Hi all…It’s been a few weeks since my last blog post. I’ve been busy with some travel to Microsoft Technology Centers and working on the Nutanix Ready Program. Yesterday, Nutanix released NOS 4.5. This exciting upgrade adds some great features.. Sit back and get ready to enjoy the ride…release notes below.
| Table 1. Terminology Updates | |
| New Terminology | Formerly Known As |
| Acropolis base software | Nutanix operating system, NOS |
| Acropolis hypervisor, AHV | Nutanix KVM hypervisor |
| Acropolis API | Nutanix API and Acropolis API |
| Acropolis App Mobility Fabric | Acropolis virtualization management and administration |
| Acropolis Distributed Storage Fabric, DSF | Nutanix Distributed Filesystem (NDFS) |
| Prism Element | Web console (for cluster management); also known as the Prism web console; a cluster managed by Prism Central |
| Prism Central | Prism Central (for multicluster management) |
| Block fault tolerance | Block awareness |
Note: You can configure bandwidth throttling only while updating the remote site. This option is not available during the configuration of remote site.
Note: You cannot use an NX-6035C cluster as a backup target with third-party backup software.
Note: Nutanix supports the ability to patch upgrade ESXi hosts with minor versions that are greater than or released after the Nutanix qualified version, but Nutanix might not have qualified those minor releases. Please see the the Nutanix hypervisor support statement in our Support FAQ.
Note: Do not use tech preview features on production systems or storage used or data stored on production systems.
Note: This feature should be used only after upgrading all nodes in the cluster to Acropolis base software 4.5.
Nutanix has introduced a Prism Central VM which is compatible with AHV to enable multicluster management in this environment. Prism Central now supports all three major hypervisors: AHV, Hyper-V, and ESXi.
The Prism Central VM requires these resources to support the clusters and VMs indicated in the table.
| Prism Central vCPU |
Prism Central Memory (GB, default) | Total Storage Required for Prism Central VM (GB) | Clusters Supported | VMs Supported (across all clusters) | Virtual disks per VM |
| 4 | 8 | 256 | 50 | 5000 | 2 |
You can learn more about the Nutanix Cluster Check (NCC) health checks on the Nutanix support portal. The portal includes a series of Knowledge Base articles describing most NCC health checks run by the ncc health_checks command.
NCC 2.1 includes support for:
The following features are available as a Tech Preview in NCC 2.1.
| Check Name | Description | KB Article |
| check_disks | Check whether disks are discoverable by the host. Pass if the disks are discovered. | KB 2712 |
| check_pending_reboot | Check if host has pending reboots. Pass if host does not have pending reboots. | KB 2713 |
| check_storage_heavy_node | Verify that nodes such as the storage-heavy NX-6025C are running a service VM and no guest VMs. Verify that nodes such as the storage-heavy NX-6025C are runningthe Acropolis hypervisor only. |
KB 2726 KB 2727 |
| check_utc_clock | Check if UTC clock is enabled. | KB 2711 |
| cluster_version_check | Verifiy that the cluster is running a released version of NOS or the Acropolis base software. This check returns an INFO status and the version if the cluster is running a pre-release version. | KB 2720 |
| compression_disabled_check | Verify if compression is enabled. | KB 2725 |
| data_locality_check | Check if VMs that are part of a cluster with metro availability are in two different datastores (that is, fetching local data). | KB 2732 |
| dedup_and_compression_enabled_containers_check | Checks if any container have deduplication and compression enabled together. | KB 2721 |
| dimm_same_speed_check | Check that all DIMMs have the same speed. | KB 2723 |
| esxi_ivybridge_performance_degradation_check | Check for the Ivy Bridge performance degradation scenario on ESXi clusters. | KB 2729 |
| gpu_driver_installed_check | Check the version of the installed GPU driver. | KB 2714 |
| quad_nic_driver_version_check | Check the version of the installed quad port NIC driver version. | KB 2715 |
| vmknics_subnet_check | Check if any vmknics have same subnet (different subnets are not supported). | KB 2722 |
This release includes the following enhancements and changes:
Customers may create a cluster using the new Controller VM-based implementation in Foundation 3.0. Imaging bare metal nodes is still restricted to Nutanix sales engineers, support engineers, and partners.
Until next time, Rob…
As a Microsoft Evangelist at Nutanix, I am always asked….”How would you monitor your Nutanix Infrastructure and can I use System Center suite. And my answer always is, “YES, with SCOM”….What is SCOM you ask?
System Center Operations Manager (SCOM) is designed to be a monitoring tool for the datacenter. Think of a datacenter with multiple vendors representing multiple software and hardware products. Consequently, SCOM was developed to be extensible using the concept of management packs. Vendors typically develop one or more management packs for every product they want plugged into SCOM.
To facilitate these management packs, SCOM supports standard discovery and data collection mechanisms like SNMP, but also affords vendors the flexibility of native API driven data collection. Nutanix provides management packs that support using the Microsoft System Center Operations Manager (SCOM) to monitor a Nutanix cluster.
The management packs collect information about software (cluster) elements through SNMP and hardware elements through ipmiutil (Intelligent Platform Management Interface Utility) and REST API calls and then package that information for SCOM to digest. Note: The Hardware Elements Management Pack leverages the ipmiutil program to gather information from Nutanix block for Fans, Power Supply and Temperature.
After the management packs have been installed and configured, you can use SCOM to monitor a variety of Nutanix objects including cluster, alert, and performance views as shown in examples below. Also, I check out this great video produced by pal @mcghem . He shows a great demo of the SCOM management pack…Kudo’s Mike….also, check out his blog.
Views and Objects Snapshots 
Cluster Monitoring Snapshots
In the following diagram views, users can navigate to the components with failure.
The following provides an high level overview of Nutanix Cluster with Components:
The following sections describe Nutanix Cluster objects being monitored by this version of MPs:
Monitored Element |
Description |
|
Version |
Current cluster version. This is the nutanix-core package version expected on all the Controller VMs. |
|
Status |
Current Status of the cluster. This will usually be one of started or stopped |
|
TotalStorageCapacity |
Total storage capacity of the cluster |
|
UsedStorageCapacity |
Number of bytes of storage used on the cluster |
|
Iops |
For Performance: Cluster wide average IO operations per second |
|
Latency |
For Performance: Cluster wide average latency |
Monitored Element |
Description |
|
ControllerVMId |
Nutanix Controller VM Id |
|
Memory |
Total memory assigned to CVM |
|
NumCpus |
Total number of CPUs allocated to a CVM |
A storage pool is a group of physical disks from SSD and/or HDD tier.
Monitored Element |
Description |
|
PoolId |
Storage pool id |
|
PoolName |
Name of the storage pool |
|
TotalCapacity |
Total capacity of the storage pool Note: An alert if there is drop in capacity may indicate a bad disk. |
|
UsedCapacity |
Number of bytes used in the storage pool |
Monitored Element |
Description |
|
IOPerSecond |
Number of IO operations served per second from this storage pool. |
|
AvgLatencyUsecs |
Average IO latency for this storage pool in microseconds |
A container is a subset of available storage within a storage pool. Containers hold the virtual disks (vDisks) used by virtual machines. Selecting a storage pool for a new container defines the physical disks where the vDisks will be stored.
Monitored Element |
Description |
|
ContainerId |
Container id |
|
ContainerName |
Name of the container |
|
TotalCapacity |
Total capacity of the container |
|
UsedCapacity |
Number of bytes used in the container |
Monitored Element |
Description |
|
IOPerSecond |
Number of IO operations served per second from this container. |
|
AvgLatencyUsecs |
Average IO latency for this container in microseconds |
Monitored Element |
Description |
|
Discovery IP Address |
IP address used for discovery of cluster |
|
Cluster Incarnation ID |
Unique ID of cluster |
|
CPU Usage |
CPU usage for all the nodes of cluster |
|
Memory Usage |
Memory usage for all the nodes of cluster |
|
Node IP address |
External IP address of Node |
|
System Temperature |
System Temperature |
Monitored Element |
Description |
|
Disk State/health |
Node state as returned by the PRISM [REST /hosts “state” attribute ] |
|
Disk ID |
ID assigned to the disk |
|
Disk Name |
Name of the disk (Full path where meta data stored) |
|
Disk Serial Number |
Serial number of disk |
|
Hypervisor IP |
Host OS IP where disk is installed |
|
Tire Name |
Disk Tire |
|
CVM IP |
Cluster VM IP which controls the disk |
|
Total Capacity |
Total Disk capacity |
|
Used Capacity |
Total Disk used |
|
Online |
If Disk is online or offline |
|
Location |
Disk location |
|
Cluster Name |
Disk cluster name |
|
Discovery IP address |
IP address through which Disk was discovered |
|
Disk Status |
Status of the disk |
Monitored Element |
Description |
|
Node State/health |
Node state as returned by the PRISM [REST /hosts “state” attribute ] |
|
Node IP address |
External IP address of Node |
|
IPMI Address |
IPMI IP address of Node |
|
Block Model |
Hardware model of block |
|
Block Serial Number |
Serial number of block |
|
CPU Usage % |
CPU usage for Node |
|
Memory Usage % |
Memory usage for node |
|
Fan Count |
Total fans |
|
Power Supply Count |
Total Power supply |
|
System Temperature |
System Temperature |
Monitored Element |
Description |
|
Fan number |
Fan number |
|
Fan speed |
Fan speed in RPM |
Element |
Description |
|
Power supply number |
Power supply number |
|
Power supply status |
Power supply status whether present or absent |
If you would like to checkout the Nutanix management pack on your SCOM instance, please go to our portal to download the management pack and documentation.
This management pack was development by our awesome engineering team @ Nutanix. Kudos to Yogi and team for a job well done!!! 😉 I hope I gave you a good feel for Nutanix monitoring using SCOM. As always, if you have any questions or comments, please leave below….
Until next time….Rob
To continue NPP training series here is my next topic: Drive Breakdown
If you missed other parts of my series, check out links below:
Part 1 – NPP Training series – Nutanix Terminology
Part 2 – NPP Training series – Nutanix Terminology
Cluster Architecture with Hyper-V
Data Structure on Nutanix with Hyper-V
I/O Path Overview
To give credit, most of the content was taken from Steve Poitras’s “Nutanix Bible” blog as his content is the most accurate and then I put a Hyper-V lean to it.
In this section I’ll cover how the various storage devices (SSD / HDD) are broken down, partitioned and utilized by the Nutanix platform. NOTE: All of the capacities used are in Base2 Gibibyte (GiB) instead of the Base10 Gigabyte (GB). Formatting of the drives with a filesystem and associated overheads has also been taken into account.
SSD devices store a few key items which are explained in greater detail above:
Below we show an example of the storage breakdown for a Nutanix node’s SSD(s):
NOTE: The sizing for OpLog is done dynamically as of release 4.0.1 which will allow the extent store portion to grow dynamically. The values used are assuming a completely utilized OpLog. Graphics and proportions aren’t drawn to scale. When evaluating the Remaining GiB capacities do so from the top down. For example the Remaining GiB to be used for the OpLog calculation would be after Nutanix Home and Cassandra have been subtracted from the formatted SSD capacity. Most models ship with 1 or 2 SSDs, however the same construct applies for models shipping with more SSD devices. For example, if we apply this to an example 3060 or 6060 node which has 2 x 400GB SSDs this would give us 100GiB of OpLog, 40GiB of Content Cache and ~440GiB of Extent Store SSD capacity per node. Storage for Cassandra is a minimum reservation and may be larger depending on the quantity of data.
For a 3061 node which has 2 x 800GB SSDs this would give us 100GiB of OpLog, 40GiB of Content Cache and ~1.1TiB of Extent Store SSD capacity per node.
Since HDD devices are primarily used for bulk storage, their breakdown is much simpler:
For example, if we apply this to an example 3060 node which has 4 x 1TB HDDs this would give us 80GiB reserved for Curator and ~3.4TiB of Extent Store HDD capacity per node.
NOTE: the above values are accurate as of 4.0.1 and may vary by release.
Next up, I figured we would look at some of the cool software technologies that run on our CVM (Controller Virtual Machine), next up Elastic Dedupe Engine.
Until next time, Rob
Another 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 hypervisor based on KVM and Acropolis. 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
To continue NPP training series, here is my next topic: I/O Path Overview
If you missed other parts of my series, check out links below:
Part 1 – NPP Training series – Nutanix Terminology
Part 2 – NPP Training series – Nutanix Terminology
Cluster Architecture with Hyper-V
Data Structure on Nutanix with Hyper-V
To give credit, most of the content was taken from Steve Poitras’s “Nutanix Bible” blog as his content is the most accurate and then I put a Hyper-V lean-to it.
The Nutanix IO path is composed of the following high-level components:
In this section I’ll cover how the various storage devices (SSD / HDD) are broken down, partitioned and utilized by the Nutanix platform. NOTE: All of the capacities used are in Base2 Gibibyte (GiB) instead of the Base10 Gigabyte (GB). Formatting of the drives with a filesystem and associated overheads has also been taken into account.
SSD devices store a few key items which are explained in greater detail above:
Below we show an example of the storage breakdown for a Nutanix node’s SSD(s):
NOTE: The sizing for OpLog is done dynamically as of release 4.0.1 which will allow the extent store portion to grow dynamically. The values used are assuming a completely utilized OpLog. Graphics and proportions aren’t drawn to scale. When evaluating the Remaining GiB capacities do so from the top down.
For example the Remaining GiB to be used for the OpLog calculation would be after Nutanix Home and Cassandra have been subtracted from the formatted SSD capacity. Most models ship with 1 or 2 SSDs, however the same construct applies for models shipping with more SSD devices. For example, if we apply this to an example 3060 or 6060 node which has 2 x 400GB SSDs this would give us 100GiB of OpLog, 40GiB of Content Cache and ~440GiB of Extent Store SSD capacity per node. Storage for Cassandra is a minimum reservation and may be larger depending on the quantity of data.
For a 3061 node which has 2 x 800GB SSDs this would give us 100GiB of OpLog, 40GiB of Content Cache and ~1.1TiB of Extent Store SSD capacity per node.
Since HDD devices are primarily used for bulk storage, their breakdown is much simpler:
For example, if we apply this to an example 3060 node which has 4 x 1TB HDDs this would give us 80GiB reserved for Curator and ~3.4TiB of Extent Store HDD capacity per node.
For a 6060 node which has 4 x 4TB HDDs this would give us 80GiB reserved for Curator and ~14TiB of Extent Store HDD capacity per node.
Statistics and technical specifications: opportunites-digitales.com/avis-expressvpn/
NOTE: the above values are accurate as of 4.0.1 and may vary by release.
Next up, Drive Breakdown on Nutanix
Until next time, Rob….
To continue NPP training series here is my next topic: Data Structure on Nutanix with Hyper-V
If you missed other parts of my series, check out links below:
Part 1 – NPP Training series – Nutanix Terminology
Part 2 – NPP Training series – Nutanix Terminology
Cluster Architecture with Hyper-V
To give credit due, most of the content was taken from Steve Poitras’s “Nutanix Bible” blog as his content is the most accurate and then I put a Hyper-V lean to it and have updated the graphics for Hyper-V.
The NDFS (Nutanix Distributed Filesystem) is composed of the following high-level structs:
Below we show how these map between NDFS and the Hyper-V:
Below we show how these structs relate between the various filesystems:
Here is another graphical representation of how these units are logically related:
Next up, I/O Path Overview
Until next time, Rob…
To continue NPP training series here is my next topic: Cluster Components
If you missed other parts of my series, check out links below:
Part 1 – NPP Training series – Nutanix Terminology
Part 2 – NPP Training series – Nutanix Terminology
Cluster Architecture with Hyper-V
Data Structure on Nutanix with Hyper-V
I/O Path Overview
To give credit, most of the content was taken from Steve Poitras’s “Nutanix Bible” blog as his content is the most accurate and then I put a Hyper-V lean to it.
The Nutanix platform is composed of the following high-level components:
Next up, Data Structures which comprises high level structs for Nutanix Distributed Filesystem
Until next time, Rob….
