AOS integrates storage, compute and networking resources into a scalable, secure, resilient and easy-to-use software-defined infrastructure.

Here are some highlights from the AOS 6.1 release.

New and Updated Features | AOS 6.1

Improved Single vDisk Performance

Previously, the vDisk controller employed just a single thread for each vDisk. Now, the vDisk controller can spawn multiple sharded controllers (up to 4) to create a multithreaded environment for processing application requests (reads and writes). From the application perspective, there is still a single vDisk controller, but the actual workload is multithreaded. The multithreading can result in substantial performance improvements for applications that use a single large vDisk, such as certain database applications. The multithreading can also provide performance improvement for multiple vDisk applications.

Enhanced Security with Restricted Shell Access

Restricted Shell Access improves the security posture of Nutanix AOS with the following controls:

• Added ability to freeze the security configuration and settings through Nutanix Command-Line Interface (nCLI). You must contact Nutanix Support to unlock the security configuration to allow for changes.
• Added an optional feature that imposes certain restrictions on the "nutanix" account access to the nCLI. The added restrictions encourage the usage of "admin" account for basic administrative workflows..

Dark Theme on Prism UI

This feature extends the Prism themes feature to support a darker theme. Selection of the Dark Theme in the UI sets a dark background with high contrast view of the Prism UI background. The UI changes cosmetically to reflect the selection. See Modifying UI Settings in the Prism Web Console Guide for more information.

Whole Node Maintenance Mode

This feature provides the ability to gracefully handle the node maintenance for planned outages. With this feature, the existing node maintenance procedure from the Acropolis Command-Line Interface (aCLI) is now extended to the Prism Element web console. When a host is placed in the maintenance mode, the CVM is placed in the maintenance mode as part of the node maintenance operation. The non-migratable VMs (for example, pinned or RF1 VMs which have affinity towards a specific node) are powered-off while live migratable or high availability (HA) VMs are moved from the original host to other hosts in the cluster. After exiting the maintenance mode, all non-migratable guest VMs are powered on again and the live migrated VMs are automatically restored on the original host.

VM Centric Storage Policy

Storage Policies in Prism Central let you manage the storage attributes like encryption, compression, and QoS for VMs running on AHV clusters. Prism Central allows you to apply storage policies on a per VM basis using Category, so that the VM uses the storage configuration defined in the storage policy. Using a storage policy, you can manage parameters of VMs, such as encryption, type of or lack of data compression, and IOPS or Throughput throttling values to be applied to the entities.

Prism Central supports storage policies only for VMs. Storage policy is not supported for Volume Groups (VGs). Prism Central supports storage policies only for entities running on the AHV hypervisor. You can associate one storage policy with multiple categories. However, you can associate one category with only one storage policy.

Support for Microsoft Windows Server 2022

AOS 6.1 supports guest VMs running Microsoft Windows Server 2022.
Note: Since Intel NIC adapters do not have compatible async drivers (third-party vendor drivers certified by VMware) for Hyper-V 2022, NX Series platforms do not currently support Hyper-V 2022 deployments.

Removing Multiple Nodes from a Cluster

AOS allows you to remove multiple nodes from a cluster. The multi-node removal process is sequential. That is, you can request to remove only one node at a time. However, you can mark other nodes for removal one after the other while data is being evicted in background from other nodes marked for removal.