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On February 16, 2016, Nutanix announced the Acropolis NOS 4.6 release and last week was available for download. Along with many enhancements, I wanted to highlight several items, including some tech preview features.
Also, checkout this excellent video with Nutanix’s Tim Isaacs and Raghu Nandan in which they go into more detail on the updates included in Acropolis 4.6 and the interviewer is my buddy Chris Brown.
Tim Isaacs and Raghu Nandan from Nutanix HQ about some of the important updates in Acropolis 4.6.
1-Click Upgrades – BIOS and BMC Firmware
The 1-Click upgrade for BIOS and BMC firmware feature is available for Acropolis hypervisor (AHV) and ESXi hypervisor host environments running on NX-xxxx G4 (Haswell) platforms only.
Acropolis App Mobility Fabric: Windows or Linux Guest Customization
Customize or clone Windows or Linux guest VMs hosted by AHV. Includes automated OS installation and custom ISOs by using sysprep (Windows) or cloudinit (Linux).
Acropolis Drivers for OpenStack
These drivers facilitate consuming the Nutanix Acropolis infrastructure as a cloud service or for use in a data center. For example, an OpenStack implementation might require using features such as single sign-on, orchestration, role-based access control, and so on. Drivers include Acropolis compute, image, volume, and network drivers.
Convert Cluster Redundancy Factor from RF-2 to RF-3
Convert a cluster created with redundancy factor 2 (RF-2) to RF-3 through the ncli cluster set-redundancy-state command. This increases the cluster fault tolerance.
Cross Hypervisor Disaster Recovery
Cross-hypervisor disaster recovery provides an ability to migrate the VMs from one hypervisor to another (ESXi to AHV or AHV to ESXi) by using the protection domain semantics of protecting VMs, taking snapshots, replicating the snapshots, and then recovering the VMs from the snapshots. To perform these operations, you need to install and configure NGT on all VMs.
Guest VM VLAN Trunking
AHV supports guest VM VLAN tagging, where the tag passes through a single port from the physical network to a VM. It allows the VLAN ID tags to be included in an Ethernet packet to be passed to the guest VM. Guest VM operating systems can use this feature to enable Virtual Guest Tagging (VGT) and simulate multiple virtual NICs.
More Backup and Data Recovery/Replication Features
- Snapshot and Async DR for volume groups.
- Application-consistent snapshots on AHV and ESXi by using the Nutanix native in-guest Volume Shadow Copy Service (VSS) agent for all VMs that support Microsoft’s VSS. Nutanix Guest Tools provides application-consistent snapshot support for Linux VMs by running specific pre-freeze and post-thaw scripts on VM quiesce.
- Integrated snapshot management from an AHV cluster to a CommVault solution
Nutanix Guest Tools
- Nutanix Guest Agent (NGA) service. Communicates with the Nutanix Controller VM.
- File Level Restore (FLR) CLI. Performs self-service file-level recovery from the VM snapshots.
- Nutanix VM Mobility Drivers. Facilitates distribution of drivers required for VM migration between ESXi and AHV, in-place hypervisor conversion, and cross-hypervisor disaster recovery (CH-DR) features.
- VSS requestor and hardware provider for Windows VMs. Enables application-consistent snapshots of AHV or ESXi Windows VMs.
- Application-consistent snapshot for Linux VMs. Supports application-consistent snapshots for Linux VMs by running specific scripts on VM quiesce.
Self-Service Restore
Self-service restore allows a user to restore a file within a virtual machine from the Nutanix protected snapshot with minimal Nutanix administrator intervention. This feature is supported on Nutanix clusters running the ESXi and Acropolis hypervisors only.
Tech Preview Features
In-Place Hypervisor Conversion
This 1-click feature available through the Prism web console allows you to convert your cluster from using ESXi hosts to using AHV hosts. Guest VMs are converted to the hypervisor target format, and cluster network configurations are stored and then restored as part of the conversion process.
Native File Services
Provides file server capability within a Nutanix AHV cluster, as one or more network-attached VMs, to form a virtual file server.
To download the update, you can go to my.nutanix.com and go to support, downloads section or you can upgrade to 4.6 within Prism. Until next time, Rob