Nutanix Disaster Recovery

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, we start to constantly receive alerts with this message: Snapshot status for vstore INFRA_001: Faile

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 replicated together on a desired schedule.  A PD can protect a full container or you can select individual VMs and/or files.A protection domain is a group of Virtual Machines fo

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.In this example, I will focus on Veeam’s feature of Fast clone, which you can read more about Veeam’s documentation here. However, this could apply to any backup solution that leverages underlying features from the file system to provide storage savings.  In essence, this solution leverages the block cloning feature from ReFS in Windows whi

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 task. Consider turning off the NICs on the VM or assigning them to a VLAN that is not routed across to the VM’s original site or externally. Depending on the application it is possible that asymmetric data forwarding or conflicting announcements from the application on both VMs (the original and the recovered temporary copy) may cause data loss. Data Protection and Recovery with Prism Element: Restoration of Protected EntitiesIn case

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 

Hi there, I have many PDs and inside these PDs I have many VMs. I want to be able to run NCLI (or the like) to unprotect VM’s using a wildcard if possible. Example: ncli pd unprotect name=ProtectionDomain vm_name=VM* Anyone have an idea on how to do this to unprotect machines by wildcard to remove a mass amount at once?

I created a replication rule in nutanix. I did not understand a topic. keep the last snapshots for remote office in Schedule area. Leave it blank and choose 1 or 3. For which scenario should I use this place? this option creates my return point. Another question is this; I have a thin disk 100 gb virtual server. It takes up space in the snapshot replication rule. How much snapshot space does it have a calculation for? thanks    

I am backing up with veeam in nutanix cluster. I use esxi 6.5 on nutanix cluster  I also replicate to remote office with some virtual machines with data protection. and backup of the same virtual servers with veeam. Is there a limit here or this building is made right. both are using the same snapshot. Would it be a problem if replication starts with veeam backup at the same time

There could be some extreme situations where you want to safely abort an ongoing replication job.    There could be multiple reasons to abort an ongoing replication job, for example:    You want to delete a protection domain. You noticed some network issues between both sites.  Remote site is unavailable due to certain reasons.   Do we have a safe method to abort a replication job?  The following knowledge base article mention the steps and procedure to abort an ongoing replication job safely from nCLI   How to Abort an Ongoing Replication Job (Async DR)   Prism admin account locked   There might be a situation where you can get locked out of  Prism due to too many failed attempts    The login screen will prompt a message  stating:   Account locked due to too many failed attempts   If you run into a similar situation, there is a method to remove the lock for the admin account   The following base article might help you with the steps to achieve the same

I am new in the Nutanix so asking silly question could it be possible to deploy Nutanix mine and file server on the same box or hardware.  

Metro Availability creates a global file system namespace across Nutanix clusters and uses synchronous replication. Combining the Nutanix hyper-converged infrastructure with a continuous availability solution limits downtime and preserves all data, even during a complete site failure. Further, Metro Availability enables workload mobility for disaster avoidance or planned maintenance scenarios.   There might be a situation where due to internal audit, you need to perform a planned failover  testing, planned maintenance, or disaster avoidance.    Do we have a comprehensive guide regarding planned failover steps and the precautions which should be taken?    The following guide explains the process of Planned Failover in Metro Availability with flowcharts and examples for better understanding. Planned Failover    Want to know more about Metro Availability in the Nutanix environment?   The following solutions guide will help you get a better understanding regarding the architecture of Metro

How does one navigate in the ocean of solutions that are available on the market? What is supported? What is compatible with which hypervisor? Allow us to help! Here is part three of supported backup solutions together with an overview of each.   ARCSERVE Top significant functionalities: Agent-based backup and restore of VMs for AHV, VMware and Hyper-V on Nutanix.  Granular restore: File / DB / App / AD Restore / BMR to VM or V2P. Disaster recovery: Zero RPO and near-zero RTO with RHA to AWS EC2 environment. Built-in replication & high availability. Migration of disk images to tape, with granular restore from disk or tape. Supported hypervisors: Nutanix AHV, VMware vSphere and Hyper-V Nutanix platform OS: Arcserve UDP 6.5 Update 4 is validated on ESXi (6.5) & Nutanix AHV (AOS 5.5.5) Arcserve UDP 7.0 is validated on on ESXi (6.5) & Nutanix AHV (AOS 5.10.3.1) Arcserve UDP 7.0 is validated on Nutanix AHV (AOS 5.11) Arcserve UDP 7.0 is validated and has API i

Hi,   Does Nutanix Leap support ESXi Hypervisor for on-premise DR automation? In two different sources I have found different information:   AAPM 5.10: Data Protection: Prism Central and Acropolis 5.10 or higher must be deployed on both sites. Orchestration is only available if you run AHV.   Xi Leap Admin Guide (page 7): Hypervisor Requirements Supported Hypervisors On premises, the hypervisor must be one of the following: • AHV • ESXi   https://nutanixbible.com/ Supported Environment(s): On-Premise: AHV (As of AOS 5.10) Thank you!  

How does one navigate in the ocean of solutions that are available on the market? What is supported? What is compatible with which hypervisor? Allow us to help! Here part three of supported backup solutions together with an overview of each.   UNITRENDS Top significant functionalities: Native protection for Nutanix’s Acropolis Hypervisor via APIs. Backup storage can be Nutanix storage connected directly or an external NAS. Extend long-term retention or full site disaster recovery to a second Nutanix deployment, or even the Unitrends Cloud. Recovery Assurance for vSphere, Hyper-V and physical Windows through instant recovery, automated backup verification, failover plans, DR testing and compliance reporting. Can use Nutanix snapshots for short-term retention and local VM recovery Supported hypervisors: Nutanix AHV, VMware vSphere, XenServer and Hyper-V Nutanix platform OS: Unitrends 10.1.1-3 is validated on Nutanix AHV (AOS 5.5.0.6) Resources and getting started: Datasheet

How does one navigate in the ocean of solutions that are available on the market? What is supported? What is compatible with which hypervisor? Allow us to help! Here is part two of supported backup solutions together with an overview of each.   RUBRIK Top significant functionalities: Instant Recovery: deliver near-zero RTOs for  Hyper-V or vSphere VMs by mounting directly onto Rubrik. No rehydration required. Global Real-Time Search: search for VMs and files with suggested search results. API-first Architecture: automate custom lifecycle management workflows that play well with third-party services (i.e. Chef, Puppet, ServiceNow, VMware vRealize Automation). Customized Analytics: deliver platform analytics across the hybrid cloud on data management, compliance, and capacity utilization with Rubrik Envision. Create and share data visualizations. Policy-Based Management: use an SLA policy engine to create and automate policies. Protects NoSQL Databases on Nutanix Enterprise Cl

How does one navigate in the ocean of solutions that are available on the market? What is supported? What is compatible with which hypervisor? Allow us to help! Here is the list of supported backup solutions together with an overview of each.   HYCU  Top significant functionalities: Automated application discovery, application-aware backup and application-aware recovery. Prism like look & feel and a hypervisor-agnostic architecture to protect Nutanix and non-Nutanix virtualized environments. Fast file share (Nutanix Files) backup that is impact-free and agentless. WAN-free backup for Remote Office Branch Office (ROBO). Application-aware storage level snapshots. Full deployment of HYCU right from Nutanix CALM Marketplace  Supported hypervisors: Flexibility and choice for hypervisors, either AHV or ESX.  Nutanix platform OS: Nutanix AOS v5.1 or later Resources and getting started: Datasheet: Simple to use, Ready-to-roll intelligent application data protection for Nuta

Whether your environment has grown enough to be ready to have a DR site or the scale of operations can no longer tolerate the loss of the site or maybe even a single application, the first question is “What are the options?”. And that is what we will talk about in this post.   Starting with AOS 5.10 Metro Availability is supported on Hyper-V.  Metro Availability is the solution if you are looking for minimal RPO and are preparing for a full scope DR scenario. Prism Web Console Guide v5.16: Data Protection   The next in line would be Async DR which is a scheduled based snapshots replications essentially. Both MA and Async DR require a physical cluster. Since single-node clusters are not supported at this point with Hyper-V it would have to be at least a 3 nodes block. Prism Web Console Guide v5.16: Configuring a Remote Site (Physical Cluster)   What if you are not ready to invest in hardware and be bothered with its maintenance? There are more options such as leveraging the mighty priva

If you need to clear up space on your Nutanix cluster you may be considering removing local snapshots, but what if the reclaimable space is displayed as “Processing”? What can we do about it, and how can we know if a snapshot is worth removing? The reclaimable space is subject to change and has to be totaled up before it can be known. This work is done during the same periodic filesystem scans which drive disk clean-up, post-process deduplication and compression, and information lifecycle management. Generally speaking we just need to wait for the next periodic scan to finish and then we should have the reclaimable space figure shown in Prism. If you need to estimate reclaimable space in the meantime, I can offer a few hints to help narrow that estimate. It helps to have a little understanding of how snapshots work, and how the reclaimable space number is identified. Think of it this way. Each current filesystem block has one or more owners, and any block cannot be deleted until no mor