Nutanix AHV 6.8 eSTS and Prism Central X-Small
Nutanix has just announced the availability of version 6.8 eSTS of AOS and with this new version comes a lot of new features including…. Prism Central version pc2024.1!
I am not going to detail all the features added or updated in this new version of AOS and let you consult the Release Notes which detail their content.
I decided to focus on a feature that arrives with the new version of Prism Central awaited by many customers who have a modest infrastructure: Prism Central X-Small.
Prism Central X-Small
Among all the new features made available by the new pc2024.1 version of Prism Central, one feature addition caught my attention: Prism Central X-Small.
Until now, the deployment of Prism Central was only possible according to 3 templates:
| Template | VM configuration | Limitations |
| Small | 6 vCPU / 28Gb RAM / 500Gb Storage | 2500 VMs / 10 Clusters / 200 Nodes |
| Large | 10 vCPU / 46Gb RAM / 2500Gb Storage | 12500 VMs / 25 Clusters / 500 Nodes |
| X-Large | 14 vCPU / 62Gb RAM / 2500Gb Storage | 12500 VMs / 25 Clusters / 500 Nodes |
Like the X-Large deployment which offers an imposing configuration of Prism Central, until now a minimum size deployment was missing. Prism Central X-Small fills this void:
| VM configuration | Limitations |
| 4 vCPU 18Gb RAM 100Gb Storage | 500 VMs 5 Clusters 50 Nodes |
As you can see, this Prism Central template has a lightweight hardware configuration, this is not the only point of differentiation with other deployment templates.
Indeed, due to its configuration, this deployment of Prism Central does not allow you to exploit all the functionalities usually offered. Here are the points of differentiation:
| Supported | Unsupported |
| Multi-cluster management (Up to 5) | Scale-out |
| VM management | Flow Virtual Networking |
| Host management | Flow Network Security |
| Infrastructure management, monitoring and health | Self-Service |
| Enterprise authentication and RBAC | Intelligent Operations |
| REST APIs | Nutanix Kubernetes Engine |
| Comprehensive search | Objects |
| Life Cycle Manager (LCM) | Files |
| Pulse Insights | Foundation Central |
| Prism Central Backup and Restore | Foundation |
| Categories | Quotas |
| Projects | Multi-site DR |
| Microservices infrastructe | Marketplace |
| Identity and access management | Reporting and Dashboards |
| Security dashboard | |
| Nearsync / Synchronous replication |
If you want to benefit from a feature not supported by Prism Central X-Small, you will need to consider deploying a Small / Large / X-Large template.
Use cases
The main use case that immediately comes to mind is the following:
- a simple infrastructure
- 1 to 3 modest-sized clusters
- a hundred virtual machines
- no need for additional services (Flow, Self-Service, NKE, etc.)
This is the type of installation that we encounter in many SMEs or local authorities for example, the arrival of Prism Central X-Small is therefore timely.
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