As Nutanix .Next 2021 is around the corner, there are some key announcements and partnership announced. Obviously the core Acropolis is always the key with new features and enhancement with simple disaster recovery and better cloud capabilities, and this year no different.
While most of you already have container workloads deployed in different flavors on-premise, the ability to deploy Cloud PaaS Services into your on-prem container is a relatively new thing. With the announced support for Azure Arc enabled Data Services on Karbon it is possible to deploy Azure managed SQL instances or PostgreSQL Hyperscale Services to your Arc managed Nutanix Karbon Kubernetes Cluster.
In this post i will guide you thru the process to deploy a Karbon Cluster, register it to Azure Arc, create a Data Controller, a custom location and a PostgreSQL Instance on your on-premise infrastructure.
Create a Karbon Cluster
To create your Karbon Cluster you have to enable Karbon on your Prism Central instance. Note that a IPAM enabled Network is required. Prism need to control the Network where the Kubernetes Clusters are deployed.
Example for a Production Cluster. You can choose the Dev Option as well.
Today, 2021-09-20, is a good day for all Nutanix Era customers and fans out there since version 2.3 has been released. Highlighted New Features There are nine new features in this dot release and i’d like to quickly present three of the most important once: You can now deploy the Era management Plane in a…
As a Red Hat Premium Partner and Nutanix Reseller Champion Partner, SVA welcomes the partnership of our focus partners that was concluded on July 29, 2021. The created this press release, we took an opportunity , us with the automated installation of Open Shift to Nutanix to deal.
Many SVA customers 1 already rely on the hyper-convergent Nutanix Webscale architecture in their data centers, often with the cost-neutral Nutanix Acropolis Hypervisor AHV. As the largest Nutanix Reseller Champion Partner in EMEA, SVA looks after all customer groups equally: From small to medium-sized customers or, of course, enterprise customers with more than 500 nodes – we have everything in our program!
Especially with enterprise customers, sooner or later you come across large RedHat installations, this customer group attaches particular importance to a stable and supported Linux distribution → always with enterprise support.
When containers come into play, many of our customers rely on the RedHat Openshift Container Platform (OCP), in fact the enterprise standard in this segment.
It has been particularly painful over the last few years that RedHat does not support the Nutanix Acropolis Hypervisor AHV as an officially certified hypervisor, although Acropolis, like RedHat Virtualization (RHV), also relies on KVM (Kernel Virtual Machine) as a substructure. From a technical point of view there was no real problem, RedHat Enterprise Linux RHEL and the RedHat Openshift container platform OCP ran without problems but were not officially supported by RedHat.
Both players have now heard their customers – with the partnership between Nutanix and RedHat announced on July 29, 2021, there are no longer any support restrictions \ o /
Our experts took this as an opportunity to take a closer look at the setup options of Openshift on Nutanix Acropolis Hypervisor AHV. It quickly became apparent that the “manual” installation did not meet the expectations of our customers, the specifications include an automated and repeatable setup without additional 3rd party tools → This is exactly where the SVA comes into play with its years of expertise in the enterprise environment
Get the overview
If you want to get started quickly with OpenShift, you usually fall back on the IPI (installer-provisioned infrastructure) installation variant . The point is quickly reached at which adjustments such as changing host names on the cluster are required or desired.
Another important point when choosing the installation variant is the existing infrastructure. Factors such as DHCP, DNS and access to the Internet play an important role in the selection of the installation variant and the installation media used for it. We often advise our customers in the on-prem environment to use the UPI (user-provisioned infrastructure) installation variant right from the start and to adapt this accordingly to the conditions in the data center.
Before the installation can start, preparatory work is required. With all OpenShift installation variants, regardless of the platform, the DNS entries must be set in advance.
We use a Linux system, the so-called Helpernode, to install OpenShift. The new CoreOS ISO file will be created on this system. This in turn is used to create the virtual machines on the Nutanix AHV. To provide the so-called ignition files, an NGINX web server was started in a container on the helpernode. A load balancer, also in the form of a container, was provided on the system for our laboratory setup. We have packed the requirements for a successful cluster installation, the provision of the VMs and the actual OpenShift installation into a single script that is executed on the Helpernode.
The Nutanix platform itself can be used and addressed in a variety of ways. In addition to the Restfull API, the Powershell module and the nCLI, it is also possible to work directly with the Acropolis CLI aCLI via SSH connection.
The second variant was chosen because our automation is completely scripted via bash. In addition, if possible, no (paid) 3rd party tools or proprietary tools should be used.
OpenShift installation history
Regardless of the selected installation variant (IPI or UPI), the installation process is identical. The values required for the installation are stored in the install-config.yaml file and used in the further course of the installation.
Fig. 2: RedHat Openshift Setup
Based on the created install-config.yaml file, the OpenShift installation process starts. The Bootstrap Node is required during the initial installation to install the OpenShift Control Plane. If the control plane is ready for use, the compute nodes are installed, which later process the actual workload. After a successful cluster installation, the bootstrap node is no longer required.
Fig. 3: Redhat Openshift Bootstrap Workflow
Automated installation
In order to automatically carry out the OpenShift installation in our laboratory, the following steps were automated:
Install cluster tools
Install Image Server
Install Ignition Server
Install LoadBalancer
Build CoreOS ISO image
Nutanix: Provide Customized CoreOS Image
Create OCP SSH key
Create install-config.yaml
Generate manifestos
Create Ignition Files
Nutanix: Create OCP Nodes
Nutanix: Install CSI Driver
Video 1: OpenShift @AHV – SVA
Conclusion
After the Nutanix-specific hurdles, such as changing the boot order, were mastered, the installation of OpenShift on AHV ran smoothly in the familiar manner. However, a small step backwards was made with the provision of the LoadBalancer. The high-availability HA proxy integrated in OpenShift had to be implemented by manual installation, as is known from OpenShift <4.5.
Due to the lack of Nutanix integration in OpenShift, it is not yet possible to automatically scale additional compute nodes. As announced by Nutanix, the integration is already being worked on. We are looking forward to the upcoming releases and will continue to follow the OpenShift topic on Nutanix AHV with excitement.
Until then, we as SVA already have a solution at the start for our customers which we can fully support, we use the mechanisms provided in the products and do not have to make any changes to the OpenShift or Nutanix AHV products. This guarantees 100% manufacturer support and we are always upgradeable.
With the new release of PC 2021.7, you can protect Nutanix Prism Central against cluster or datacenter failure. You can configure up to 3 Nutanix clusters as backup targets. 44 more words
The new N-series, which also incorporates Sophos cybersecurity technology, is aimed at customers in the high midmarket and in the enterprise.Today, data protection provider Arcserve is announcing its new Arcserve N-Series appliances. The product of a new strategic alliance with Nutanix, the new appliances provide unified data protection, scale, and security to hyperconverged infrastructures [HCI].…
In case anyone had missed last week Nutanix and Redhat had announced alliance to strengthen enterprise offering by certifying RHEL and Openshift on Nutanix AHV.
Today Nutanix had announce new release of Prism Central version 2021.7 with some of much anticipated features and enhancements.
AHV Metro Availability with Witness – With Metro Availability now supported, enterprises can have a full automatic site availability for clusters running Nutanix AHV.
MoreX-Play Actions Added for Playbook – As Prism Central actions based on categories, assigning categories was a big job until now. With new x-play action, that process can be automated to assign / unassign categories to VM, Host, Clusters, etc.
Now X-Play can aswell trigger Ansible workflows and jobs for more guest based automation or management.
Prism Central 1-Click Disaster Recovery– With the new enhancement now Prism Central can be protected from site or cluster failure by native backup / replication upto three clusters. The recovery process is as usual 1-click experience and supports AHV as well as Vmware ESXi.
Flow Microsegmentation – Flow version 1.0 – Now Flow will be independent release and be unlocked from AOS / Prism Central release train. This will allow Flow to be enhance must faster.
Powershell cmdlets v2.0
This release of Prism Central now supports PowerCLI cmdlets version 2.0. PowerCLI cmdlets 2.0 introduces a new set of detailed cmdlets.
If you want to get good at something, do it. If you want to understand something, teach it. And if you want to master something, do both. 56 more words
Today, 2021-06-30, is a good day for all Nutanix Era fans out there since version 2.2 has been released. There are a lot of new and improved features in this release which i trust you’ll find useable no matter what is your preferred DB engine. First of all, Era version 2.2 brings another DB engine,…
Background This is not a big secret, the next famous OS from Microsoft leaked over the Internet few days ago. Windows 11 beta. I’m not a Windows fan, but I’m curious about anything technology related (as you already notice since you are here). I was wondering how it looks and what is the experience. The…
