Nutanix Disaster Recovery

Hi All, I'm wondering what configurations people have on Async Protection Domains? How many VMs per PD Create many PDs and group by application/department/roles eg[list] All Web servers in one group, all SQL servers, all application servers All HR based systems, All IT based systems, All Fiance based systems Is there a limit on how many PDs you can have in a cluster What's the dis/advantage to having fewer large PDs over many smaller PDs What frequency and retention are the local/remote snapshots What issues arrise when activating a PD I believe the IP address will be removed and the MAC will change...correct??, any scripts or automation applied?[/list] Thanks for any response you can give. Regards Dave

Use a Nutanix cluster external Data Services IP address when using IntelliSnap. Install a VSA on every Nutanix compute node. Install the MediaAgent software on all the VSA proxies. Install CommServe and MediaAgent on a secondary Nutanix cluster to separate backup and production infrastructure to protect against failure. Follow Commvault sizing guidelines. Create a virtual server client proxy group for easier management. When using IntelliSnap, colocate the MediaAgent software with the VSA. With ESXi, when you add ESX hosts to vCenter, make sure that the format of the ESX host name matches the host name format in vCenter. For example: If the host name format is short name, use short name to add the host to vCenter. If the host name format is FQDN, use FQDN to add the host to vCenter. If the host name is an IP address, use the same IP address to add the host to vCenter.

Third party backup integration is data protection that involves creating snapshot and backup copies via third party backup software. The requirements for integration changed depending on the backup software being used. Some of the supported backup vendors are HYCU Veeam Commvault Cohesity Rubrik For full list please visit

Hi, I’m new on the Data protection feature. I’ve done the a test VM migration to another nutanix cluster. The thing is after the migration, the VM on the source will be destroyed. I’m planning to use the Data protection to migrate the VM from the source cluster to the target cluster. I would need to failback the VM to the source VM. Am I able to restore the VM on the source site? 

Hi All,Does anyone know that veeam can directly add prism central(AHV) for backup?

We are currently evaluating Nutanix and also HYCU for backup. So far HYCU looks really good running on my CE lab server but there is one issue that they cannot answer to. For file restores on older recovery points (past the "Fast Restore" point), HYCU must copy the entire VM from the storage target and mount it to even start the search for a file. While for small VM's this my not be a big deal, larger VM's would cause a wait time based on your network connection to the storage target. For anyone using HYCU is this a concern to you? I'm very interested in hearing real world feed back here. Thanks!

Hi Everyone,I want to know what nutanix version can do replication or leap recovery plan with volume group (iscsi)? I currently use the CE version for testing ,my Nutanix CE and PC version are NUTANIX 20190916.276.I'm testing the iSCSI space of volume group mounted on Windows Server,then execute the plan of leap failure. However, after my windows server fails to DR, there is no iSCSI space on the windows server, and I do not see that the volume group is sync to DR.Is there a problem with my configuration, or is the CE version not supported at present?Has anyone ever done this test?Thanks.

Nutanix offers a variety of DR solutions. The flowchart provides a detailed representation of disaster recovery solutions.  Leap with two Prism Centrals: Asynchronous replication: it enables you to protect your data with an RPO of 1 hour or beyond.The policy creates a recovery point of the VMs in every 1 hour (or in the hourly time interval that you sp

Setup4 host cluster Every host has: 1 SDD, 1 HDDProblem1 HDD died, CVM doesn’t start: "virsh start" shows: "Failed to start domain" and "Cannot access storage file". HDD is already replaced. QuestionHow do I recreate the CVM as part of the existing cluster?

Hi, I’m tryning to wrap my head arout the differences between Snapshot and recovery point on a functional perspective. My target is to take vmware like snapshot of my vm. For that i saw 2 possibilities :the recovery point, which are managed by PC and allow for easy replication The snapshot which, correct me of i’m wrong) can only be created in PC My issue is that the recvery point cannot be restored “in place”, I mean in the vm object itself, but only by creating a clone of the vm, this create a extra administrative burden if i have to restore a vm from a recent recovery point as i have to :restore/clone the recovery point into a new VM delete the old one update the clone with the previous name, categories, etc ….In addition the newly restored/cloned vm has lost all the previous recovery point However the snapshot can be restored in place, but they are not ma

When performing a restoration of a VM with a volume group on a different cluster, changes are made to the guest OS in order to connect to the restored volume group.Since the primary site’s data services IP address will no longer be valid, the guest OS will connect to the volume groups using the secondary site’s data services IP address. Also, all other SCSI target IP addresses on the guest OS will be removed.Another change that occurs is the IQN of the VM. When the volume group is restored, the IQN is updated with the timestamp of when the volume group was recovered. This allows for multiple restorations of the volume group if necessary. Therefore, the IQN needs to be changed in the guest OS iSCSI configuration as well. The Nutanix Guest Tools (NGT) CD is mounted on the VM to facilitate this iSCSI configuration change so that no manual changes are required.More information about the above restoration process can be found in the Support Portal

Hello, I am an engineer with a security software vendor. We have a mutual customer that seems be experiencing system hangs on their vms in use on their Nutanix Acropolis platform. Admittedly I am not very familar with Nutanix as I mostly work with Vmware. These hangs are reportedly occurring after they upgraded our security product. Vmware has a process where we can create snapshot files and convert them into a memory dump file. This is helpful for our troubleshooting effort when normally you cannot take any action within the vm image to force a dump. I am trying to find out if the Nutanix Acropolis infrastraucture has any comparable capability. I will be suggesting that our mutual customer reach out to you as well, but am trying to inverstigate capability in parallel. Your assistance and advisement is welcome. David Alexander

when i do retrieve, i can do for the entire snapshot. but the snapshot contains a lot of vms and i only need one. so how can i pull just one?

While learning AHV I’m a bit confused on a few things as it relates to vStores and Remote Sites. What is the purpose of a vStore and how do they differ from Containers? What are the implications of mapping a Site-A’s vStore (Container-A) to Site-B’s vStore (Container-B) that has running VMs in it? What are the implications of not including all VMs from within Site-A’s Container-A in a Protection Domain and failing-over said PD to Site-B?      - Will the unprotected VMs from Container-A continue to run in Site-A?      - What happens when I fail-back the PD to Site-A? Let’s say I’ve mapped Container-A (Site-A) to Container-B (Site-B). If I create a Protection Domain that contains VMs from Container-A2 (Site-A), how does this factor into my vStore mappings between sites? Thanks for the assist!

Hi all We recently converted one of our environments to AHV/Acropolis from ESX/VCenter. All is well and runs just fine. One of the caveats is, we have a tertiary machine we use in “disaster” type scenarios and with this machine we would use our backup solution to “backup” a VM to and run with VMWare Workstation. As I understand it, Nutanix does not offer a “Workstation” type solution, so I am reaching out to hopefully receive some feedback on what a “new” solution would entail. Could I build a small PC and run Community edition on it? Can communtiy edition run on say an i9/32gb RAM/1TB ssd or does it need N+1 to function? This way I could point my backup solution to the new cluster or have my cluster be aware of a NAS solution and ingest the AHV VM as needed in these type scenarios. Any feedback will help me in the endeavor!

Hello! I’m pretty new to this Nutanix world. Have been dealing with standard server+storage for more than a decade. We have 2 clusters here, with 3 nodes in each site with metro availability. There are 3 protection domains active in each site (active) that are replicated to the other site (passive) and vice-versa.    Site1: Node1 - Node3 - Node5 PDs site1 (active): PROD_001, DEV_001, INFRA_001 PDs site1 (passive): PROD_002, DEV_002, INFRA_002   Site2: Node2 - Node4 - Node6 PDs site2 (active): PROD_002, DEV_002, INFRA_002 PDs site2 (passive): PROD_001, DEV_001, INFRA_001   In vCenter cluster configuration we obviously have affinity rules for VMs/Hosts in site1 and VMs/Hosts in site2, preventing the VMs running in “odd” nodes from being stored in “even” nodes. Sometimes we have to migrate VMs from one site to another. So we do a complete vmotion (compute and storage). After the migration, w

Hi Cloud builderWhile I was reading the NTNX Bible they said that the VM snapshot being taked by freezing the VM, unlikely with ESXi where the VM is stunned » Delta created for I/Os and then VMDK is consolidatedMy question while on NTNX Platform how/when the I/O takes place while VM is being snapshot’ed while its freeze.

Today - we will highlight the flexibility Nutanix offers with Protection Domains. You can access Protection Domains via the “Data Protection” Menu option in Prism.DR Basics in Nutanix:The foundation of data protection and disaster recovery in a Nutanix cluster is the concept of snapshots.Snapshots work very similar to VM/vDisk clones - leveraging a "redirect on write" algorithm that marks a snapshotted vDisk as immutable and directing new write operations (block overwrites and new blocks) to a new vDisk.  Read operations reference the correct vDisk blocks based on metadata lookup from the meta-data store.  From the Nutanix Bible - Book of Acropolis - Backup & Disaster RecoveryWhat is a Protection Domain (PD)?* Key Role: Macro group of VMs and/or files to protectDescription: A group of VMs and/or files to be replica

Hello guy , hope you are all safe around the world !I want to know what is the difference between xi leap and cloud connect ?Thank you

As you already know Nutanix provides block storage services in your clusters which are called Volume Groups. This provides SAN like capabilities by leveraging the existing hyper-converged infrastructure. Additionally, volume groups support SCSI unmap commands natively without having to turn on any additional setting as of AOS 4.7 in order to reclaim space from deleted blocks, more on that in the Nutanix Bible in the “Volumes (Block services)” section.  However, there are certain caveats when using volume groups as backup targets so you must architect your backup solution wisely as you may have to consider losing some benefits in order to gain others.

Something quick for the end of the week.Did you know you can test a copy of your VM with no impact to the production instance?Provided you replication is configured to a remote site, here is how you can do this:1. Open prism element for the remote site2. Navigate to the Protection Domain (PD) dropdown 3. Find the PD containing the VM that you would like to restore 4. Restore the VM with a new name using Out-of-Place Restore restore option (and NOT an In-Place Restore).Important: Understand the networking setup and the testing scenario before executing the ta

HI Everyone!   Can you map a test network in a recovery plan to both the production network and the Test network at the recovery site?  Nothing in the documentation around this.  Our customer has VLAN 2 at the recovery location (isolated) and this is the network that matches current VLAN 1 in production.  Since it’s isolated, they also want to use it for testing. Thanks!  

There are 2 nutanix cluster in different regions. I'm curious about a replication issue. I currently have 19.77 TiB free (physical) 50.7 TiB and 9.74TiB free (logical) 25.35 TiB disk space on first nutanix cluster site . there is enough free space in the second zone. I saw it through Nutanix. now if I replication 2 servers ( both 500gb ) in other region. in the configuration, local snapshot and remote snapshot 1 selected. How much to lose from Nutanix storage. For example, in the nutanix cluster there is 9.7 tb of free space, if I replicate 10 servers . 500 gb each.  how much space will i lose on nutanix storage. Does this have an account?  I want to learn this. I have 9.7 tb of free space, but I want to replicate 10-15 servers. Is there a problem in the storage area? How to calculate?

Hi, Vmware thin disk backup takes full disk backup. VM backup size is entire disk allocated space. The backup is taken from IBM Spectrum Protect. Is this a known issue. Hypervisor: Vmware HW: Nutanix Any idea/suggestion ?

Hi Team, Do we have any link which clarifies nutanix Mine (VMware) with HYCU backup. Please help with a link for docs.  Thanks