HAIKU.. holding to adopt Nutanix AHV.. hold no more…

Since Nutanix had introduced AHV –  there had been lots of speculation as Nutanix was moving out of HCI and moving towards full stack enterprise platform. More can be found about Nutanix AHV at Josh Odgers’s excellent blog here.

With every release Nutanix AHV we had been seen new features been added, but the only thing a general adaptation was holding it was a proper backup solution. Perhaps there were adaptation of AHV using native data protection or using legacy backup solutions, some vendors* do supports AHV but it does not seems to go with them looking at the other factors.

Last week to fill the gap Comtrade Softwares well-known for SCOM MP for Nutanix had released backup software exclusive for Nutanix Platform.. HYCU.. pronounced as haiku is form of japanese poetry known for simplicity.. is well suited name for the solution following Nutanix design simplicity..

HYCU is using Nutanix API talks to Nutanix Acropolis directly and not to the hypervisor running on Nutanix Platform making it hypervisor agnostics. It also support automatic discovery of applications running inside virtual machines to protect them.

The best part of HYCU is it follow Nutanix simplistic approach. In may test setup i was literally done in less than 5 min.. then i was left thinking what to do next.. have a coffee..

The dashboard is designed keeping in my the most important required information available in single sight for administrators as well as any C levels.

HYCU currently support backup targets as Azure, AWS or any NFS or CIFS shares or Nutanix AFS.

The protection is based on policy which can be customised as per your need to be compliant with primary and or secondary backup target.

The intuitive interfaces is really going to make administrators job easy with access to required options and information available.. with less babysitting.

HYCU has also introduce self-service for end users to remove dependency from administrators and simplifing recovery when needed.

Moving forward although it is release one and still room for developement lots of backups vendors are trying to jump onboard and support AHV. The key with HYCU is its cost which makes much affordable for every sector and to eliminate the hypervisor tax without off-setting to other side..

Stay tuned for hands-on videos of install and configuration of HYCU..

 

 

End-to-End Data Management with Nutanix AHV – Rubrik

Last week, we announced Rubrik Alta, our ninth and most significant product release. Alta brings many cool, innovative additions. One of the items that I’m most excited about is support for Nutanix Acropolis Hypervisor (AHV) virtual machines. Rubrik now provides end-to-end data management for Nutanix. So, users can securely access data instantly, automate protection policies, and manage…

via End-to-End Data Management with Nutanix AHV — Product – Rubrik

How easy is to replace disk in Nutanix AOS — VMwaremine

Q: How many disks types you know? A: Two. Those already broken and those will fail soon 🙂 How Nutanix AOS handle disk failures? Nutanix AOS has build in, out of the box self… The post How easy is to replace disk in Nutanix AOS appeared first on VMwaremine – Artur Krzywdzinski | Nutanix.

via How easy is to replace disk in Nutanix AOS — VMwaremine – Artur Krzywdzinski | Nutanix

Simplified Sizing for Virtualizing SAP Environments — Long White Virtual Clouds

I recently had the pleasure of attending SAP & ASUG SapphireNow conference in Orlando Florida, where the audience learned that SAP systems now have up to 76% of world GDP running through them. I had many questions about sizing SAP for virtualized environments, which also comes up on a daily basis in the work my…

via Simplified Sizing for Virtualizing SAP Environments — Long White Virtual Clouds

Quick Tip : Create Phoenix ISO for bare metal image & Expand Nutanix Cluster manually from cli

Nutanix prism allows you to expand cluster in 1-click fashion which will allow to discover, image (foundation), configure network and expand cluster (expand storage pool) in two page wizard, but some times due to unknown reason or environmental restrictions you cannot use prism wizard..

1. Use field guide to Image the node with your choice of hypervisor.
2. Use phoenix to get CVM Configured on the node..

but recently you don’t get to download phoenix iso from support but instead generate from any existing CVM as below;

allssh  ls  ~/foundation/nos/

to find where you have AOS tar uploaded already, then ssh to that CVM..and run

mkdir /home/nutanix/foundation/tmp

it might possibly exists.. change to foundation binary directory

cd /home/nutanix/foundation/bin

run below command to create phoenix iso..

..upto foundation 3.6

./foundation --generate_phoenix --nos_package=/home/nutanix/foundation/nos/
nutanix_installer_package-release-euphrates-x.x.x-stable.tar
--temp_dir=/home/nutanix/foundation/tmp

for foundation version 3.7 above

./generate_iso phoenix --aos-package ~/foundation/nos/nutanix_installer_package-release-euphrates-x.x.x.x-stable.tar.gz 
--esx ~/foundation/isos/hypervisor/esx/installer-esxi.iso
--temp_dir=~/foundation/tmp

replace the currect aos/hypervisor image tar file and version..

WinSCP to CVM and download the Phoenix ISO file to be used for new node imaging.

Once node is ready, use Prism Cluster Expand to configure. if you cannot you can always manually set IP address to hypervisor and CVM using IPv6 or through hypervisor internal network. Once IP addresses are set and connectivity is verified run below command on your Nutanix cluster to discover the new node by your Nutanix cluster.

ncli cluster discover-nodes

Which should show output as below

Cluster Id :
 Controller Vm Address : 192.168.29.234
 Current Network Interface : eth0
 Foundation Version : foundation-3.5-7ca0fb1f
 Hypervisor : hyperv
 Hypervisor Address : 192.168.29.238
 Hypervisor Version : Microsoft_Windows_Server_2012_R2_Datacenter
 Ip : fe80::215:5dff:fe09:8c00%eth0
 Ipmi Address : 192.168.29.242
 Node Position : D
 Node Uuid : 50d9b2f9-d099-4a7f-bc4b-4417d4a4413e
 Nos Version : 5.0.1
 Rackable Unit Model : NX-1065-G4
 Rackable Unit Serial : 16SM6501XXXX
 Sed Node : false
 Svm Ip : 192.168.29.234

Note the node Uuid and run below command to add the node to cluster.

ncli cluster add-node node-uuid="50d9b2f9-d099-4a7f-bc4b-4417d4a4413e"

Go have coffee and when you are back login to Prism to see the newly added node or new storage size..

 

Quick Tip : Restore Nutanix Snapshot (Expired) from nCLI

One of the life saving feature of Nutanix platform is native data protection, now every other vendor has it so whats so great about it… I do remember at one of our customer had failed upgrade of application in a critical virtual machine and to get the virtual machine out and running from storage snapshot how much it takes..

The best part of Nutanix data protetion is virtual machine granularity, it does not only give per virtual machine protection,  it also enables to spin-up selective virtual machine as test/dev isolated environment in minutes.

Addition to that Nutanix have hidden feature of data protection to keep few expired snapshots in case you does not noticed you have curruption days over your retention. By default the value is keep 5 snapshots (kb1531) which can be seen from ncli as below;

ncli pd ls-sched name="pd-name"

and can be updated as below if required.

ncli pd set-schedule min-snap-retention-count=3 name="pd-name"

So set it with cuation if you have less then 5 snapshot retention and running low on disk space.

But what if the snapshot has been expired and believe me it has saved me coulpe of time when someone from top c level mess up with data and after strugling for few days to realize your snapshot retention has passed.

so what you do .. connect to Nutanix cluster by ssh..

ncli pd ls

to list all your protection domains configured..

ncli pd ls-snaps name="pd-name"

to list all the snapshots.. which show output similar as below

ID : 96731
 Protection Domain : CRM-PD
 Create Time : 02/11/2017 23:30:00 UTC
 Expiry Time : 02/12/2017 23:30:00 UTC
 Virtual Machine(s) : 1

VM Name : CRM-VM01
 Consistency Group : CRM-VM01
 Application consistent... : false
 Power state on recovery : Powered On

NFS Files : 0
 Located at Remote Site : Local
 Snapshot Size : 15.54 GiB (16,689,091,848 bytes)

ID : 96530
 Protection Domain : CRM-PD
 Create Time : 02/10/2017 23:30:00 UTC
 Expiry Time : Expired
 Virtual Machine(s) : 1

VM Name : CRM-VM01
 Consistency Group : CRM-VM01
 Application consistent... : false
 Power state on recovery : Powered On

NFS Files : 0
 Located at Remote Site : Local
 Snapshot Size : 8.95 GiB (9,609,154,312 bytes)

there you see you have a snspshot you need on the date but Expiry Time is Expired, worry not, my retention was just 1 day an minimium retention was set 2 so Acropolis is going to retain minimium 2 snapshots.. now prism also shows expired snapshots and allows operations on it.. but i still run old NOS..for some unknown reason 😦

ncli pd restore-snapshot name="CRM-PD" snap-id="96530" vm-names="CRM-VM01" '
replace="false" path-prefix="/Restored-CRM-VM01" vm-name-prefix="Restored-"

and voila..! vm restored and resgitered in no time.. just power on and have a coffee..

How To – AHV Acropolis Dynamic Scheduling

With introduction to AOS 5.0 Nutanix had release one of the most competing feature as ADS which makes AHV fully enterprise ready and more competing.

Acropolis Dynamic Scheduling or ADS will proactively monitors AHV cluster for compute and storage I/O and migrate VMs to avoid any hotspots similar to VMware DRS or Hyper-V SC PRO, but as built-in intelligence u don’t have much to worry about configuring it properly.

ADS will be enabled default and to verify run

acli ads.get

can be disabled from acli using

acli ads.update enable=false

and can be re-enabled using

acli ads.update enable=true

so now ADS is enable whats next, set rules configure affinity rules.

Currently AHV supports VM-Host and VM-VM anti-affinity policy only.

VM-Host Affinity

Using VM-Host affinity you can make sure that VM will only be able to run on selected hosts only.

VM-Host affinity cannot be configured if you have HA set for reserved host.

To verify run acli ha.get

acli ha.get
..
 reservation_type: "kAcropolisHAReserveSegments"
..

verify reservation_type is not set as kAcropolisHAReserveHosts.

To set reservation_type as Reserve Segments run

 acli ha.update reservation_type=kAcropolisHAReserveSegments

To set VM-Host affinity you can select host list while creating VM or update VM later.

and selecting hosts you want to set affinity to.

so now you have list of host that VM is allowed to run on.

Now if you try to migrate that VM you will be allowed selected hosts only.

ADS will not allow to unset VM-Host affinity while VM is ON but you can do using acli

acli vm.affinity_unset vmname

VM-VM Anti-Affinity

VM-VM anti-affinity allows to make sure VMs will always run on different hosts. Currently it can be set using acli.

In order to define anti-affinity policy you have to create a VM Group and set anti-affinity on that group, so when the VMs are turned ON they are prefered to be on different host, but this policy does not limit ADS from taking action in resource constraints.

Create VM Groups

acli vm_group.create <vm_group_name>

List VM Groups

acli vm_group.list

Add VMs in VM Group

acli vm_group.add_vms webservers vm_list=<vm1_name>,<vm2_name>

List VMs in VM Group

acli vm_group.list_vms <vm_group_name>

Get VM Group Information to see Anti-Affinity Policy

acli vm_group.get webservers

*Noticed no anti-affiity policy defined

Set Anti-Affinity Policy to VM Group

acli vm_group.antiaffinity_set <vm_group_name>

Get VM Group Information to verify Anti-Affinity Policy

acli vm_group.get <vm_group_name>

Now when the VMs will be turned they will be placed on different host.