Intelligent Operations

Nutanix recommends that you have a single container for simple VM management, but due to certain reasons if you have configured multiple storage containers and VMs are running on them respectively. Let's say now you need to move a VM from one storage container to another in an AHV cluster.   Is there a method to accomplish the same?Of course Please go through the Knowledgebase article to know the steps requires to move VMs between containers within an AHV cluster.KB-2663     Want to know about different migration Scenarios in an NX environment? Go through the following KB 1062

​Just like with many other services NTP is something you do not think about until it breaks. Then all these strange things start creeping into your environment.   Symptoms: Users are not able to log in to the Prism web console using LDAP or other directory integrated services. Cluster services do not start. Cluster does not function correctly due to major time-skew post outage or maintenance. Log collection is inaccurate. Health checks that rely on accurate time frames and event correlation return inaccurate results. Incorrect and skewed graphs in Prism. User VMs start on hypervisor hosts with inaccurate RTC (real-time clocks) causing guest OS time skew. Third-party software products like Veeam or CommVault have trouble interacting with the cluster. Snapshots expire too early or too late when the time between a cluster and a remote site is out of sync. To resolve any doubts please run NCC check_ntp - status other than PASS indicates that troubleshooting is needed.   Troubleshooting NTP

Hi Guys, I have a nutanix block with four nodes. I mean four node cluster.  Supermicro NX30-60 I have a query about fault tolerance. Currently it is set as RF-2 Each node  has 6 disks. 4 hdd and 2 SSD 4*800 gb hdd 2* 200 gb sad OS is AHV.  1) Assume, if one host completely fails, then the vm will be restarted on other host and it will continue to run without any issues.  2) If one disk fails(either HDD or SSD or both at the same time)from first AHV, then there will be no impact.  3) If two disk fails from two hosts(1st  AHV and 2nd AHV) at the same time(assume one HDD fails on both the nodes), then what will be the impact for all the running vms in the cluster?  4) If two disk fails from two hosts(1st  AHV and 2nd AHV) in different time I. E 30 mins gap(assume one HDD failed in 6AM in first node and another HDD failed at 6.30 AM in second node), then what will be the impact for all the running vms in the cluster?    Could someone please advise?    Thank you,  Manivel RR        

Whenever you find LCM inventory operation on your cluster displaying only SATADOM firmware ugrades available while you now for a fact that newer firmware versions for other components are available it is not a bug that you have encountered! Firmware upgrades for 3IE3 satadoms are being prioritized in LCM. To reduce the likelihood that customers are impacted by issues with S160130N and S560301N firmware on 3IE3 model SATADOMs, Nutanix has updated Lifecycle Manager (LCM) in such a way that it will only show Satadom (Host Boot Device) upgrades available. Customers are being advised to use LCM to upgrade satadom disk on module firmware in their cluster to the version S670330N during their next available maintenance window. Once all satadoms are upgraded, later Inventory operations with LCM will once again show available updates for any other types of firmware (BMC, BIOS, SATA, etc.) on the cluster that are not already on the latest versions. Since there are no AC power cycles involved in u

Uploaded the image but can’t see it? Why? Prism Central 5.5 and above includes a global image service that allows you to add (upload) images through Prism Central by using the v3 API. However, the Prism Central administrator (admin) interface still uses the v2 API. As a result, after you upload an image when you are logged in as admin, you might not see the image in the list of available images when you are creating a VM. This issue occurs if the global image service has not yet copied the image to the cluster on which the admin is trying to create the VM.   What to do? Add the image using the URL option instead of Image File. The source can be a standard HTTP(S) URL, or for NFS, use <hostname or FQDN>://folder/subfolder/filename. When uploading images with the URL option, each cluster will immediately attempt to fetch the image from the source. When the Create Image task displays as completed, the image should be available on all clusters. Use the v3 API or nuclei to provide

We have multiple Clusters registered in our Prism Central, how can we fetch a report having clusters basic details through PC or command line?

Hello Community, I'm involved in a PreSales action. The customer asks for information regarding deletion of user data from Audit Logs. Is it possible to delete user information from audit logs? Or does the audit log automatically delete entries older than XX months? How long are events stored in audit log? Maybe this is based on a parameter? Thanks for any feedback! Jan-Oliver Ohloff

So I had to replace my prism central with a new one, unfortunately it had already taken ownership of the images. With my new prism central at I can not delete any of the old images and I get this error. Operation kImageDelete not allowed, catalog item is owned by cluster 4452164c-24b6-479d-b16b-a8635fbe2741, which I believe is my old prism central UUID. I can't delete them from from the clusters locally because they are hooked to prims central. This is pretty frustrating as I am trying to use PC as my main entry point for managing and deploying vm.

Continuing on NGT series this post is about troubleshooting. Nutanix strongly believes power of the community and joint effort. You are not alone. We’re here to help. Nutanix engineers put together troubleshooting steps for some of the potentiall or more common scenarios out there for you: KB-3741 Nutanix Guest Tools Troubleshooting Guide: SSR login is successful but you receive "Error executing command: System identifier mismatch" after login. Guest Agent Service is not reachable. NGT is failing installation on a user VM/server where a Python environment already exists. NGT is failing in-place upgrade or uninstall on a user VM/server with "notify_cvm_of_uninstallation". NGT installation on Windows server 2008 R2 SP1 VM gives a warning "Hot-fix 2921916 is not installed on your system". NGT management from Prism Central fails with "NGT can only be upgraded on x/y VMs which have the latest version of NGT". NGT installation fails with "The system cannot open the file" error. NGT installat

You can create a VM template from a VM’s disk. While the process is somewhat tricky the goal is achievable. Acropolis Image create, update, delete (CUD) behavior has changed in AOS / Prism Central 5.5. Image API CUD behavior depends on whether a cluster (also known as Prism Element) is registered to Prism Central. If the Prism Element (PE) cluster is newly created and has never been registered with a Prism Central instance (that is, never managed by Prism Central), all image CUD operations will be allowed on the PE cluster. If the PE cluster is registered with a Prism Central instance (that is, managed by Prism Central), CUD operations will be blocked on the PE cluster. Ownership of images is migrated from PE to Prism Central. CUD operations must be performed through Prism Central. When CUD operations are blocked on Prism Element, they cannot be performed through the version 0.8 API, version 2.0 API, Prism Element web console, or acli. These CUD operations are replaced by the Prism Cen

Lets start small! In this topic I will share how you can know your ESXi version on the cluster.  I understand that you want a quick way to verify ESX version on Prism, in Prism, although we do show the Hypervisor the cluster is running on, but currently the Prism UI does not show the hypervisor version. Perhaps a command may fit better your purpose. For this you can issue the following command from any CVM. nutanix@cvm $ hostssh "esxcli system version get" The above, will query each node to find out the version of ESXi it is running. Alternatively you could also use commands like- nutanix@cvm $ hostssh vmware -v (command specific to ESXi hypervisor) nutanix@cvm $ hostssh uname -a (hypervisor agnostic command)  

Hi All, Assume one cluster, all the same model. Can anyone confirm whether downloading the updates from the software upgrades option in prism for a cluster downloads the updates individually for each node? Or does it download it once and distributes the updates among the nodes. Our networking guy reckons he’s seeing the updates get downloaded 4x times for our 4 node cluster. I couldn’t find any documentation to confirm so I thought I’d ask the community. Cheers guys…

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. Nutanix Guest Tools enables the VM to CVM communication and sometimes we might encounter the NGT Services to be falling with the signature guiding towards SSL error.   So how do I identify if I’m facing a similar issue and resolve it? You can refer to the KB-3868 for guidance regarding which log file to check and which error trace is matching the issue. After confirming that you’re encountering the same issue, you can proceed with the solution mentioned in the knowledge base article. Want to know more about NGT and it’s configuration? Give the following document a coffee readNGT Guide Prism  

Security is the backbone of every infrastructure and Nutanix Prism gives you an option to upload an SSL certificate to establish secure communication with the cluster. Every AOS includes a self-signed SSL certificate by default to enable secure communication with a cluster.How  I create my own-self signed certificates? The following Knowledge Base article will guide you with the process of generating your own self-signed certificates.KB- 1537 How can I upload or replace custom or self-signed certificates to establish secure communication? The following documentation will guide you with the process to upload the certificates using Prism GUI Prism Certificate Management 

Handling a large infrastructure is tough and Prism Central is a tool to manage a large number of clusters with ease. Let’s say you’re handling 10 clusters and want to have an image in all 10 clusters to be readily available.Do we need to manually add images to each and every cluster? Prism Central 5.5 and above includes a global image service that allows you to add (upload) images through Prism Central by using the v3 API.   Need info on how to browse and add images to Prism Central?  Give the following documentation guide a read. Prism Central Images I uploaded an image using Prism Central but can’t view it? There might be a situation in which you have created an image but you might not see the image in the list of available images when you are creating a VM. Try going through the following knowledge base articleKB-4892 Want to know more about Prism Central? Try giving the official documentation a coffee readPrism Central 

We normally keep a handful of template VM’s with different type of OS that are updated and “ready to go” and use these for global automation when deploying new machines. I would like a way to deploy these templates as qcow2 images globally using the Prism Central image management. After a template VM are updated, I would like to automate them beeing converted to qcow2 images (already got this working with “qemu-img convert” command) and then import the qcow2 image to the Image repository in Prism Central to be distributed to all sites. The last step I have not managed to figure out how to do. Obviously I need some kind of API or CLI to automate this but all I find is how to do this using the GUI in PC. Did I miss something? 

Registered your Prism Element to a Prism Central, but now want to unregister the PE from the Prism Central and confused regarding the steps! Why would anyone like to unregister a cluster?The following are the reasons when you might want to unregister a cluster from prism central and perform a clean-up. 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.Unregistering a cluster through Prism GUI is no longer available and now you’ll be wondering the “WHY SO??”Well we all make mistakes and accidentally unregistering a cluster can be a big risk, so we need to mitigate the riskSo what’s the process to unregister a cluster? Before answering the question, let’s take note of one pointAfter the force cleanup process mentioned in the below mentioned KB is followed, all PC-PE re

I am looking to monitor performance of my Volume Groups during third party backups. I am using a 3rd party vendor and when the backup starts, Volume Groups are created for the snapshotted disks. I want to create a metric/entity chart but want to see if there is a way to create one for ALL Volume Groups so when a new one is created, it is included into the chart. Currently I can only see creating it while one exists but I want to monitor it from start to finish periodically.

Every infrastructure admin knows the importance of the correct time zone to be configured in architecture otherwise, administration jobs and log analysis between different components is nothing but a nightmare to go through.So do we have an option to change the time zone of the CVM in a Nutanix cluster?Yes, we do!Give the following KB a read to know the procedure to change the time-zone of the CVMKB-1050Nutanix Cluster Check(NCC) also have a check which confirms whether the CVMs in a Prism Element are in the time-zoneFor more information on the checkKB-2044Confused regarding the procedure or have further queries?Drop a comment and let’s start a conversation.

Hello, I've been looking relatively hard for a comprised list of STS and LTS release dates and a indexed link to the readme's for those releases and perhaps the CVE's addressed in those patches. Seems like it would be easy to find but I'm struggling.

LifeCycle Manager (LCM) is the 1-click upgrade process for firmware and software on Nutanix clusters. This feature can be accessed through the Prism UI. LCM Provides Two Operations:     1. Inventory: Detects what can be managed on a cluster.      2. Update: Performs an update to a certain version.So what happens before an update?LCM runs a set of pre-defined checks, pre-checks to confirm and validate your cluster health and sanity. If any checks fail, it shows you as an error and advises you to fix the issue before going ahead with the upgrade.So what are those pre-checks?Do we have a list and recommendation if we encountered a pre-check failure before the upgrade or if we want to the know the list of complete pre-checks to proactively make our cluster ready for an upgrade? Of course, we have a list of pre-checks and the recommended KBs to help you resolve the issue and go ahead with the upgrade smoothly and efficiently.Try going through the following KB to get an idea about the pre-ch

Sometimes it is necessary to delete and re-deploy Prism Central (PC) VM. Instances may include errors that occurred during PC deployment or when PC version deployed is outside of Software Product Interoperability matrix. Starting with version 5.5, Prism Central becomes the primary management plane and houses features like SSP, Calm, RBAC, Microsegmentation, etc. Therefore it is important to follow the recommended process when deleting PC VM: Identify the cluster on which the Prism Central VM that you wish to delete has been deployed. Copy the Prism Central VM name from this cluster. Unregister and clean up all clusters registered to Prism Central. Check if all clusters have been unregistered from Prism Central by executing the following command from any CVM in each cluster. Delete the Prism Central VM. Check if the Prism Central VM has been deleted by logging into the cluster's Prism Element UI and browsing the VM section. For detailed instruction please refer to KB-6274 How to delete

Using less storage for more data is awesome. After all storage does not come cheap. Files Servers often become black holes of storage space in the environment where they consume space rapidly and ever increasingly. While using deduplication on Nutanix Files container might seem like a good idea at first, unfortunately, it is not recommended.Excerpt from Nutanix Files Tech Note:Every file server maps one-to-one to a container. This mapping allows you to manage compression and erasure coding individually for each file server deployed. Inline compression and erasure coding are turned on by default to save capacity. Deduplication is not recommended. [...]From Files 3.6 onward, you can control compression on a share-by-share basis. When you create a share, compression is enabled by default. This is backed up by NCC health check file_server_container_check which fails if deduplication is enabled on a container used by Nutanix Files.As always, you can bookmark useful KBs  by hitting that star

In our previous post, we explored “where are vdisks stored for AHV VMs and how to access or download them”. In this post, we will briefly go through the AOS Image service, which contains all ISO images, disk images etc.What is AOS Image Service:The image service feature enables you to import the images (ISOs, disk images, or any images which are supported in ESXi or Hyper-V format) directly into virtualisation management.The raw, vhd, vmdk, vdi, iso, qcow2 disk formats are supported.You can import images from http or NFS source URL. You can use this feature to create disks for a VM from images (images that are stored in the image library or repository) and also an option to clone from an image. You must install virtIO drivers on the image prior to importing these images into the image library.By creating an image of an existing bootable disk or a non-bootable disk, we are publishing it in the AOS image service across the cluster. Any Cluster Admin can use this image to spin up further

Hi community I am planning an upgrade of our Hypervisor of ESXi from VMware ESXi, 6.5.0, 8294253 to 6.5 U3 Latest build. Just wanted to get some feedback whether the process I have would be the correct one? first time we plan to use the one click upgrade process! We have 2 clusters, a production and DR cluster. We do use Data protection and Async DR and I believe that the target Async environment needs to be updated first which is the preferred option anyway.  This is the approach I was going to take. Any feedback on this would be great. Prism Central SpecificNCC (already upgraded to latest 3.9.2.1 version)Prism Central from 5.10.4 to 5.11.1.1We use vCentre VCSA 6.5, we plan to also upgrade this to later patching level. This will be done separately.  Prism Element (each cluster)NCC (already upgraded to latest 3.9.2.1 version)Install AOS 5.10.4.1 LTS to 5.10.8 LTS. We wish to stay on a LTS release, is this the latest one for LTS.? 5.11.1.2 is available for us to install but I think this