Nutanix Basics¶

Topics to be discussed:

NX Node Naming Convention¶

Objective: familiarity yourself with native NX! For not NX Systems, please get in touch with the designated Vendor

Cluster & Node architecture¶

Objective: prepare yourself to be able to draw up our architecture

I/O CDP¶

Objective: explain why the architecture delivers high performance I/O and its failsafe data protection

Reads and writes in an RF2 example
OpLog - Quantity of SSDs used by the OpLog
- Software RAID 1
- < 16kb & > 64kb write pathing
Guarantee of how a write operation is committed correctly and a read request is 100% true of its original. Expand on this further to drive pre-fail notification and subsequent offline-ing of a disk
North/South & East/West data locality of virtual machine hot data (explain that no other HCI vendor functions in this manner)

Data locality¶

Objective: re-iterate the North/South & East/West CDP and where it isn’t a good fit

Use the example of a VM migration where the data is local, VM moves and where data now resides in relation to its original
When data locality doesn’t work well (de-dupe, ABS and storage only nodes)

Replication Factors (RF2 & RF3)¶

Objective: understand how to identify when to use 2 or 3

Describe the minimum requirements for RF2 & RF3 and in which scenarios would each apply?
What is the ‘maximum cluster size’ for RF2 before tipping into RF3? (provoke a discussion as no actual number exists)
RF3 can suffer up to 25% performance degradation versus RF2 due to its additional write and metadata updates

Storage Pools and Containers¶

Objective: describe the methods used by the hypervisors and that minimal is the utopia

Which hypervisors use what protocols
What is the ‘perfect’ amount of Containers in a single Nutanix Cluster?
Store templates and VMs on the same container

Compression / Deduplication / Erasure Coding (EC-X)¶

Objective: explain the different disk optimisation techniques and their relevance

Compression
- Inline and post process
- LZ4 inline
- LZ4HC 3 days after
- Do not use for encrypted data
Deduplication
- Block size is 8KB
Erasure Coding
- What it is and it’s purpose?
- 8k & 4k granularity for EC-X
When to use the methods above in different environments
Don’t forget to mention the dynamic behaviours and how no other HCI vendors compare to us

Data Protection¶

Objective: describe the differences of each, functionality gained and lost with each hypervisor and why snapshots are not backups

Our snapshot process
Asynchronous, Synchronous and Metro Availability
- Why Synchronous replication is not Metro
The differences in functionality of these features for each hypervisor
NearSync and its pre-requisites
- SSD overhead, minimum SSD size and quantity depending on storage requirement plus CPU cores…
- Review this document for the latest PD Documentation.
CloudConnect
- AWS S3 & Azure Blobs (these require compute resource for the CVM)

Networking¶

Objective: describe the physical (and logical) network elements for Nutanix including the terminology used

Physical ports on a node
- IPMI and failover IPMI
- LAN ports
CVM NIC layout
‘Storage traffic’ separation
Access and Trunk ports
LACP
Hypervisor and CVM ‘same subnet’ requirement
Support ‘supported’ NIC speeds and refer to the Networking Best Practice Guide (BP2050)

Mixing and matching of nodes¶

Objective: describe the flexibility and ‘configure to order’ approach with the caveats of mixing

Considerations
- Unable to mix hardware vendors in the same cluster
- Multiple clusters each using different hardware vendors is permitted
- Mixed cluster with storage heavy nodes, the impact of imbalance
- Part population of drives
- SSD imbalance across nodes and the potential impact to Curator
- Different CPUs in the same Nutanix Cluster from AOS, hypervisor and workload perspective
- Mixed node configurations in the same block is not permitted, it’s not a technical reason

Expansion and Reduction¶

Objective: describe the flexibility of cluster explanation and node eviction

Flexible
- Add any node of the same hardware vendor
- Remove a node from a cluster for re-purposing
  - Reclaim licenses
  - Duration of node eviction

Failure scenarios¶

Objective: preparing for customer failure questions during demos and workshops

Node failure
CVM failure
- …and rolling upgrade
Disk failure
SSD failure (disks 1&2)
- On a single SSD node
  - Node no longer accessible
- One a dual SSD node
  - CVM reboots node to check metadata
NTP failure
- Cluster won’t start
- Protection domain snapshots fail

Shadow Clones¶

Objective: describe why it exists and also that it’s not just for VDI

Why have it?
What hypervisors are supported?
What triggers the feature on non-AHV clusters? (The three CVM trigger)
Functionality difference between ESXi / Hyper-V and AHV (Copy of write, no waiting for three CVM trigger)

Data-at-rest-Encryption¶

Objective: awareness to position the software and hardware options and pre-requisites

The software and hardware options
Differences in functionality between hypervisors
KMS options, third party and Nutanix native

Prism / Prism Central¶

Objective: overview the Element and Central differences, the fully distributed architecture(s) and resilience

Prism Element navigation and demonstrate how to deliver a ‘10-15 minute first meeting demo’
Prism Central and Prism Pro features
Prism Central Scale-Out

Nutanix Files¶

Objective: overview the feature and use-case(s)

What is it and why do we have it?
Hypervisors supported
Protocols supported
Replication options

Nutanix Volumes¶

Objective: overview the feature and possible use-case(s)

What is it and why do we have it?
Hypervisors supported
Protocols supported
Replication options

Hypervisors¶

Objective: check familiarity of the hypervisors and supporting eco-system components as well as some basics

VMware vSphere, vCenter, Intelligent Operations (previously vROps), vRealize Automation
Microsoft Hyper-V, VMM, SCVMM, SCOM
AHV
- Background, explain the KVM story
- Pricing
- HA / DRS / EVC equivalent features and our naming conventions