Nutanix Community Edition – Deploying and Configuring – Part 1

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nutanix-community-edition_w_500Another very exciting announcement was Nutanix Community Edition (CE) on June 9th, 2015 at our Inaugural .NEXT conference. So, what is it?…..Our website describes it the best “Community Edition is a 100% software solution enabling technology enthusiasts to easily evaluate the latest Hyperconvergence technology at zero cost.”

In other words, you can use your own hardware to test out Nutanix.  Very cool.  This is great for building a lab and just gaining understanding of Hyperconvergence hands on.
Nutanix is offering a hardware compatibility list (HCL) to users that includes the minimum requirements to run the software; essentially, any standard x86 server can be used….

And to quote our CEO and co-founder Dheeraj Pandey:

“From our very first software release in 2012, Nutanix has been dedicated to open architectures and technologies, offering unprecedented customer choice and flexibility,” “Community Edition is the next step in democratizing HyperConverged infrastructure technology, enabling anyone to experience the transformative benefits of our software. Only by eliminating the requirement for proprietary hardware and embracing off-the-shelf platforms can the next revolution of datacenter technologies be fully realized.”

As the name implies, the support for the CE will come from the community through Nutanix’s NEXT online portal. Users will be able to log in, ask questions and get answers from the community.

CE also allow you to also check our new Acropolis hypervisor based on KVM.  Check out Josh Odger’s Blog to learn more about Acropolis.

Join the beta…And don’t forget my NPP training series that helps you with all the concepts around Hyperconvergence.

Currently, I am getting started with Nutanix CE installation and will be posting my experiences in a later blog post with how I build my Nutanix Lab @ Home. 🙂

Until next time….Rob

Heading to Microsoft Ignite 2015…stay tuned….

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Well, its been crazy days lately.  I am leaving for Microsoft Ignite 2015 in a few days.  My last few weeks been filled getting demo’s ready around Exchange, SQL, Azure Pack, and SCOM. Ignite is the biggest customer event of the year. My company Nutanix is a gold sponsor at the event this year and we plan to show off all of our Reference Architectures (i.e. Lync, SQL, etc.). We also are going to demo our new support of ISCSI on ESXi.

 

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Heads down….;) Life and Times of a Microsoft Technology Evangelist

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Life and Times of a Microsoft Technology Evangelist

Hello all…It’s been a few weeks since my last blog post…I have been to my HQ twice in San Jose, California for week at a time.  You would be surprised how 3 hour time differences and coming back east messes up your day.  Still working on a system for that, but what works so far is to stay on your schedule…Last time I went to Cali, I let myself slip into the Cali schedule and coming back east was brutal for a week. ;(
So far my schedule that seems to work, but always evolving, is to run the entire west coast workday.

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VHD vs. VHDX: Hmm….What’s the Difference

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I get asked this all the time….and here is my answer. Microsoft’s virtual hard disk format, VHDX, has some important advantages over the legacy VHD format, as this VHD vs. VHDX comparison shows.

The release of Windows Server 2012 brought many new virtualization improvements, but one that caught the eye of many IT pros was the introduction of the VHDX file format. Windows Server 2012 supports the new format but also lets Hyper-V administrators use the legacy VHD format. With two virtual hard disk formats to choose from, let’s take a minute to talk about VHD vs. VHDX.

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Azure ExpressRoute….Explained….

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One of the traditional impediments to businesses adopting public cloud computing is the concern over putting all your eggs in one basket. This is where Hybrid Cloud steps in.

The Hybrid Cloud is a description of utilizing a preexisting on-premises datacenter and a cloud solution such as Microsoft Azure to balance the overall solution. Hybrid Cloud requires the need for a constant reliable connection to your datacenter.

Building a Hybrid Cloud and having a customer put this over the shared Public internet connection gives you no SLA or reliability.

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NPP Training series – Nutanix Terminology – Part 2

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I was asked  “What does Web-Scale Mean?” at the end of my last post.

If you missed part 1, check link below:
Part 1 – NPP Training series – Nutanix Terminology

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NPP Training Series – Nutanix Terminology – Part 1

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I started with Nutanix about 1 month ago and concurrently began my Nutanix training which entails going through the NPP (Nutanix Platform Professional) training course. I will be posting a series of blog posts on my learning track with Nutanix and will eventually tie it all together with the Microsoft Stack. My track commenced about 2 weeks ago and I have keep detailed notes on my learning progress. My plan is to post every few days in a multi-part series.

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Back to Basics….Hyper-V…What is it?

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To start the journey, one needs a foundation to start.  I assume everyone knows what a hypervisor is, but if you don’t check out Wikipedia.

VMware has been the leader for a number of years, along with another vendor and open source, like Xen and KVM. Microsoft also has a hand in Virtualization early on in the with Virtual Server, which was originally developed by Connectix, but no real traction and frankly it sucked..

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