Prism Central Deployent on AHV

Manish Jha

What is Prism Central?

Software to provide centralized infrastructure management, one-click simplicity and intelligent operations. Prism Central runs as a separate instance composed of either a single VM or a set of  (3) VMs.

What does Prism Central provides?

  • Manage multi-cluster from single pane of glass.
  • Single sign-On for all registered clusters.
  • Entity Explorer to search various items.
  • Global alert and notifications.
  • Multi cluster analytics dashboard.
  • Dashboard Customization.
  • Capacity Forecast and Planning

Prism Central is a must have tool for every Nutanix administrator if they have a multi cluster Nutanix environment. In this post I am not stressing on explaining each features of Prism Central. I will write a separate blog post on that. In this post I will walk through the installation procedure for prism central.  

Prism Central can be deployed directly from Prism Element. You can use one-click deploy method or the manual (imaging service) method. In this post I will demonstrate the one click method.… Read More

My HCI Lab with Nutanix Community Edition-Part 4: Deploy Multi Node Cluster

Manish Jha

In earlier post of this series, we learnt how to deploy a single node cluster. In this post we will learn how to deploy a multi node cluster using community edition.

If you are not following along this series, then I recommend reading earlier posts of this series from below links:

1: Nutanix Community Edition Introduction

2: Lab Setup

3: Deploy Single Node Cluster

During lab setup, I created a template vm to for faster deployments of CE vm’s. To create a multi-node cluster, we node to deploy at least 3 VM’s and during deployment we need to make sure to not to select “Create single-node cluster”

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Once all 3 VM’s boots up, connect to any one of the CVM and run command: check cluster status and you will see message that cluster is currently unconfigured.

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To create cluster we need to run command: cluster -s <cvm1 IP,CVM2 IP,CVM3 IP> -s create

This command will trigger cluster creation and start the necessary services.… Read More

How to Change CVM Memory in Nutanix CE Platform

Manish Jha

In last post of this series, I covered installation of Nutanix CE single-node cluster. In this post i will walk through steps of reducing CVM memory.

By default when you deploy Nutanix CE, CVM is configured with 16 GB RAM. You can verify this by logging into Prism and navigating to Home > VM view.

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Or you can SSH to AHV host and type command : virsh dominfo

Now suppose you allocated 20 GB RAM to the VM where Nutanix CE is installed, CVM will consume 16 GB out of it, leaving only 4 GB for the AHV host. But we can reduce CVM memory to 12G or 8G for lab purpose.

Follow below steps to change CVM memory.

1: Connect to CVM via ssh and stop cluster by executing command: cluster stop

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Wait for clean shutdown of cluster

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2: Once cluster is stopped on CVM, connect to AHV host via SSH and run command: virsh list –all to fetch CVM name

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Additionally you can run command : virsh dominfo to see details of CVM

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3: Stop CVM by typing command: virsh shutdown <cvm name>

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4: Reduce CVM memory by typing below commands:

  • virsh setmem  12G –config
  • virsh setmaxmem  12G –config

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Verify that new memory settings have applied.… Read More

My HCI Lab with Nutanix Community Edition-Part 3: Deploy Single Node Cluster

Manish Jha

In last post of this series we discussed about lab setup that is needed to deploy the Nutanix CE platform. In this post we will learn about how to deploy a single node cluster.

If you are not following along this series, then I recommend reading earlier posts of this series from below links:

1: Nutanix Community Edition Introduction

2: Lab Setup

In last post we converted our centos VM to a template to save deployment time. I deployed a new VM from the template and booted it. 

Once the “init image” is loaded at the login, type “install” command to proceed.

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Select your keyboard layout and hit proceed. 

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The installer will now show the disk drives namely sdb and sdc since they are connected to SCSI(0:1) and SCSI(0:2).

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The install wizard script will then detect the performance of the disk attached.

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If the installer is able to detect the required number of IOPS (as specified in sysUtil.py… Read More

My HCI Lab with Nutanix Community Edition: Part 2: Lab Setup

Manish Jha

In last post of this series we discussed about what Nutanix CE is what does it offer and we talked about limitation of the product. In this post I will walk through my lab setup which I used to deploy the Nutanix CE.

Recommended Hardware

Before planning your deployment, make sure to refer to below spreadsheet which lists all necessary piece of hardware you need to have in place. 

Nutanix CE-HW Specs.png

In my lab, I don’t have a dedicated hardware server for deployment, so I went ahead with Nested virtualization technique. But if you are interested in deploying CE on dedicated piece of hardware then I would recommend reading this article.

Step 1: Download Nutanix CE bits

Before starting deployment, you need to first register register yourself on Nutanix Next Community . Fill in all the needed details and hit submit.

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You will get an email with download links and Getting Started docs. … Read More

My HCI Lab with Nutanix Community Edition: Part 1: Introduction

Manish Jha

Till the time I was working majorly on VMware products, I thought there can’t be a better piece of technology than this. But since the time I started learning Nutanix, my thoughts changed and I must admit that I am in awe of this product.

To learn any new product, home lab is the best place where you can learn things from scratch. Since I don’t have dedicated hardware pieces to deploy Nutanix, I tried my hands on Nutanix Community Edition.

In this post I will outline some basic considerations which you should keep in mind when when planning to go with Nutanix CE and will walk through the steps needed to create lab. Also I will discuss possibilities and limits of using this product.

What is Nutanix Community Edition (CE) ?

Nutanix Community Edition is the free version of Nutanix OS which can be used to test drive main features of Nutanix.… Read More

Learning vRNI 3.9: Part 3:User Management in vRNI

Manish Jha

In last post of this series we learnt how to change default retention period for events etc in vRNI. In this post we will learn how about user management.

If you are not following along this series, then I recommend reading earlier posts of this series from below links:

1: Adding Data Sources in vRNI

2: Changing Default Data Management Policy

Default installation of vRNI allows you to login with admin@local user and this user can add new users (local and LDAP) and configure memberships and other settings of existing users. In this post we will learn how to add a local and LDAP user to vRNI.

Adding Local User

For security reasons, you might want to delete the default local user and specify a new one as per your organization access standard. To add a new local user login to vRNI and navigate to Home > Settings > User Management > Local Users and click on Add New User.… Read More

Learning vRNI 3.9: Part 2:Changing Default Data Management Policy

Manish Jha

By default the data retention policy in vRNI is one month. However if you have an enterprise license, then you can change this policy.  The data is divided into the following categories:

vrni-data retention

We can change the value of any category and can set it to maximum value specified in above table.

To change the default data retention policy, login to vRNI and navigate to Home > Settings > Data Management. 

Click on configure button to change the values.

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From the drop down menu, select the new value for each category which you want to change and hit submit button.

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And that’s it. Easy peasy task isn’t it 😉

I hope you find this post informational. Feel free to share this on social media if it is worth sharing. 

Learning vRNI 3.9: Part 1:Adding Data Sources in vRNI

Manish Jha

By default when vRNI 3.9 is installed, it starts in the NSX assessment mode and in this mode you will only see option to add vCenter server as data source.

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If you click on Add Data Source, the only option available to you is to add vCenter, Infoblox and Netflow Collector.

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In order to add different data sources like NSX Manager or Cisco devices, you need to change the evaluation license and then click on “Switch to Full Product Evaluation” button available in the bottom right corner of vRNI homepage.

Once you have switched to full evaluation mode, you can add various data sources to analyze traffic flow, and generate reports. 

To add a new data source, go to settings page from gear icon menu and navigate to Accounts and Data Sources option.

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Click on Add Source button.

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Now you will see plenty of options available to be added as data source.… Read More

vCloud Extender-Part 4: Cloud Provider Registration and VM Migration

Manish Jha

In last post of this series, I covered the steps needed to configure on-prem environment to connect it to a cloud provider site. In this post I will demonstrate how to register cloud provider and initiate vm migration using vCloud Extender.

1: Introduction to vCloud Extender

2: vCloud Extender-Cloud Provider Setup

3: vCloud Extender-Tenant (On-Premise) Setup

Lets start with Cloud Provider registration.

Login to On-prem vCenter server webclient and click on vCloud Extender plugin and navigate to Provider Clouds tab. Click on Add a Provider Cloud button.

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Specify Cloud Provider name and Provider Cloud URL. This should be in format https://provider-url/cloud/org/tenant-org-name.

Also specify the vCD Extender cloud service URL. This URL we configured in post 2 of this series.

Clicking on Test button verifies that if the supplied info is correct and the on-prem vCenter can connect to cloud environment successfully. Once test is passed, click on Add button to save the configuration.… Read More