This is a question I am regularly asked: “with which cluster do you perform your tests for your articles?”. So here is what my Nutanix homelab looks like…

My network infrastructure

Before talking about my Nutanix cluster, I will present my home infrastructure that I installed 4 years ago when the house was built.

I based my network infrastructure on Ubiquiti brand equipment. The hardware is very good, silent, robust, easy to use… but for the configuration it is really very particular and we are very far from what we are used to practicing on a daily basis in a data center.

So I set up:

a Ubiquiti Dream Machine Pro for the entire network / filtering part with

• 2 SFP+ 10Gb ports
• 8 1Gb ports

a Ubiquiti USW Pro 24 PoE switch which has

• 2 10Gb SFP+ ports
• 24 1Gb PoE ports

Ubiquiti Flex switches in various parts of the home

My internet access is currently a Free connection which relies on the Freebox Delta and which offers me a theoretical speed of 10Gb/s:

On the program:

• a 10Gb fiber arrival
• 4 RJ45 ports in 1Gb (B, C, D, E)
• 1 SFP+ 10Gb port (F)

A well-stocked box to allow latency-free Internet access.

The network topology therefore looks like this:

As you can see, no professional type infrastructure at home so if you only have consumer type equipment, don’t hesitate to get started, it will do the trick.

My Nutanix cluster

My Nutanix cluster is nothing exceptional, it is quite old hardware since it is based on an Intel S2600WTTR chassis that was launched by the manufacturer in 2016!

Link to the technical sheet: https://www.intel.fr/content/www/fr/fr/products/sku/88281/intel-server-board-s2600wttr/specifications.html

I recovered it in a previous professional experience, the cluster had a hardware failure that the administration did not want to deal with given the age of the hardware and the fact that the existing infrastructure was being replaced by brand new Nutanix clusters.

I carried out the repair at my own expense so that the server would be operational again. In terms of the physical installation, the cluster is not allowed to stay in the house (due to noise), so it is in the garage, installed in an unconventional way:

The hardware configuration of my cluster is as follows:

• 2 Intel Xeon E5-2640 v4 @ 2.4Ghz processors

• 384 Gb of RAM
• 1 120Gb SDD for the OS
• 4 800Gb SAS SDDs
• 6 1.6Tb SAS HDDs
• 2 10Gb RJ45 network ports

This hardware configuration allows me to have disk redundancy. This is not the ideal scenario but it is already much better than no redundancy at all. The amount of CPU / RAM allows me to faire tourner un grand nombre de machines virtuelles sans que les performances ne soient dégradées :

If I had to make a hardware change to my cluster, I think I would opt for a 10Gb fiber network card in order to have a 10Gb connection from one end of the chain to the other Internet > Router > Firewall > Switch > Cluster.

The cluster is now installed with a Nutanix CE 2.1 in the latest versions available:

This allows me to test the latest features, to perform configuration tests and it also serves as a support for writing all the blog articles, each subject covered being obviously tested on the Lab before publication.

Although the Lab is essential for writing my articles, I do not leave it on permanently because it consumes a significant amount of electricity as I already mentioned in one of my previous articles.

That’s my infrastructure, hoping that it makes you want to get started and set up your own Nutanix CE cluster.