert emails  Prism Web Console Guide 5.16   Q. What will happen if the alert emails are not set up correctly?    It may lead to users being unaware of critical errors that should be addressed. In addition, Nutanix Autosupport (ASUP) relies on alert emails from customer systems to pro-actively warn of errors and depending on the alert will generate a support case so we can quickly bring attention and resolution to critical issues.   Is there a way to send a new mail to test my configuration?  How to monitor logs relevant to the alert email  How can I check my firewall and port configuration?  What are the basic troubleshooting steps to perform in scenarios of

Should you ever have a need to extract affinity rules settings via command line there are aCLI commands to achieve the task.   Additionally, in AOS releases older than 5.10.8, 5.11.2 when VM affinity is removed via Prism task may complete successfully, but affinity can still remain set.   This may happen when the following conditions are met: AOS release older than 5.10.8, 5.11.2. Action is initiated from Prism. VM affinity is removed from all nodes. For the steps and commands please refer to KB-7198 AHV | VM Host affinity is not removed when task initiated from Prism   More on affinity policies:Prism Central Guide: Affinity Policies for AHV Nutanix University: Tech TopX: VAAI on Nutanix

When considering providing certain permissions to a user or a group the following may come handy. Nutanix user accounts can be created or updated as needed using the Prism web console. The accounts can be local or pulled from Active Directory or LDAP servers.  On top of that Prism Central provides a third authentication method – SAML authentication. Users can authenticate through a qualified identity provider when SAML support is enabled for Prism Central. The Security Assertion Markup Language (SAML) is an open standard for exchanging authentication and authorization data between two parties, ADFS as the identity provider (IDP) and Prism Central as the service provider. Once the account has been created it must be assigned a role. There are three options in Prism Element: User Administrator – allows the user to view information, perform any administrative task, and create or modify user accounts.  Cluster Administrator – allows the user to view information and perform any administr