11/1/21, 12:41 PM Nutanix Study Notes (Part 3) | InfraPCS

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Nutanix Study Notes (Part 3)

This post is my personal study technical note Nutanix Hyperconverged Solution drafted during my personal
knowledge update.  This post is not intended to cover all the part of the solution and some note is based on my
own understanding of the solution. My intention to draft this note is to outline the key solution elements for
quick readers.

The note is the third part of the whole note. The previous posts are as per the below link:

Nutanix Study Notes (Part 1)

Nutanix Study Notes (Part 2)

Deployment
Nutanix installs AHV and the Nutanix Controller VM at the factory, re-image in the field if needs other
Hypervisor.

Foundation will be used to re-image and create the cluster. Foundation can be accessed via Java Applet or CVM
port 8000.
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Discover Nodes
Discover blocks and nodes Close and accept
Set the redundancy factor at cluster level (RF2 or RF3)
Define Cluster
Cluster Name/IP
NTP/DNS
Network Info (CVM/Hypervisor NetMask/GW, CVM memory, option for backplane LAN)
Setup Node
Hypervisor hostname/IP
CVM IP
Select Image
AOS Image
Hypervisor image (whitelisted)

Post Deployment Check

Concluding the installation by running NCC (Nutanix Cluster Check)

Results: Pass/Fail/Warn/Info
Run from console or by command “ncc” on CVM with below example
NCC health_checks system_checks ….
NCC rerun_failing_plugins=True
NCC health_checks run_all –parallel=4
Check status, run command on CVM: cluster status.
Enable remote support service Pulse and Alerts.

Configure the cluster via Prism

Below items will can be configured

Name Servers
Network Connections
File System Whitelist
NTP Services
SMTP Server

Non-Configurable Items:
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Local datastore name
Setting and contents of any Controller VM Close and accept
AHV: hypervisor configure/iSCSI/open vSwitch/taking snapshot of CVM

ESXi: NFS/VM swap location/VM start-shutdown order/iSCSI/Standard Nutanix vSwitch/vmk0

interface/SSH enabled/Host firewall ports/taking snapshot of CVM
Hyper-V: English Language/Hostname/Internal and external network adapter name/Windows roles and
features/Multipath IO/CVM configuration

Cluster Management
Prism Element

Run on each node with a leader elected to handle HTTP

Login through Nutanix cluster IP
Listen on port 80 and 9440

Prism Central

Support Multi-Cluster management through single console

Additional capabilities as Calm, Flow and Beam
Calm – Automation the management of the cluster, Application Lifecycle
Management/Customizable Blueprints/Nutanix Marketplace/Governance/Hybrid Cloud
Management
Flow – End to end network management
Beam – Multi-cloud optimization service (Support AWS, Azure and etc.)
Access the console by the IP of Prism Central VM
Prism pro license (60 days trial, per node basis with yearly subscription) adds below features:
Customer dashboard
Capacity planning (CPU/Memory/Storage Capacity)
Advanced search
Prism pro license can be disabled if needed
Scenario view is a “as if” scenario to access future resource requirement
Main tabs: Explore, Analysis, Planning, Calm, Alerts
Search tab: magnify icon or press slash “/” key
Explore tab: Support filter, tile view/circles view, group option, action.
Report tab: customer can define log/background, style, data and report schedule.
Proxy Whitelist: need when TCP port 9440 is not opened between prism central and clusters and bypass
the proxy.
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Close and accept

Prism Self Service Portal

https://cvm_ip:9440/ssp
Integrated with AD for user authentication
Components in SSP: Projects (define user and roles)/Roles/Catalog/VMs/Users/Images
A special view of Prims Central
Customer support case created on Prism Central
User
Prism Central Administrator
Self-Service Administrator
Project User

Nutanix REST API (V1 and V2)

Use HTTP request to get information as well as make changes to the configuration.
Output of the commands return JSON format.
REST API Explorer is available for reference on Prism.

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Download from Prism web console. Close and accept

Common commands:

Cluster connection: Connect-NutanixCluster -Server xx.xx.xx.xx -Username xxx -Password xxx”

Connected Cluster Info: “Get-NutanixCluster [-Server cvm_ip] ”
Cmdlets version: Get-NutanixCmdletsInfo
Use grid/expand for output formatting.

NCLI – manage the Nutanix Cluster

Download from Prism web console.

Can run from local machine (preferred) or any CVM.
Command format is “entity action p1=value p2=value…”
Embedded help in command: “entity help” or “entity action help”

ACLI – manage Acropolis portion of the Nutanix product, including AHV host, network, snapshots and VMs.

Run from CVM by type “acli” at the shell prompt, exit by typing “exit”.
Command format is “entity.action p1=value p2=value…”

Health Monitoring in Prism Element

Health Dashboard
Analysis Dashboard
Performance data will be kept for 3 months (6 months for Prism Central), output by CSV and JSON
format.
Alerts Dashboard
Alert Policy
Create Policy to monitor selected entities and metrics for customer alert.
Email configuration
Every alert or daily digest
Create rules for Email notification
Create email template

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Backup and DR
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VM-Centric Data Protection Close and accept

Time Stream – A set of snapshots stored on the same cluster as the source VM.(Native on-site backup)
NearSync – New feather since 5.1 to protection the data up to 1 minute (RPO=1 minute). Lightweight
Snapshots (LWS) is introduced to create snapshots on the metadata level. Snapshots are stored on LWS
store, which is on SSD tier.
Cloud Connect – AWS/Azure. CVM on AWS/Azure will create a single node cluster with 20TB Capacity. For
AWS, S3 is used for data extents and EBS for metadata. For Azure, Azure Blob storage is used for data ex-
tents and Blob Storage backed disk is used for metadata. By default, the data transmitted to the remote
site is deduplicated. Citrix cloud could be connected by Citrix Cloud Connector.
Remote replication for off-site backups: site-to-site replication. Snapshot is replicated Async.
VM snapshot is crash consistent (VSS for app consistency)
VM snapshot can be taken on a defined schedule or on demand.
VM snapshot come with an expiration time and Nutanix cluster will automatically delete the snapshot.
Non-critical files are not included in snapshot. (Swap, log and etc.)
Remote site – Remote site could be another physical cluster or cloud provider (AWS or Azure)

Protection Domain (Async DR) – A group of VMs backed up locally and optional replicated to remote site.
(Active/Inactive)

Protection Domain (Metro Availability) – Specified (active) storage container is synchronized to (standby)
storage container with same name on a remote site.

Witness could be added as an option to enable auto-failover and avoid “split-brain” scenario.
Three Failure Handling Options – Witness, Automatic Resume (after 10 seconds by default), Manual (All
VMs paused).
Apart from replicating data synchronously to the remote site, the active Nutanix cluster creates and repli-
cates snapshots at a built-in schedule of 4 hours. A user-configured schedule with a replication interval of
4 hours or lower suppresses the built-in schedule. The built-in schedule continues to run if the user-con-
figured schedule is greater than 4 hours. Only metadata is replicated, so a more aggressive replication
schedule does not incur a higher replication cost.

Data Protection Strategies:

Two-Way Mirroring
One-to-Many Topology
Many-to-One Topology
Many-to-Many
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Close and accept

Operation Notes
Image Service

Enable user to import images to virtual management.

Support raw, vhd, vmdk, vdi, iso and qcow2 disk format.
Need install virtIO prior to importing for AHV.
Clone the image after importing.

Security Management

User access control (Local and LDAP)

SSL for console access (Disable SSH V2/V3, Enable TLS)
Key-based SSH for node access
D@RE through self-encrypting drives
Data on SED is always encrypted.
Protection can be disable/enable at any time on cluster.
Enable protection on cluster required a separate key to access data.
Each disk has a unique Key
Use local or remote key management servers (KMS)
When a node restarts/power cycle, CVM retrieves the key from KMS.
Support SafeNet keySecure and Vormetrix Key Management Servers.
No performance penalty.

VM Customization

Cloud-init – Utility to customize Linux VMs, configuration file is written by YAML.

Sysprep – Prepare Windows
ISO for cloud-init/sysprep is mounted on bus IDE 3.

Migration VM from ESXi to AHV

1. Pre-migration
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To 2. Install
find Nutanix
out more, Guesthow
including Tool
to for Windows
control VM
cookies, see(VM Mobility for
here:
Cookie Linux)
Policy
3. Migrate VM disk to DSF
4. Convert VM disk by importing Close and accept
5. Create new VM in AHV and attach disks

Nutanix Guest Tools

Guest Agent service – Communicate with CVM

FLR CLI – Perform FLR from VM snapshot.
VM Mobility Driver – In-place Hypervisor conversion.
VSS requestor & Hardware provider for Windows
Application consistent snapshot for Linux (By Script)
Request
VIP must be configured on Nutanix Cluster
One empty IDE CD-ROM slot
Port 2074

Pulse and Alerts Notification (Support HTTP Proxy)

Pulse – Send status message to Nutanix server every 24 hours

Alert Email – Enabled by default
Remote Support Service – Can be enabled for a certain time for remote SSH connection from
ncs01.nutainx.ent or ncs02.nutanix .net.

Maintenance
Lifecycle Management

Command run with locale en_US.UTF-8 only. (check by running /usr/bin/locale)

Start/stop a cluster: cluster start/stop
Shutdown a node: Shutdown/Move VM, put host into MM, shutdown CVM (cvm_shutdown –P now), shut-
down the host.
Start a node: Revert sequence. After CVM is powered up, check the cluster status by “ncli cluster status |
grep -A 15 cvm_ip_addr”.
Shutting down more than one nodes need shutdown the cluster first.
For ESXi patch, shutdown the CVM first before patching.
Life Cycle Manager
A framework and a set of modules for inventory and update.
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Independent of AOS, not tie to AOS release cycle.
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Access through Prism interface.
Two functions: Inventory and update the cluster. Close and accept
Log: genesis.log and lcm_ops.out.

Cluster Expansion

Support below expansion:

Add new node to existing block (update /etc/nutanix/factory_config.json with rackable_unit_serial &
node_position)
Add new block with multiple nodes
Add all nodes from existing cluster to another existing cluster
Node need upgrade or downgrade(re-image) to add to existing cluster
AOS: /home/nutanix/cluster/bin/cluster –u new_node_vcm_ip upgrade_node
Re-image is not supported for D@RE nodes.

Firmware Upgrade

Firmware upgrade type:

AOS Upgrade – live upgrade from console
Hypervisor – One node at each time, follow hypervisor instructions and node shutdown procedure.
Disk firmware – One node at each time.
NCC – Upgrade NCC with one at each time.
CVM memory could be expanded by one-click on console.

This entry was posted in Hyperconverged Solution, Nutanix and tagged Hyperconverged, Notes, Nutanix, Study
on February 7, 2019 [https://ranchh.wordpress.com/2019/02/07/nutanix-study-notes-part-3/] .

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