Following the takeover of VMWare by the giant Broadcom and the subsequent runaway prices, many customers are looking for alternative solutions. Unfortunately, it is not always easy to find your way around.
VMWare vs Nutanix comparison
The most complicated thing when we are used to a technical solution is to make a radical change.
Will we find all the features we use? What do the names correspond to? What prospects for possible developments among competitors?
I took the time to make a comparison of the different VMWare and Nutanix bricks:
I hope this will help you see things more clearly and shed light on a possible future choice.
Nutanix has a tool for automating the deployment and life cycle of applications: Nutanix Self-Service (formerly Calm).
I’ll show you how to deploy Nutanix Self-Service on your Nutanix cluster.
Nutanix Self-Service Overview
Self-Service (formerly Calm) streamlines application management, deployment, and scalability across hybrid clouds through self-service, automation, and centralized role-based governance.
Deploy Nutanix Self-Service
To deploy Nutanix Self-Service, you must have a functional Prism Central on your cluster. Indeed, almost all of Nutanix’s complementary building blocks are managed by Prism Central, so don’t look for it on Prism Element.
In the side menu, look for the “Services” section and click on “Calm” (the old name for Nutanix Self-Service):
Deployment is very simple, then just click on “Enable App. Orchestration”:
The first box must be checked to be able to deploy Self-Service, the second is optional but highly recommended because it allows access to the online catalog offering a plethora of ready-to-use blueprints.
Once you have made your choice, click on “Save” and wait around ten minutes while Self-Service deploys:
Once deployment is complete, a new Volume Groups will be available on your Nutanix cluster:
That’s it, Nutanix Self-Service is deployed and ready to use:
It happens that the admin account of a Nutanix cluster is locked due to too many authentication failures and that you can no longer connect to it.
Most of the time, this is the result of changing the password of the admin account on the cluster if it is used on other systems such as Nutanix Move or HYCU for example.
Here’s how to reset the password for the “admin” account of a cluster
Remove the “admin” account from routines
To begin with, if you do not want the problem to recur, you must remove the “admin” account from the cluster from the elements that can cause this. This could be backup software, a Nutanix brick (Move for example), possibly a monitoring tool.
It is important not to use the “admin” account of a cluster to connect a tool to the cluster.
Reset “admin” password
Connect by SSH to a CVM of the Nutanix cluster on which the account is locked with the “root” account.
Then enter the following command:
passwd admin
Enter the new password twice, the password is reset.
Unlock the “admin” account
To unlock the “admin” account, enter the following command:
As part of setting up labs on a Nutanix infrastructure, you may be required to deploy a hypervisor (ESXi, Promox, Hyper-V, etc.) on the AHV hypervisor (Inception!).
You will then be confronted with this type of error message when installing ESXi for example (the form differs for other hypervisors, but the substance remains the same):
The processor will not be detected as having virtualization capabilities and you will therefore not be able to deploy a hypervisor… But it is possible to bypass this restriction.
Nutanix AHV: bypass processor restriction
I assume that the virtual machine on which you want to deploy a hypervisor is already created.
To bypass the processor restriction, we must connect to one of the CVMs in our cluster and modify our virtual machine with the acli vm.update command and the “cpu_passthrough” parameter:
Please note, this command will only work if your virtual machine is turned off.
Once the command is applied you can restart your installation… Except for ESXi which still requires a little subtlety!
Nutanix AHV: truncate NIC type to install ESXi
To install an ESXi nested on Nutanix AHV and have it be fully functional, you also need to modify the network adapters to make it think they are e1000 type.
To do this, with the virtual machine still off, connect to one of the CVMs, and type the following command:
Be sure to replace VM_NAME with the name of the virtual machine concerned, and NETWORK_NAME with one of the networks previously created on your Nutanix cluster. You will get the following message:
With the surge in prices for VMWare licenses linked to the company’s acquisition by Broadcom, many customers are looking for alternative solutions to ESXi in order to avoid a hefty bill.
Among the alternatives, there is obviously Nutanix among the alternatives but customers are quite cautious regarding the migration from VMWare ESXi to Nutanix AHV, a task which can be tedious if the VMs have to be migrated one by one.
This is where Nutanix Move comes in. Nutanix Move is a tool made available by Nutanix to facilitate the migration of virtual machines to any cloud.
What will interest us is mainly a migration from ESXi or Hyper-V to Nutanix AHV.
Nutanix Move: virtual machine download
To retrieve the virtual machine image, you must connect to the Nutanix Support portal: https://portal.nutanix.com/ then go to the “Downloads” section:
Click on “Move” and download on the “Move QCOW2 file for AHV” button:
For a customer case, I had to configure the anti-affinity between 2 virtual machines.
Anti-affinity: what is it?
First, I’ll give some context so the foundations are laid. For one of our clients, I am deploying 2 Palo Alto virtual machines to set up a cluster which will manage flows between its different networks.
In order to ensure maximum redundancy in the event of any failure, it is essential that the virtual machines be hosted on different hosts. Indeed, if they were hosted on a single host, in the event of a host failure, the Palo Alto cluster would be out of service.
This is where anti-affinity comes into play and will allow me to ensure that the 2 virtual machines are never found on the same host.
Setting up anti-affinity
The implementation of the anti-affinity is to be carried out in command lines directly from one of the CVMs of the cluster and takes place in several stages:
Create a group: connect via SSH then type the following command:
After a while, virtual machines that were previously on the same host will then be spread across 2 different hosts.
In the event of failure of a host hosting one of the 2 virtual machines, the machine concerned will be restarted on one of the hosts in compliance with the anti-affinity rule.
Be careful, however, if you manually migrate a virtual machine or as part of the host being put under maintenance, the anti-affinity rule may not apply.
To be able to deploy a virtual machine on your Nutanix cluster and have it reachable on your network, you will need to start by configuring the network(s) on your cluster.
Creating a network using Prism Element
Under Prism Element, in the “Settings > Network Configuration” menu is the list of all existing networks on the cluster, click on “Create Subnet”:
Then enter your network information, namely the name and vlan ID:
If you do not have a DHCP server, you can let Nutanix manage the addressing of the network created using the “Enable IP address management” option:
You will then need to complete all the options that would normally have been delivered by a traditional DHCP server:
Click “Save” once the settings are correct. Repeat for each VLAN you need on your infrastructure.
Creating a network using Prism Central
In Prism Central, network management is carried out in “Network & Security > Subnets”:
To add a new network, click “Create Subnet”:
It is then a form similar to that of Prism Element that must be completed by activating, or not, the “IP Address Management” option if you wish to leave the management of your addressing to Nutanix.
To be able to deploy virtual machines on your cluster, you will need images that are available to launch your installations and here is the procedure to follow.
Before you start
An image uploaded via Prism Element can be imported to Prism Central. The reverse is not possible.
An image uploaded or imported via Prism Central is visible but not editable on Prism Element.
An image uploaded via Prism Element can only be used by the cluster to which it was uploaded.
An image downloaded via Prism Central can be used by all clusters managed by this Prism Central
Nutanix provides compatibility with images in the following formats:
RAW
VHD
VHDX
VMDK
VDI
OVA
ISO
QCOW2
Download via Prism Element
To upload an image via Prism Element, connect to the web interface using your credentials, then navigate to the “Settings > Image Configuration” menu:
Click Upload Image:
Complete the “Name”, “Image Type”, “Storage Container” fields, select the image you wish to transfer then click on “Save”:
Wait during the transfer and then while your image is processed by the cluster. Its status must be “ACTIVE” for it to be operational:
Download via Prism Central
The process for transferring an image through Prism Central is essentially identical to that of Prism Element.
Connect to the web interface then navigate to “Compute & Storage > Images” and click on “Add Image”:
Click on “Add File”, select the image you want to transfer, fill in the description then click on “Next”:
On the next screen, select the image placement mode based on your environment. In most cases, the default method “Place image directly on clusters” will do the trick, click “Next”:
Wait while the cluster transfers and processes the image.
Import images from Prism Element to Prism Central
On the image management page on Prism Central, click “Import Images”:
Then select the transfer method that suits you:
“All images” will repatriate all the images from all the clusters managed by Prism Central
“Images on a cluster” will allow you to select the cluster(s) and source image(s) on a case-by-case basis.
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