Nutanix NCSE-Core Dumps

Understanding Thick Provisioned Virtual Disks:

Thick provisioning allocates the entire storage capacity to a virtual disk at creation, consuming physical disk space equivalent to the specified virtual disk size immediately. Thus, accurate resource sizing requires an understanding of the actual disk usage and allocation.

RVTools Overview:

RVTools is a powerful tool for VMware administrators to collect information about their virtual environments, including detailed data on virtual machines, their disks, and resource allocations.

Tabs in RVTools Relevant for Thick Provisioning:

vInfo Tab: This tab provides general information about the virtual machines, including VM name, power state, tools status, and importantly, information about the provisioned storage.

According to the Nutanix Bible, three File Server VMs (FSVMs) are deployed by default in a Nutanix Files deployment to ensure high availability and load balancing​​.

Oracle Database Performance:

Oracle databases can benefit from higher CPU clock speeds as database operations are often CPU-intensive.

Best Practice Consideration:

Higher Clock Speed: Ensuring the nodes have CPUs with higher clock speeds can improve the performance of the Oracle database, particularly for operations that are single-threaded or depend on faster processing speed.

Fewer Cores: While core count is important, the clock speed has a more significant impact on Oracle database performance due to the nature of database operations.

Explanation:

CPU Selection: Nodes with higher clock speeds and fewer cores can provide better performance for Oracle databases compared to nodes with more cores but lower clock speeds.

This is because Oracle databases often benefit more from faster CPU cycles for transactional and query processing.

Outcome:

Choosing nodes with higher clock speeds and fewer cores will ensure optimal performance for the Oracle database deployment on Nutanix.

References: Refer to Nutanix best practices for database performance optimization and Oracle database deployment guidelines.

To meet the FIPS 140-2 Level 2 encryption requirement for data at rest for a federal government prospect, the solution must include the following:

A supported Key Management Server (KMS): Nutanix supports external KMS solutions that are FIPS 140-2 compliant, ensuring secure key management.

Self-Encrypting Drive (SED): SEDs provide hardware-based encryption that meets the FIPS 140-2 Level 2 standard, ensuring that the data is encrypted at rest with high security​​.

IPAM (IP Address Management) in a Nutanix networking configuration provides the following key capabilities:

Automatic IP Address Assignment (DHCP)IPAM allows AHV (Acropolis Hypervisor) to automatically assign IP addresses to virtual machines (VMs) using DHCP. This is crucial for simplifying network management by dynamically allocating IP addresses from a defined pool to VMs as they are created or started. This capability ensures that IP management is centralizedand automated, reducing the need for manual IP address configuration and minimizing the risk of IP address conflicts.

VLAN and Subnet ConfigurationIPAM can configure a VLAN with an associated IP subnet and assign a group of IP addresses within that subnet. This feature allows administrators to define network segments with specific IP ranges, which is essential for organizing and managing network traffic efficiently within the data center. By associating IP addresses with VLANs and subnets, IPAM enhances network segmentation and security.

References:

Nutanix Community Edition Getting Started Guide

Nutanix Bible

To address the performance concerns of a prospective customer evaluating a hybrid configuration versus an all-flash array, the following Nutanix features should be discussed:

Data Locality:

Nutanix ensures that data is kept local to the node where the VM is running. This reduces latency and increases performance by minimizing the distance data must travel over the network.

Automatic Data Tiering:

Nutanix can automatically move frequently accessed data to faster storage tiers (e.g., SSDs) and less frequently accessed data to slower storage tiers (e.g., HDDs). This ensures that critical data gets the performance benefits of faster storage without the need for an entirely all-flash array.

References:

Nutanix Bible​

When sizing a hybrid cluster to replace an existing IT test and development environment, the systems engineer (SE) requires the following additional items besides the aggregate vCPU and RAM requirements:

Working Data Set:

Understanding the size of the working data set helps determine the amount of active data that needs to be stored and accessed frequently. This information is crucial for optimizing the performance and ensuring that sufficient resources are allocated for the active workloads.

Storage Capacity:

The total storage capacity required for the cluster must be assessed to ensure that the new environment can accommodate all the data from the existing cluster. This includes not only the active data but also additional capacity for future growth, snapshots, backups, and other storage needs.

References:

Nutanix Bible​

Understanding the Context:

The project to migrate to the public cloud was largely unsuccessful, indicating underlying issues that need to be identified.

Effective Open-Ended Questions:

What challenges triggered the public cloud initiative?:

Explanation: This question helps understand the initial pain points and motivations for the migration attempt, providing insight into what problems the company was trying to solve.

To address the concern about rebuilding data when a node hosting 100TB of data goes offline, Nutanix uses the distribution of rebuild tasks across all nodes. This approach significantly reduces the time required for data rebuilding by leveraging the collective resources of the entire cluster, ensuring faster recovery and minimizingthe impact on performance​​.

Understanding Customer Requirements:

The customer needs to run z/Virtual Machine (z/VM) for mission-critical workloads.

Nutanix Support:

z/OS and z/VM Support: Nutanix currently does not support IBM mainframe environments, including z/OS and z/VM.

To achieve N+2 resiliency for the entire cluster, the configuration can be adjusted by:

Increasing the number of Nodes: Adding more nodes enhances the cluster's ability to tolerate failures by distributing data across a larger number of nodes.

Increasing the SSD capacity per Node: Higher SSD capacity per node can improve data distribution and redundancy, ensuring that the cluster can maintain performance and availability even during failures​​.

Understanding the Prospect's Goals:

The prospect aims to replace a mainframe environment, reduce the datacenter footprint, and enhance disaster recovery for mission-critical applications.

Relevance of Document Collections:

Nutanix Bible: Provides comprehensive technical details and architecture insights but may not directly address business outcomes and real-world success stories.

Knowledge Base Articles: Offer troubleshooting and technical guidance but are not focused on high-level strategic goals and outcomes.

Case Studies: Present real-world examples of how other organizations have successfully implemented Nutanix solutions to achieve similar goals, providing a persuasive and relatable narrative.

Best Practices Guide: Offers guidelines and recommendations for optimal usage but may lack the impactful, real-world validation that case studies provide.

Recommendation:

Case Studies: These documents highlight successful implementations, showing how Nutanix has helped other organizations achieve goals similar to those of the prospect. They provide practical examples, detailed results, and customer testimonials, making a compelling case for the effectiveness of Nutanix solutions.

Conclusion:

To demonstrate how Nutanix can help the prospect reach their goals, the SE should useCase Studies.

References:

Nutanix Case Studies.

Nutanix Customer Success Stories.

To describe Nutanix hardware refreshes to a prospective customer, the SE should emphasize the seamless process of adding new hardware to an existing cluster and decommissioning old hardware:

Add New Nodes: New nodes can be added to the existing Nutanix cluster without downtime. This allows the cluster to temporarily expand its capacity and resources.

Migrate Workloads: Once the new nodes are operational, workloads can be migrated from the old nodes to the new nodes using live migration features (e.g., AHV, vMotion).

Decommission Old Nodes: After all workloads have been successfully migrated, the old nodes can be gracefully removed from the cluster.

Minimal Downtime: This process ensures minimal to no downtime and allows for hardware refreshes without significant disruptions to operations.

This streamlined approach significantly reduces the complexity and time required for hardware refreshes compared to traditional SAN-based environments.

References:

Nutanix documentation on adding and removing nodes from a cluster.

Best practices for performing hardware refreshes in Nutanix environments.

Sizer Scenario Utility:

Nutanix Sizer is a tool used to configure and size Nutanix deployments based on customer workloads and requirements.

Actions Possible with BOM (Bill of Materials):

Review Budgetary Pricing: The BOM provides detailed component and configuration costs, enabling budgetary analysis.

Review Workload Sizing Details: The Sizer generates detailed workload sizing, helping validate if the proposed configuration meets the performance needs.

Actions Not Possible:

Review Power Consumption Requirements: Sizer primarily focuses on performance and cost, not detailed power requirements.

Review Applicable Discounts: This is typically handled through sales channels and deal registrations, not directly via Sizer.

Reference HCL for Additional SKUs: The Hardware Compatibility List (HCL) lookup is beyond the scope of the immediate BOM review.

References:

Nutanix Sizer tool documentation and usage guidelines.

Nutanix Foundation is the tool used for imaging nodes that are either bare metal or require a different hypervisor. Foundation is designed for bootstrapping the imaging and deployment of Nutanix clusters. It installs the desired version of the Acropolis Operating System (AOS) and the hypervisor of choice. By default, Nutanix nodes ship with AHV pre-installed, but Foundation can be used to re-image the nodes with a different hypervisor if required.

References:

Nutanix Bible

C. Expand the cluster by adding an additional node:

Demonstrating the ease of expanding the Nutanix cluster by adding an additional node showcases the scalability and simplicity of Nutanix’s hyperconverged infrastructure. This is a critical success criterion for customers looking for a solution that can grow with their needs.

D. Use a single interface to manage and monitor the full stack:

One of Nutanix’s key advantages is the ability to manage and monitor the entire infrastructure stack from a single interface, Prism. This feature simplifies management and reduces operational overhead, which aligns with the customer’s requirement for an “All in One” solution.

Understanding RVTools Output:

RVTools provides detailed information on the storage usage of virtual machines, including provisioned, used, and free space.

Determining Storage Requirements:

Aggregate Workload Sizing: The SE must consider the total storage requirements, including current usage and future growth, to ensure the Nutanix Cluster can handle the workload.

Value Selection:

15 TB: Likely insufficient for a sizable environment.

24 TB: More significant but may still be insufficient for larger deployments.

37 TB: Appears to be a reasonable estimate for a substantial workload, considering both current usage and future growth.

39 TB: Very close but slightly overestimated compared to typical recommendations.

Conclusion:

The most accurate representation of the minimum required storage capacity for the aggregate workload in sizer is37 TB.

References:

Nutanix Sizing Guidelines.

RVTools Documentation.

D. 2400 Users:

The number of users (2400) directly impacts the performance and scalability requirements of the Nutanix Files (AFS) deployment. High user counts can lead to increased demand for resources and necessitate additional nodes to ensure optimal performance and responsiveness.

References:

Nutanix Files (AFS) documentation and sizing guidelines highlight user count as a critical factor in determining the resource requirements for file workloads.

When an HDD fails, Nutanix's high availability (HA) system ensures the continuation of VM operations by initiating an HA event. The affected VMs will be restarted on a node that contains the replica data, ensuring minimal downtime and data availability​​.

To migrate database workloads from a 3-tier vSphere architecture to a Nutanix cluster while maintaining customer experience and minimizing costs, it is crucial to focus on maintaining similar processor speeds. Here’s a detailed explanation:

Workload Analysis:

The current environment consists of hosts with 256G RAM and Broadwell 2.8 GHz 12-core processors.

The largest database VM uses 64G of memory, and some databases are single-threaded but have acceptable performance.

Processor Consideration:

Database performance, especially for single-threaded workloads, is highly dependent on the CPU's clock speed.

Using processors with similar speed ensures that the performance characteristics remain consistent, minimizing the risk of performance degradation.

Avoiding Performance Bottlenecks:

Matching the CPU speed helps maintain the current acceptable performance levels.

This approach is more cost-effective than upgrading to higher-speed processors or increasing memory excessively.

Cluster Configuration:

Ensuring the new Nutanix cluster has processors with similar clock speeds to the existing environment will provide a smooth transition.

This consistency will also help in minimizing the need for extensive re-optimization or re-tuning of the databases post-migration.

References:

Nutanix documentation on CPU performance considerations for database workloads.

Best practices for migrating workloads to Nutanix and ensuring consistent performance.

Nutanix clusters can use software encryption for data protection regardless of the underlying hardware configuration. Software encryption is implemented at the software level and provides flexibility as it does not depend on specific hardware features like self-encrypting drives (SEDs). This allows for consistent data encryption across different hardware platforms.

References:

Nutanix Bible

Nutanix Security Best Practices

Concerns Addressed:

Product Supportability: Addressing the prospect's concerns about support and partnership is critical.

TSAnet:

TSAnet(Technical Support Alliance Network) is an industry cooperative that provides multi-vendor support. Nutanix's participation in TSAnet ensures coordinated support efforts across vendors, including HPE (Nutanix Support Resources)​​.

Nutanix Software Only HCL:

TheNutanix Software Only Hardware Compatibility List (HCL)provides a comprehensive list of supported hardware, ensuring that Nutanix software can be reliably deployed on HPE servers. This official documentation helps counter FUD (Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt) by verifying compatibility (Nutanix HCL)​​.

Conclusion:

Leveraging TSAnet and the Nutanix Software Only HCL provides credible and verifiable evidence to overcome concerns about product supportability and partnership with HPE.

References:

Nutanix TSAnet information

Nutanix Software Only HCL

To migrate a VM configured for UEFI-boot from a Nutanix Hyper-V cluster to AHV, the recommended method is to use Nutanix Move. Nutanix Move is a migration tool designed to streamline the process of moving VMs between different hypervisors, including from Hyper-V to AHV. It supports UEFI-boot VMs and ensures that the VM's configuration and data are migrated efficiently and with minimal downtime.

References:

Nutanix Move Documentation

Nutanix Community Edition Getting Started Guide

Scenario Analysis:

The customer does not have access to vCenter or ESXi hosts on ACME Public Cloud.

ACME replicates copies of virtual disks to external storage.

Migration Feasibility:

Without access to vCenter or ESXi, tools like Xtract for VMs cannot directly access and migrate the VMs.

Nutanix Community Edition would not be feasible as it cannot replicate VMs directly without vCenter access.

Calm is used for automation and orchestration but not for direct VM migration from unsupported platforms.

Best Method:

Using the replicated VM copies on external storage provides a direct and viable migration path.

Import the VMs from external storage to the local Nutanix cluster, ensuring a smooth transition.

References:

Nutanix documentation on VM migration strategies.

Best practices for migrating VMs from external storage to Nutanix clusters.

A. Native convergence of traditional infrastructure:

Start by explaining how Nutanix converges traditional server, storage, and networking into a single platform, simplifying infrastructure management and reducing complexity.

Scalable distributed system:

Next, highlight the scalable nature of Nutanix’s distributed system, which can easily expand to meet the growing needs of the prospect’s environment.

Data locality and distributed data:

Discuss the benefits of data locality and distributed data management, ensuring high performance and efficient resource utilization.

Application automation with Calm:

Introduce Nutanix Calm for application automation, streamlining the deployment and management of applications across the infrastructure.

Xi Cloud Services:

Conclude with Nutanix Xi Cloud Services, providing additional flexibility and extending the capabilities of the on-premises infrastructure to the cloud.

References:

Nutanix First Customer Presentation guidelines and best practices for presenting Nutanix’s value proposition to prospects.

To ensure that an RF2 (Replication Factor 2) cluster can survive a complete rack failure without negatively affecting workload performance, it is important to have sufficient nodes distributed across multiple racks to maintain data availability and redundancy.

Current Cluster Configuration:

30 nodes distributed as 10 nodes per rack across three racks.

40TB usable storage per node (total 1.2 PB).

Current utilization: 900TB.

Surviving a Complete Rack Failure:

With RF2, data is replicated to two nodes. To survive a complete rack failure, each rack should have enough nodes to ensure that data can be replicated across the remaining racks.

Adding 3 additional nodes per rack (total 9 nodes) ensures that the cluster can still function with 27 nodes across three racks, maintaining redundancy and performance.

Avoiding Single Points of Failure:

Ensuring that each rack has a balanced number of nodes helps avoid single points of failure and ensures that workloads can continue to operate without performance degradation.

By expanding the cluster to 39 nodes (13 nodes per rack), the administrator ensures that the cluster can handle a complete rack failure while maintaining sufficient storage capacity and performance.

References:

Nutanix Bible, Cluster Resiliency and RF2 Configurations​​.

Nutanix-NDB-User-Guide, Guidelines for Adding Nodes to a Cluster​​.

To troubleshoot high I/O latency and correlate it with other potential resource issues, such as network or memory constraints, the administrator should create a VM entity chart. This type of chart allows for:

Inclusion of Multiple Metrics:

The VM entity chart can incorporate various relevant metrics such as I/O latency, CPU usage, memory usage, and network throughput, providing a comprehensive view of the VM's performance.

Ease of Data Export:

The chart can be easily exported to CSV format, facilitating detailed offline analysis. This is essential for correlating different metrics over the same time period and identifying patterns or anomalies that could explain the high I/O latency.

By using a VM entity chart, the administrator ensures that all pertinent data is collected and can be analyzed together, providing a holistic view of the VM's performance and aiding in pinpointing the root cause of the latency issue.

References:

Nutanix Prism Central User Guide

Nutanix Documentation on Performance Monitoring

To enhance the resiliency of the Nutanix environment against power outages to individual racks, it's essential to implement a strategy that ensures data availability even if an entire rack loses power. Here’s a step-by-step breakdown of the solution:

Current Environment Analysis:

The customer has two NX-3460-G7 blocks and one NX-3160-G7 block in a single rack.

Each block consists of multiple nodes, with a total of nine nodes across these blocks.

Objective:

Increase resiliency to power outages affecting individual racks.

Recommendations:

Move one node from each NX-3460-G7 block to the NX-3160-G7 block: This step is crucial to distribute the nodes across different physical blocks. By doing this, each block will have nodes that can ensure data availability even if a block is compromised.

Distribute the blocks across three separate racks: This ensures that even if one rack loses power, the nodes in the other racks can still maintain data availability and cluster operations.

Enable Rack Awareness: Rack Awareness is a feature in Nutanix that ensures data is distributed in such a way that a rack failure does not lead to data unavailability. When enabled, the system understands the physical location of each node and ensures data replication across different racks.

Implementation:

Physically relocate one node from each NX-3460-G7 block to the NX-3160-G7 block.

Physically distribute the three blocks (NX-3460-G7, NX-3460-G7, NX-3160-G7) across three different racks in the data center.

In the Nutanix Prism interface, enable Rack Awareness to logically inform the cluster of the new rack distribution.

Outcome:

By spreading nodes and blocks across three racks and enabling Rack Awareness, the customer will have increased resiliency. In case one rack loses power, the nodes in the other racks will ensure continuous data availability and cluster operations.

This approach leverages the best practices for ensuring high availability and fault tolerance in a Nutanix environment. It minimizes the risk of data loss or downtime due to power failures in a single rack.

References: For further information and detailed steps on enabling and configuring Rack Awareness, please refer to the Nutanix documentation related to high availability and data protection in multi-rack deployments.

For a prospective customer concerned about the suitability and design of using Nutanix for an Avaya IP Office migration, the appropriate document to provide is a Reference Architecture.

Definition:

A Reference Architecture document provides a detailed technical blueprint, including the design, configuration, and deployment guidelines specific to an application or solution.

Content Relevance:

It includes validated configurations and best practices that have been tested and recommended by Nutanix for running Avaya IP Office.

This document will address concerns about performance, reliability, and integration specific to Avaya IP Office.

Design Validation:

Reference Architectures are created based on real-world implementations and are designed to ensure that the proposed solution will meet the customer’s requirements.

References:

Nutanix Reference Architecture documents and guidelines.

Avaya IP Office deployment guides on Nutanix platforms.

For running a single instance Oracle Database VM on AHV that is driving over 250,000 IOPS, the AOS feature that should be positioned to deliver the highest level of performance is Data Locality.

Data Locality Overview:

Data Locality ensures that data is kept local to the node where the VM is running. This minimizes the latency involved in data access because it avoids traversing the network to fetch data from remote nodes.

Performance Benefits:

By keeping the data local to the node, it leverages the local SSDs and RAM for the highest possible performance.

This is crucial for high IOPS workloads such as an Oracle Database VM, where low latency and high throughput are essential.

Implementation:

Nutanix AOS automatically manages data locality, ensuring that read and write operations are performed on the local storage as much as possible.

References:

Nutanix Bible on Data Locality.

Nutanix Documentation on Performance Optimization.

C. Adding storage only nodes:

Nutanix allows the addition of storage-only nodes to a cluster. This feature is beneficial for environments where data retention for compliance purposes increases, as it provides a cost-effective way to scale storage capacity without adding compute resources.

Storage-only nodes help in efficiently managing and expanding storage capacity while controlling costs, making it a suitable solution for the prospect’s concerns.

References:

Nutanix documentation on cluster configuration and expansion highlights the benefits and use cases for adding storage-only nodes, particularly in scenarios requiring increased storage capacity.

Nutanix handles node failures by immediately beginning the rebuild process. When two nodes fail within a short time frame, Nutanix automatically initiates the data replication and rebuild process to ensure data integrity and availability. The system leverages the remaining capacity and resources in the cluster to redistribute and rebuild the data from the failed nodes, minimizing the risk of data loss and maintaining cluster resilience.

References:

Nutanix Bible​

A. Multi-Site Management:

Nutanix provides centralized management of multiple sites through Prism Central, which allows for efficient management and monitoring of the main datacenter and the 25 satellite offices from a single interface. This reduces operational overhead and complexity.

B. Pay as you grow:

Nutanix's "Pay as you grow" model allows the prospect to start small and expand their infrastructure incrementally as their needs and budget allow. This model is ideal for environments with budget constraints and ensures that the infrastructure can scale with the business’s growth.

References:

Nutanix documentation and resources on Prism Central and the pay-as-you-grow model provide detailed explanations on how these features support multi-site management and scalable infrastructure.

To address the VP of Applications' initiative to transform IT from a cost center to a business enabler, the following key benefits should be reviewed:

On-Premises Cloud-Like Experience:

Benefit: Nutanix provides an infrastructure that delivers a cloud-like experience on-premises. This includes easy scalability, high availability, and efficient resource utilization, which helps in reducing the time and expenses related to meeting business deliverables.

Impact: This transformation ensures rapid deployment and management of applications, which in turn enhances business agility and reduces the dependency on slow IT response times.

Self-Service Portal:

Benefit: Nutanix offers a native and integrated Self-Service Portal that allows developers and business units to provision and manage resources on demand. This capability is crucial for reducing shadow IT and controlling unplanned spending on public cloud services.

Impact: By providing an easy-to-use, scalable portal, developers can quickly respond to business needs, reducing the time to market for new opportunities and innovations.

References:

Nutanix Documentation on Self-Service Portal and Cloud-Like Experience.

Nutanix Customer Success Stories on Transforming IT.

C. Adding Storage Only nodes:

Nutanix allows for the addition of storage-only nodes to a cluster. These nodes provide additional storage capacity without adding compute resources, which is a cost-effective way to increase storage for data retention and compliance purposes.

This capability allows the prospect to scale storage independently of compute, addressing concerns about data retention costs by adding capacity as needed without the overhead of additional CPU and memory resources.

For migrating 5 Petabytes of unstructured, archived patient data, Nutanix Objects is the recommended product. Nutanix Objects provides a scalable object storage solution designed to handle large volumes of unstructured data efficiently, making it ideal for archival purposes​​.

Understanding FIPS 140-2 Level 2 Requirements:

FIPS 140-2 is a U.S. government standard that specifies security requirements for cryptographic modules. Level 2 adds requirements for tamper-evidence and role-based authentication.

Required Items for FIPS 140-2 Level 2 Compliance:

Self-Encrypting Drives (SEDs):

Explanation: SEDs automatically encrypt data at rest, meeting the encryption standards required by FIPS 140-2 Level 2.

B. Beam:

Nutanix Beam is a multi-cloud cost optimization and governance tool that provides deep visibility into cloud usage and spending. It helps organizations understand and manage their cloud costs on a per-application basis.

Beam enables detailed auditing and reporting of where applications reside across both public and private clouds. This addresses the customer’s difficulty in auditing applications and understanding cloud costs.

Key features of Beam include cost visibility, budget management, compliance, and security monitoring, making it an ideal solution for the customer’s needs.

Problem Analysis:

The prospect experiences unplanned downtime due to hardware failures.

Notifications from their SNMP-based monitoring solution have been ignored due to communication issues.

Nutanix Pulse:

Pulse provides proactive support and monitoring for Nutanix clusters.

It automatically sends cluster health and performance data to Nutanix support, enabling quick issue resolution.

This feature can ensure critical alerts and notifications are not missed, improving overall system reliability.

Conclusion:

Highlighting Pulse helps address the key pain points of unplanned downtime and missed notifications, ensuring better system management and support.

References:

Nutanix Pulse feature documentation.

Nutanix support and monitoring best practices.

In the provided scenario, to meet the performance requirements and avoid any reduction in performance of the web servers, the systems engineer needs to adjust the CPU configuration. By switching to manual sizing and changing the CPUs of the node configuration to a dual 10 core model, the CPU resources will be sufficient to handle the workload without performance degradation​

A. Data Locality:

The concept of data locality in Nutanix ensures that data is always kept close to the VM that uses it, typically on the same node. This reduces latency and provides high performance comparable to, or exceeding, traditional 16Gb Fibre Channel SAN solutions.

Data locality minimizes the need for data to travel over the network, effectively leveraging 10Gb Ethernet for low-latency and high-throughput operations, addressing the storage administrator’s concerns.

C. ABS (Acropolis Block Services):

Acropolis Block Services (ABS) enables Nutanix storage to be used by external servers, providing the performance and benefits of Nutanix’s distributed storage fabric while allowing the customer to continue using their existing investment in Oracle servers.

ABS allows the integration of all-flash storage with the existing Oracle environment, addressing the prospect's preference for all-flash arrays while leveraging Nutanix’s advanced storage capabilities.

References:

Nutanix documentation on ABS describes its features and benefits, particularly its ability to integrate Nutanix storage with external servers and support high-performance applications like Oracle databases.

C. Inline compression:

Inline compression compresses data as it is written to the storage, reducing the amount of storage used and improving capacity utilization immediately. This is highly effective for reducing the storage footprint of a Splunk workload.

D. Capacity tier de-duplication:

Capacity tier de-duplication eliminates duplicate copies of data, further reducing the storage requirements. This is particularly useful for environments with repetitive data patterns, like log files generated by Splunk.

References:

Nutanix documentation and best practices on storage capacity optimization highlight the use of inline compression and de-duplication as key techniques for reducing storage usage and improving overall storage efficiency.

In Sizer, when creating a multi-cluster scenario, the Summary Failover Capacity indicator (N+0, N+1) shows the worst resiliency level of any cluster in the scenario. This helps in identifying the weakest link in terms of failover capacity across multiple clusters. If any cluster within the scenario has a lower failover capacity, the indicator will reflect this to ensure that the overall solution can handle the identified worst-case scenario​​.

To size a new project that requires offsite backup using Veeam with an RPO of 24 hours and the ability to restore from the past 7 days of backups, while considering the data change rate of 1%, the SE should configure the Nutanix Sizer with the following parameters:

Backup Frequency: Since the required RPO is 24 hours, a daily backup schedule should be set.

Retention Policy: The retention policy should be set to retain daily backups for 7 days. This means that each backup is kept for a week before it is overwritten.

Data Change Rate: The data change rate is 1%. This information is crucial for sizing the backup storage. A 1% daily change rate indicates that each daily backup will be approximately 1% of the total data size.

Backup Target: Veeam should be configured to send backups to an offsite location. This can be an external storage repository or a cloud target.

Storage Calculation: Calculate the total backup storage requirement. If the total data size is D, then the daily backup size will be 0.01D. Over 7 days, the storage requirement will be approximately 0.07D.

The SE should enter these details into the Nutanix Sizer to ensure the configuration aligns with the prospect's requirements.

References:

Nutanix documentation on configuring backup policies and retention in Veeam.

Standard practices for backup retention and RPO configurations in data protection solutions.

Problem Analysis:

The customer needs to replace an existing 200TB filer with a Nutanix solution.

The filer is used for storing archived images, requiring maximum storage density.

The proposal includes using RF2 and Erasure Coding with a stripe size of 4/1 (data/parity).

Erasure Coding Requirements:

Erasure Coding (EC-X) in Nutanix improves storage efficiency by distributing data and parity across multiple nodes.

A 4/1 stripe size means 4 data blocks and 1 parity block.

To implement a 4/1 Erasure Coding stripe, a minimum of 5 nodes is required to ensure the distribution of data and parity blocks.

Explanation:

RF2 (Replication Factor 2): Requires at least two copies of the data to be stored on different nodes.

Erasure Coding with a 4/1 Stripe: Requires 5 nodes to ensure there are enough blocks to store the 4 data and 1 parity blocks.

Outcome:

The minimum number of nodes required to support the maximum Erasure Coding stripe size of 4/1 is 5 nodes.

References: For more detailed information, refer to the Nutanix documentation on Erasure Coding and storage policies.

The certified configuration for Oracle Linux and Oracle VM via iSCSI uses Nutanix Acropolis Block Services (ABS). ABS allows Nutanix storage to be presented as iSCSI targets to external servers, enabling the use of Nutanix storage in conjunction with Oracle environments.

This feature ensures high performance and reliability for Oracle workloads while leveraging Nutanix’s advanced storage capabilities.

References:

Nutanix documentation and the Oracle HCL list provide details on certified configurations and the use of ABS for integrating Nutanix storage with Oracle environments.

In Prism Central, the Alerts dashboard is used to audit recent alerts on the cluster. This dashboard provides detailed information on all the alerts, their severity, status, and occurrences, allowing the administrator to generate comprehensive reports for management​​.

Understanding the Prospect's Pain Points:

The prospect faces issues with application downtime during upgrades and struggles with infrastructure resource planning for a growing development environment.

Success Criteria Selection:

Integrated Reporting on Resource Utilization Trends:

Explanation: This helps the prospect in better planning and managing their infrastructure resources by providing insights into utilization trends and capacity planning.

The status shown in the exhibit within the Hardware Diagram section indicates a critical hardware issue that needs immediate attention.

Reseat Disks/Nodes: While reseating might help with connectivity issues, it should be performed with caution and typically after consulting support to avoid data loss or further complications.

Resolve Alerts and Re-import Disks: This step is useful but secondary to ensuring that applications are not negatively impacted. Immediate action should focus on stability and minimizing downtime.

Restart CVMs: Restarting CVMs might help but could also disrupt services and should be a last resort after consulting with support.

Application Status and Support: Checking the status of applications ensures that any critical services are not interrupted, and calling support provides access to Nutanix's expertise to address the hardware issue effectively.

Given the critical nature of hardware issues and the potential impact on the cluster, contacting support while checking the application status is the best course of action to ensure a safe and effective resolution.

References:

Nutanix Bible, Troubleshooting Hardware Issues​​.

Nutanix-NDB-User-Guide, Handling Critical Hardware Alerts​​.

To evaluate the performance impact of failing a node while running workloads on the cluster, the systems engineer should use X-Ray, Nutanix's benchmarking and testing tool.

X-Ray Overview: X-Ray is a comprehensive tool designed to simulate various failure scenarios and measure their impact on performance. It is specifically built for testing Nutanix clusters.

Failing a Node: The tool can simulate node failures and provide detailed metrics on how the cluster and workloads are affected.

Performance Metrics: X-Ray provides insights into performance degradation, recovery times, and overall cluster resilience under failure conditions.

References:

Nutanix X-Ray Documentation: Detailed instructions and capabilities of X-Ray for simulating failures.

Nutanix Community: User experiences and best practices for using X-Ray.

X-rayis a performance testing tool designed by Nutanix to simulate real-world application workloads and provide detailed performance metrics. It can effectively demonstrate the performance of Microsoft SQL Server on Nutanix compared to the existing infrastructure.

Xtractsimplifies the migration process by automating the migration of workloads from existing infrastructure to Nutanix, reducing the effort and time required for the POC.

By using these tools, the SE can provide the customer with comprehensive performance data without the need for a lengthy POC, thereby addressing their concerns more efficiently.

When calculating the required cluster resources with only the Raw input workload type for a multi-VM workload in Sizer, the following items are considered:

The vCPU

ratio applied for specific VMs: This ratio helps determine the number of physical cores needed based on the virtual CPU requirements of the VMs.

Large VM NUMA requirements: Non-Uniform Memory Access (NUMA) requirements ensure that large VMs are allocated memory and CPU resources in a way that optimizes performance and resource utilization .

Customer Requirement:

Data-at-Rest-Encryption for all data.

License Options:

Pro with the Encryption SKU: This option allows customers to add encryption capabilities to the Pro tier.

Ultimate: This tier includes built-in encryption features, providing comprehensive data security.

Explanation:

Pro with the Encryption SKU: Customers using the Pro tier can enhance their security by purchasing the additional Encryption SKU, which enables Data-at-Rest-Encryption.

Ultimate: This tier natively includes encryption, offering an all-in-one solution for customers requiring high levels of data security without additional SKUs.

Outcome:

Customers can choose either of these two licensing options to meet their Data-at-Rest-Encryption requirements, ensuring that all their data is securely encrypted.

References: For detailed licensing information and encryption capabilities, refer to Nutanix documentation on security features and licensing tiers.

A prospect evaluating Nutanix for a large number of Oracle RAC deployments, prioritizing time to deployment and utilizing an in-house self-service tool, would benefit most from Nutanix's REST API capabilities. Here is a detailed explanation:

Requirement Analysis:The prospect needs a solution that allows rapid deployment of Oracle RAC environments and integrates with their existing self-service deployment tool. This means the feature should support automation and programmatic control.

Feature Analysis:

Calm: While Nutanix Calm can orchestrate and automate application deployments, including complex multi-tier applications, the existing self-service tool of the prospect may make Calm redundant for this specific need.

Xtract for Databases: This tool assists in migrating databases to Nutanix but is not directly involved in deploying new Oracle RAC instances.

ABS (Acropolis Block Services): ABS provides block storage services to external physical and virtual machines but is not focused on deployment automation.

REST API: Nutanix’s REST API offers extensive programmatic control over various functions, including provisioning, managing, and configuring Nutanix environments. It allows the integration of custom tools to automate and expedite deployments effectively.

Conclusion:Given the requirement for rapid deployment through an existing self-service tool, Nutanix REST API is the most appropriate feature to discuss. It provides the necessary flexibility and integration capabilities for automated deployments.

References:

Nutanix REST API documentation

Nutanix community and user guides highlighting automation use cases

For highly active SQL workloads that write I/Os in 2 MB chunks to a vDisk, compression is the most suitable storage optimization technology. Compression works well with larger I/O sizes and can significantly reduce the storage footprint, providing better capacity optimization. This approach ensures that the large chunks of data are compressed efficiently, maximizing storage utilization and performance​​.

D. Case Detail:

On portal.nutanix.com, open cases can be directly escalated from the "Case Detail" page. This page provides specific details about the case, including the ability to escalate it if necessary.

The "Case Detail" page contains all relevant information about the case, making it the appropriate place to manage and escalate cases.

1 x 480GB SSD:

For a hybrid cluster running both general-purpose VMs and an ERP application with a 500GB database, having a single 480GB SSD may lead to performance bottlenecks.

Nutanix best practices recommend using multiple SSDs for better I/O performance and redundancy​​​​.

2 x 1GB NIC:

The network interface cards (NICs) with only 1GB capacity each are insufficient for a production environment expected to handle significant data and application traffic.

Nutanix typically recommends 10GB NICs for adequate bandwidth and performance in such scenarios​​.

References:

Nutanix Community Edition Hardware Recommendations​​.

Nutanix Bible - Network and Storage Configuration Best Practices​​​​.

When an HA event causes a SQL virtual machine to restart on a different node, Nutanix's data locality feature ensures that the active VM data is localized to the new node. This means that the data associated with the VM will be migrated to the storage local to the new node, ensuring optimal performance by reducing the need for cross-node data access.

References:

Nutanix Bible​