Hyper-V 2016

RE Asterix Date
I see you caught my dry humor joke. Internally we're targetting the month of November, but this is a really, really big release, so we want to get it right.

RE Hyper-V 2016
I've forwarded this over to our PM for Hyper-V, so he can respond in more detail cc Raymon

Here's my 2 cents: Keep in mind that Hyper-V 2016 is an absolutely massive new release from Microsoft, which will fundamentally have different considerations for how Nutanix integrates. There are many things to consider; however, the largest is Microsoft's DDA, which is their version of PCI Passthrough.

As you might know, Nutanix uses direct PCI Passthrough of the SAS controller on ESXi, AHV, and XenServer. Hyper-V does not have this same capability in 2012 R2, so we take a different approach currently. We've been clamoring for PCI passthrough for years, to standardize the disk connectivity approach between all four hypervisors we support, and Microsoft is now allowing this in 2016.

That said, Unlike ESXi and AHV, it isn't just a simple passthrough, it requires guest OS kernel changes to support the DDA-enabled devices, so we've had to patch those in, which takes some qualification time.

That's just one low hanging example of what we've got to work through to get 2016 enabled correctly.

RE Hyper-V specific features
Are you looking for something specifically? Or wanting the system to do something it doesn't today? I'm happy to investigate or advocate on your behalf, just let me know.

RE Veeam + AHV
We've talked about this in the past, the ball is in Veeam's court on this one.

RE APC + AHV
APC would need to do work to enhance their PowerChute network shutdown product, that's really the best way to do that. I'll ask our alliances folks to see if we're working with them already.

RE Shutdown sequence
Yes, that would be a challenge with Nutanix (or most SDS products), as in your 3 node cluster, its N+1, so you'd be able to do that with one node, then the whole thing would need to be gracefully shutdown.

I didnt attend either.. but I have heard/seen that 2016 is all go. GA Aug/Sep. This the session it was all announced:

NUTANIX ENTERPRISE CLOUD WITH HYPER-V AND WINDOWS SERVER 2016Nutanix takes pride in being hypervisor agnostic and continues that tradition with our Windows Server 2016 support for Hyper-V. Hyper-V with Windows Server 2016 has introduced a number of new key features including discrete device assignment, change block tracking and switch embedded teaming to name a few. This session will explore Hyper-V support with Nutanix including the technical details around our integration with Windows Server 2016 and its ecosystem of products. Learn the key differences between Windows Server 2012 R2 and Windows Server 2016 on Nutanix. Obtain best practices and considerations when deploying a Windows Server 2016 based Hyper-V solution with Nutanix. Understand the integration points with the Hyper-V ecosystem of products including the System Center suite and Azure Pack.

Hey folks,
Sorry for the extreme delay. I realize its borderline silly at this point, and on behalf of everyone in engineering (including myself), I appreciate your patience.

Here's the deal. 2016 changed quite a bit for us (which is a net-good thing), and that took us quite a while to adapt in a way that we could uplift our existing 2012 customers to 2016 in an easy manner, and provide a kick butt product for net-new hyper-v installs as well.

I won't rattle off each detail, for the sake of keeping this direct and to the point, but rather simply say we've worked through all of those challenges, and are projecting to launch 2016 support with AOS 5.5.

Given we're a public company, I can't put a forward-looking date on 5.5; however, I will say from the engineering perspective, we've got all hands on deck working on closing down this release, which means final QA and launch prep. We've already got alpha and beta customers on 2016 Hyper-V in the field right now, and have molded their feedback into the product.

In general, and this goes for the *ENTIRE* customer base, if you ever feel you're in the dark on something, please feel free to email me directly jon@nutanix.com from your business emails and I'm happy to chat in detail about what we're up to. For 2016 Hyper-V specific issues, I'm happy to loop in the PM for that feature as well, and we can discuss even more. We pride ourselves on being a pretty open book here at Nutanix, so my "digital door" is always open.

My apologies again that we didn't update this thread with our progress, but I'm hoping this will suffice for the last little bit of waiting we need to do (collectively) before 5.5 launches.

Hi John,

Do you have any information on the upgrade process? Are we looking at a rather simple One-Click? Also, will we be able to use Nano-server, and if so is the process the same as an normal One-Click upgrade?

Kind Regards

Hi All,
Hello Jon,

Any update about Cluster install with Windows server 2016 RTM ?
We have a NX-3000 and we want reinstall a cluster with the last windows server operating system.

Can we have some documentation about fresh install ?
After a crash we have previously need full reinstall cvm with a nutanix support operator and it's not a OneClick process 🙂 .

Thanks you so much for your precious help.

Hava a nice day.

Regards.

Hi Jon,

Thanks for your prompt reply.

Sounds Bad for my team.

When i read compatibility guide i can see :

• Microsoft major/minor releases (like 2012 R2) are Supported immediately and QA qualified within 90 days of the software GA release date

Windows server 2016 RTM has released oct12 , it's oct 12 + 3 month ?
You think it will be good in January 2017 ?

If you have any information about timeline i got it :)

Thanks you so much Jon

Have a nice day.
Regards.

Do we have any timeframe when Asterix 5.0 will be available?
does it has any fixes for Hyper-V

If we were to deploy 2012R2 now on a 3 nodes cluster, will we be able to upgrade to 2016 by pulling a node from the cluster, re-imaging to 2016 and joining back the cluster again?

"Tenative target is the next 30 days or less. My feeling is that it will be a day with "teen" in the name,"
Is that a November "teen" or a December "teen"?

Nothing in particular for hyper-v but wodnering how we will be able to upgrade to 2016 with a 3 node cluster. 2016 has a rolling upgrade feature but we would still be missing out on some features like REFS etc as the cluster storage would have already been formatted.

http://myvirtualcloud.net/?p=8310
Hoping that Part 2 will have some Hyper-V specific features

We could also move to AHV for our new setup but even that would create a challenge for us namely:

• the ability to perform backup using our VEEAM backup server
• using our APC UPS to shutdown the servers cleanly (Still haven't find an easy and documented way to do that from an APC UPS)

A 3 tier infrastrucure has it downside but I can't see how this would be possible with a 3 nodes nutanix cluster (Actually even with more nodes)

RIght now we have 3 Servers running Hyper-v and on a Power outage, after 30 minutes, we live migrate all VMS from one server and then shut it down to give us more runtime, after another 30 minutes, the same scenario happens until there is only 20-30 minutes left and then all vms are turned off and the last server is then shut down as well. When power is restored, all servers are then powered up and re-balanced automatically without me having to ping a Server or Storage. Doing this with CVM would be suicide i reckon...

I sent him and the PM team an email to get some clarification on this one. I'll bet "yes", but again, this is a massive massive massive shift on Microsoft's part, I have a feeling this is going to be tricky. Looking forward to what Engineering pulls off.

Just adding my name to list of people eager to see this; I'm been holding off implementing our new block as I'd sooner have 2016 "from the begining" rather than upgrading the block at a later date.

RE File system
eh, what? The container is not formatted with NTFS now, nor any other windows file system, so we couldn't format it with REFS even if we wanted to.

The container is presented, from a protocol perspective, with SMB3. The actual formatting on the filesystem is invisable to windows.

Much like doing a SMB share from a linux box running a XFS or ZFS file system, or ext or something like that, the protocol and the underlying file system are not coupled together.

RE Veeam
You've got that sentence in reverse ... more like if Veeam had AHV support, and let you read into that what you will. Very simply put, we're waiting on them, not the other way around.

It is presented to the cluster as storage, but its SMB3 volume, not a block device that needs to be formatted.

As far as upgrades and such, thats not defined yet, we know we want to support rolling upgrades, but as I mentioned in a prior post, we haven't completed the work on 2016 yet, so we'll have more clarity as time goes on there.

Any update on the progress of this? Little past the 90 day mark now.