Nutanix Disaster Recovery

There are many situations when you might need to abort an ongoing disaster recovery replication job on your Nutanix cluster. You may be deleting the protection domain or maybe you added a large VM to an existing protection domain and now you don’t want to include this new VM’s baseline replication in the existing job, at least not before the weekend. Maybe the destination is running short of space and we need to stop adding to the problem.  You can see the replication in Prism, but there’s no button to pause or cancel it.   To abort the replication we will need to go to the CLI. This process is covered in https://portal.nutanix.com/kb/3272   SSH to a CVM in the cluster as the user ‘nutanix’, then run ‘ncli’ to get into this interactive CLI.   First, list current ongoing replications with this command. You’ll need the Protection Domain name and ID from this output for the next command. <ncli> pd ls-repl-status   You’ll need the Protection Domain name and ID from this output for th

It’s five-o’clock on Friday and the database admin has just let you know they’re working on a problem and need to keep last week’s Friday afternoon snapshot until further notice. If you do nothing that backup will expire in about an hour due to the protection domain schedule. How can we make sure this snapshot sticks around?    Don’t worry! There‘s an NCLI command for this. You can change that snapshot’s expiration time to indefinite, and it will wait around until you delete it manually later. See the solution in the KB article here: https://portal.nutanix.com/kb/8594   First, you need the snapshot ID and the protection domain name. You can get this from the Prism UI, or from NCLI.   To capture these details from Prism go to the Data Protection dashboard, Table view, Async DR tab, and select the protection domain from the table here. In the lower panel click on Local Snapshots and find the snapshot with the right Create Time. The number in the ID column is the snapshot ID you need, alo

Good Day,  I am very new to Nutanix and recently purchased a cluster. It has only been running for about 30 days now managing my network and I am in the process of make some configurations to it. I need some assistance with an error message that I am receiving. I am using AHV as hyper-visor on my 3 node cluster. On this cluster I am running 5 Windows based Server VM's (not using Hyper-V or VMware). I followed the instructions from the Administration Guide by enabling VSS Shadow Copies on the Servers, then installing guest tools on all the servers and creating a protect domain Async DR. My configurations are working and snapshots are being created for my Domain Controllers and Application Servers. However, when a snapshot is trying to be created of my File Server, I keep getting the following error.  "Warning : VSS snapshot failed for the VM(s) FS-01 protected by the FileServer in the snapshot (169035, 1563300389081879, 960) because Quiescing guest VM(s) failed or timed out. Impact    

We are currently considering implementing NearSync for a DR with an RPO of 15 minutes.   Is there still a cluster limit of 40TB in 5.16? I can't find anything more specific in the documentation. https://portal.nutanix.com/#/page/docs/details?targetId=Prism-Element-Data-Protection-Guide-v5_16:wc-dr-near-sync-requirements-limitations-r.html   The restrictions that backup tools like rubrik or netbackup cannot take normal snapshots when nearsync is active should be solved in 5.9 or not?

I cant seem to find any info in the manual on how to manage consistency groups assigned to entities?

Configuring data protection and disaster recovery solution in your Nutanix environment is seamlessly simple and interesting. What if you have configured a remote site and have configured all the settings but still you are not sure regarding the configuration.   Have you configured the vstore mapping correctly? Have you configured the network mapping correctly? Is there a check which can help me verify all the remote site configuration? Nutanix Cluster Check provides a check which helps you to verify the mapping configuration of a remote site.   Give the following Knowledgebase article a read to know more about the check. KB-3335 Give the following documentation a read regarding best practises of DATA PROTECTION AND DISASTER RECOVERY to understand the configuration and limitations in-depth.DATA PROTECTION AND DISASTER RECOVERY   

Inquiring if Possible to create Data Protection Async DR of VM that also backing up by Veeam Availability for Nutanix at the same time or different schedule? Or what if I will use Agent Base Veeam Backup and had Data Protection Async DR?   Thanks in Advance.

Hi All,   i want Plan a strategy as below. is this possible using Nutanix and  Azure cloud.  replication from Onprem to Cloud (Azure- GOV) Another primary site (Azure ) will replicate to Azure cloud Both primary - ( On-Prem and Azure ) will connect to interconnect.

Getting the following error “VSS Scripts Not Installed” in your Nutanix environment with the description “VSS software or pre_freeze/post_thaw Scripts Not Installed”.Confused about VSS and the above-mentioned scripts?Let us help you understand the use of VSS for a snapshot!When you are enabling the Nutanix Guest tool, the following features VSS and Application consistent snapshot is enabled by default.Nutanix native in-guest VmQuiesced Snapshot Service (VSS) agent is used to take application-consistent snapshots for all the VMs that support VSS. This mechanism takes application-consistent snapshots without any VM stuns (temporary unresponsive VMs) and also enables third-party backup providers like CommVault and Rubrik to take application-consistent snapshots on the Nutanix platform in a hypervisor-agnostic manner. What’s the use of pre_freeze/post_thaw then? Within a Windows VM, NGT will use the Microsoft VSS writer built into the OS to quiesce the VM to take the app consistent snapsho

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

We’re in the process of testing Veeam for AHV on our NTNX running AOS 5.10.  So far with Windows issues we have had very few issues and we worked them out quickly.   However with a Linux VM running Ubuntu we’re getting errors on the Nutanix where the snapshot is checking for pre-freeze and post-thaw scripts.  We’ve attempted a variety of ways to get those scripts in place, but it seems that there is no clear path.   Does anyone else have experience with Veeam for AHV and backing up Linux VMs? Does anyone have any info on setting up the pre-freeze and post-thaw scripts?  While we have some experience with this on Linux we’re certainly not experts. 

Netbackup 8.2 has announce release of NetBackup Accelerator support for Nutanix AHV. What is Accelerator :- If the client has no previous backup, NetBackup performs a full backup and creates a track log. The track log contains information about the client’s data, for comparison at the next backup. At the next backup, NetBackup identifies data that has changed since the previous backup. To do so, it compares information from the track log against information from the file system for each file. For NTFS and ReFS file systems, it also uses the Windows change journal to help identify the data that has changed since the last backup. Accelerator uses the Windows change journal in two ways: To check for changes in the file system metadata, and to help detect which files have changed since the last backup The NetBackup client sends to the media server a backup stream that consists of the following: The client’s changed blocks, and the previous backup ID and data extents (block offset and size

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!

I have issue about Rubrik backup. I have monitored that some vms could not backup some days with alerts are same. However, some days work fine.

Hi, We are looking for a solution to restore the VMs running on Nutanix AHV to a vSphere (SAN based) environment. I've heard that HYCU can do backups on ESXi non-nutanix, however is not clear if I can restore VMs running on AHV to ESXi non-Nutanix and vice-versa. If HYCU is not the answer, is there any other vendor that can achieve this goal? Nutanix AHV backup/DR to ESXi non-Nutanix. We need to run the VMs on ESXi non-Nutanix in case of Nutanix/Primary DC failure.

Hi, Looking to see if it is possible to manually deploy the CVM to Azure for use with Cloud connect? Also what is the reliance on the classic deployment model? Why can't the CVM be deployed using the Resource Manager model? Microsoft have been pushing customers away from the classic model over the last few years, its likely that the majority of customer with mature Azure deployments won't be using the classic model.

Hello - I'm new to Nutanix and am in the middle of taking the online 5.5 course in the education portal. I have a simple question about Cloud connect: In the section about Cloud Connect features the very first thing you read is "data transmitted is already deduplicated and users can choose to enable compression on the local storage container.." Yet when I look at the section regarding General Recommendations and Limitations I see the following: "It is not recommended to enable deduplication on the source cluster..." Can you please help me understand this? This looks like a complete contradiction.

Tim Wallace, who leads out public sector solutions marketing efforts has a Nutanix community blog coming out talking about the value of Xi Leap for Public Sector including education institutions. Nutanix also has numerous service provider partners (www.nutanix.com/x-powered) that offer Nutanix powered DRaaS for customer's hosted and on-prem deployment. What are some of the reasons why you would consider DRaaS and Xi Leap in your environment? Share with your peers.

We've just gotten started with Nutanix, and I have a question about snapshots. Do I need to create a Protection Domain before I can create a snapshot? I'm not looking to take snapshots of a bunch of machines or have scheduled snapshots. I just want to make one snapshot of a single Windows server before I upgrade some software on it. We are running AHV as our hypervisor. Thank you

I need someone to light my bulb regarding data protection scenario I have in my mind. Currently we're migrating from NetApp/UCS ESX to Nutanix ESX and we uses Commvault as data protection. In addition to Commvault, we uses volume snapshot in NetApp for DR and fast recovery. This does not replicate to remote site however. In Nutanix, I have configured container for Prod and Dev/QA datastores. Prod datastore protected by Commvault intellisnap and keep two day worth of snapshots. DEV/QA datastore does not protected by Commvault due to licensing issue, we would like to use Nutanix data protection to have similar data protection like Prod datastore (2 day snapshots) . My question is, writing script to adding VMs automatically to data protection domain is the only way to go? Or any other suggestion?

Hello, First-timer here, I don't know if I'm posting on the right place, I'm sorry if I'm not... I have Acronis 12.5 Backup installed on a Windows Server 2019 Essentials 64 bits (that's installed bare-metal on a Lenovo SystemX 3650 M5). Attached to it, there's an IBM TS4300. I'm trying to figure how to backup the VMs running on my AOS 5.10.1 in the tape drivers inside the TS4300. I know I can install Acronis Agents on my Windows VMs, but I don't know if that's the answer for my question. And, if a disaster happens and I need to restore the Acropolis VMs from the tapes, how can I do it? Sorry if my questions seem too basic, but I'm googling for the desired infos all day long with no success up to now, so I'm asking for help here. Best regards,

Interested in the cost for Xi LEAP. I cannot find any estimated costs for this new service and need to know how it is priced. Anyone have information on this?

i`m looking for technical document to configure AHV with Actifio sky. Anyone did that or is it compatible? i found that in 2017 Nutanix announced partnership but can`t find technical info. https://www.actifio.com/nutanix-actifio/#sthash.Jotd7mm3.dpbs

Is there a way to deactivate an old Protection Domain and move the snapshot data to a new Protection Domain?

Caution: Deletion of the remote site is currently not supported from Prism. Contact Nutanix support for further assistance. Not quite sure if I get this ?