NCSE-Core Nutanix Certified Systems Engineer-Core (NCSE-Core 6.8) Questions and Answers

Understanding Network Planning for POC:

A Proof of Concept (POC) requires meticulous planning, especially concerning network configurations. This ensures seamless integration and evaluation within the customer's existing infrastructure.

VLAN Tags:

Explanation: VLAN (Virtual Local Area Network) tags are crucial for segregating network traffic, ensuring that the different types of traffic (management, storage, VM traffic) do not interfere with each other.

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.

Scenario Analysis:

The VM is protected with NearSync Replication, scheduled every 15 minutes, but misses the replication window during nightly backups due to high write volumes.

Expected Behavior:

Option B: Protection Domain transitions back to hourly schedule:

NearSync automatically falls back to a less frequent replication schedule, such as hourly, when it cannot keep up with the 15-minute schedule due to write volume or other issues.

Option D: The system continuously tries to get to the NearSync schedule:

The system does not give up on the NearSync schedule. Instead, it keeps attempting to return to the 15-minute interval as soon as conditions allow (e.g., write volume decreases)​​.

Behavior Explanation:

Hourly Schedule Transition:

When the high write volume prevents the 15-minute replication, NearSync transitions to an hourly schedule to ensure that replication continues, albeit at a reduced frequency.

Continuous Attempt to Return to NearSync:

The system monitors conditions and makes continuous efforts to revert to the NearSync schedule as soon as it becomes feasible.

Conclusion:

The correct options that describe the expected behavior are B and D.

References: Nutanix Bible explanation of NearSync behavior under high write volumes and missed replication windows.

POC Requirements:

Measure recovery time from power loss, the impact of running multiple workloads, and peak storage performance.

The results need to be presented to the CIO.

Tool Selection:

X-Ray: Nutanix X-Ray is a comprehensive testing and benchmarking tool designed specifically for Nutanix environments. It includes pre-defined scenarios for various testing requirements.

Explanation:

X-Ray Scenarios: X-Ray comes with built-in scenarios that cover various aspects of performance, resiliency, and workload impact. This ensures that the tests are standardized and reliable.

PDF Report: X-Ray generates detailed PDF reports that can be directly presented to stakeholders, such as the CIO, providing a clear and professional summary of the test results.

Outcome:

Using X-Ray with its included scenarios will provide the most reliable and comprehensive testing environment, reducing the room for error and ensuring the results are presented in a professional format.

References: Refer to Nutanix documentation on X-Ray and its usage for performance testing and benchmarking.

Scenario Understanding:

The administrator needs to verify if all network cards associated with Bridge0 are being utilized in a Nutanix AHV Cluster VDI environment.

Menus to Check Network Configuration:

Option A: Host NICs tab in Hardware menu:

This tab provides detailed information about the physical NICs on each host, including their status, speed, and which bridge they are associated with.

Option B: Host view in Network menu:

This view offers a summary of the network configuration for each host, including the active bridges and the associated NICs. It allows administrators to see if all NICs are being used correctly and if Bridge0 is correctly configured across the hosts.

Evaluation of Other Options:

Option C: 1.0 Metrics tab VM menu:

This option is related to VM metrics and does not provide detailed information on the physical NICs or their utilization.

Option D: Network Configuration item in Setting menu:

This option is used for configuring network settings but does not provide detailed utilization information of the NICs associated with a specific bridge like Bridge0.

Conclusion:

The correct menus to check the current network configuration and utilization of NICs are the Host NICs tab in the Hardware menu and the Host view in the Network menu.

References: Nutanix documentation and guides on network configuration and monitoring in AHV clusters.

A. Gartner Magic Quadrant:

The Gartner Magic Quadrant is a well-recognized industry report that evaluates technology vendors based on their completeness of vision and ability to execute. It is a credible source that highlights Nutanix’s position as a leader in the hyperconverged infrastructure (HCI) market.

Highlighting Nutanix’s leadership position in the Gartner Magic Quadrant can help address the management’s concerns about Nutanix’s market presence and reinforce its credibility as a major player in the HCI space.

For a customer intending to build out their VDI environment over 18 months, the systems engineer should highlight the element of Nutanix WebScale architecture that ensures linear performance with predictable scaling.

WebScale Architecture:

Nutanix’s WebScale architecture is designed to provide consistent performance as the environment scales. Each node added to the cluster contributes proportional compute, storage, and network resources.

Linear Scaling:

This architecture ensures that performance remains consistent and predictable as new nodes are added, which is critical for maintaining a consistent user experience in a growing VDI environment.

Benefits:

Predictable Performance: Users can expect the same level of performance as the environment scales.

No Single Point of Failure: The distributed nature of Nutanix’s architecture ensures high availability and resilience, which is crucial for VDI environments.

References:

Nutanix WebScale Architecture documentation.

VDI deployment guides and scalability best practices on Nutanix platforms.

Manual Sizing Considerations:

Switching to manual mode requires a more detailed consideration of various factors to ensure the configuration meets the desired requirements.

Key Considerations:

N + 1 Availability:

Explanation: Ensures high availability and fault tolerance by adding redundancy. This means the system can tolerate the failure of one node without impacting the overall system availability.

Within RVtools, the "vDisk" tab provides actual utilization information on thick provisioned disks. This tab displays detailed information about the virtual disks, including their size, provisioning type, and utilization metrics. Administrators can use this information to analyze disk usage and plan capacity accordingly.

References:

Nutanix Community Edition Getting Started Guide​

Understanding the Requirements:

Replicating data offsite involves several key considerations to ensure data integrity, availability, and compliance with business needs.

Key Questions:

Retention Requirements: Determines how long the replicated data needs to be kept, which impacts storage needs and costs. This helps in defining the replication and retention policies (Nutanix Bible, Data Protection section)​​.

Data Volume: Knowing the amount of data to be replicated ensures proper sizing of network and storage resources. It also helps in understanding the replication bandwidth and storage capacity required (Nutanix-NDB-User-Guide)​​.

WAN Speed and Latency: The speed and latency of the WAN link between source and target sites affect replication performance and the ability to meet RPO (Recovery PointObjective) and RTO (Recovery Time Objective). High latency can impact data transfer rates and consistency (Nutanix-NDB-User-Guide, Network Requirements section)​​.

Conclusion:

Asking these questions ensures the SE can design a replication solution that meets the prospect's business continuity and disaster recovery needs effectively.

References:

Nutanix Bible on Data Protection

Nutanix NDB User Guide on Network Requirements and Best Practices

Shadow Clones is the AOS feature that provides enhanced read performance specifically for virtual desktop environments. This feature allows frequently read data to be cached locally on each node, reducing read latency and improving performance in environments with multiple virtual desktops accessing the same data​​.

Understanding the Requirement for Timely Notifications:

Customers need timely notifications about significant product issues to ensure they can take proactive measures to maintain the stability and security of their environments.

Field Advisory Notifications:

Explanation: Field advisories provide critical information regarding product issues, updates, and patches. Registering for email notifications ensures customers receive these advisories promptly and directly.

Register for Field Advisory Email Notifications:

Steps to Register:

Visit the Nutanix Support Portal: Customers should visit the Nutanix support portal at portal.nutanix.com.

Create or Log in to Account: Ensure they have an active account on the support portal.

Subscribe to Notifications: Navigate to the subscription section and register for email notifications for field advisories.

Other Options Considered:

Visit the nutanix.com website: Useful for general information but not specific for timely field advisories.

Open Prism Element > Gear icon Menu > Field Advisories: Provides access to advisories but does not facilitate proactive notifications.

Visit the Portal.nutanix.com website > Documentation Tab > Security Advisories: Accesses advisories but requires manual checking rather than receiving timely updates.

Conclusion:

To ensure timely and proactive notifications, customers shouldregister for Field Advisory email notifications.

References:

Nutanix Support Portal.

Field Advisories Notification Setup.

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​​.

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.

CVM (Controller VM) Autopathing allows workloads to continue running on the host during an AOS (Acropolis Operating System) upgrade. This feature ensures that the I/O operations are redirected to other healthy CVMs in the cluster if the local CVM is temporarily unavailable during the upgrade process. This seamless redirection ensures that there is no disruption to the workloads, maintaining continuous operations and high availability during upgrades.

References:

Nutanix Bible​

To increase availability by enabling rack awareness in a current configuration with a single RF2 cluster consisting of 7 identical NX-3170 1U nodes, the systems engineer should:

Add Nodes: Increase the node count to enhance redundancy.

Add 2 additional NX-3170 1U nodesto bring the total to 9 nodes. This ensures there are enough nodes to distribute across multiple racks while maintaining the RF2 configuration.

Distribute Nodes Across Racks:

Distribute nodes across 2 separate racksto achieve rack awareness. This means placing nodes in such a way that the failure of a single rack does not impact the availability of the entire cluster.

By following these steps, the cluster will be resilient to a single rack failure, enhancing the overall availability.

References:

Nutanix documentation on RF2 configurations and rack awareness.

Best practices for node and rack distribution to ensure high availability.

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.

B. Review budgetary pricing:

The Sizer BOM (Bill of Materials) provides a breakdown of the components and their costs, allowing the SE to review budgetary pricing and ensure the solution fits within the prospect’s financial constraints.

C. Review workload sizing details:

The Sizer BOM includes detailed workload sizing information, which helps the SE verify that the proposed solution meets the performance and capacity requirements for the SQL Server workload running on Cisco C240 M4 servers.

References:

Nutanix Sizer tool documentation explains how to use the BOM for reviewing pricing and workload sizing details.

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 Era is a tool that provides database management with one-click operations for provisioning, patching, and managing databases. It includes capabilities for self-service and lifecycle management for both Kubernetes containers and SQL databases, making it ideal for building a private cloud for internal developers. Era simplifies database operations and integrates seamlessly with Nutanix infrastructure to provide a comprehensive solution for database lifecycle management.

References:

Nutanix Bible​

Evaluating the Situation:

The prospect has concerns about AHV due to FUD (Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt) and requires further validation despite a demo and case studies.

Additional Options to Address FUD:

X-Ray:

Explanation: X-Ray is a Nutanix tool designed to simulate real-world scenarios and workloads, providing automated and comprehensive testing to validate the performance and capabilities of AHV.

Analyze the CPU utilization data:

Historical CPU utilization data indicates that peak CPU utilization never exceeds 50% on either physical host.

This implies that the existing physical CPUs are underutilized.

Calculate vCPU

ratio:

Given that peak utilization is only 50%, a conservative approach would be to use a lower vCPU to pCore ratio to avoid overcommitment and ensure performance.

Recommended ratio:

A 2:1 vCPU to pCore ratio is appropriate in this scenario to ensure that there is ample CPU capacity and to avoid potential performance bottlenecks.

References:

Nutanix Sizer tool recommendations and best practices for CPU allocation in virtualized environments.

Current User Metrics:

The financial institution has 5000 named VDI users.

Peak concurrent users are 2800.

Growth Factor Calculation:

To account for growth, an additional 10% needs to be added to the peak concurrent users.

Calculation: 2800 concurrent users * 1.10 = 3080 users.

Conclusion:

The SE should size the VDI environment for 3080 VMs to accommodate current and near-future needs.

References:

VDI sizing guidelines from Nutanix best practices.

Growth factor considerations from industry standards.

Current Configuration:

The customer has a 3-node cluster configured for RF2 with 100TB of raw disk space.

Erasure Coding Requirements:

Erasure Coding (EC-X) improves storage efficiency by using a parity-based method to store data.

For EC-X to be enabled, a minimum of 4 nodes is required in the cluster.

Explanation:

RF2 (Replication Factor 2): Requires data to be replicated across at least two nodes.

Erasure Coding: Requires additional nodes beyond the replication factor to store parity information. In this case, a minimum of 4 nodes is needed to implement EC-X.

Required Change:

Add 1 Node: Adding one more node to the existing 3-node cluster will meet the minimum requirement of 4 nodes, allowing the customer to enable Erasure Coding.

Outcome:

By adding an additional node, the cluster will be able to utilize Erasure Coding, thereby gaining additional usable space.

C. N+1:

In the exhibit, the Failover option selected is "Standard (N+1)." This indicates that the configuration is set up for N+1 resiliency.

N+1 resiliency means that the system can tolerate the failure of one node without affecting the availability of the applications running on the cluster.

This is a standard level of resiliency where one additional node is available to take over in case of a failure, ensuring continuous availability.

References:

Nutanix documentation and the Nutanix Bible explain the different levels of resiliency, including N+1, and how they ensure data and application availability in case of node failures.

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.

https://portal.nutanix.com/page/documents/details/?targetId=Web_Console_Guide-Prism_v4_7:lic_licensing_managing_c.html

Reclaiming Licenses (Including License Renewal)

You can reclaim and optionally re-apply licenses for nodes in your clusters:

You must reclaim licenses when you plan to destroy a cluster. First reclaim the licenses, then destroy the cluster. You do not need to reclaim Starter licenses. These licenses are automatically applied whenever you create a cluster, including after you have destroyed a cluster.

Return licenses to your inventory when you remove one or more nodes from a cluster. Also, if you move nodes from one cluster to another, first reclaim the licenses, move the nodes, then re-apply the licenses.

You can reclaim licenses for nodes in your clusters in cases where you want to make modifications or downgrade licenses. For example, applying an Ultimate license to all nodes in a cluster where some nodes are currently licensed as Pro and some nodes are licensed as Ultimate. You might also want to transition nodes from Ultimate to Pro licensing.

You must reclaim licenses when you renew licenses. First reclaim the expired licenses, then apply new licenses.

B. Defined and measurable success criteria:

Before proceeding with a Proof of Concept (POC), it is crucial to establish defined and measurable success criteria. This ensures that both the SE and the prospect have a clear understanding of what constitutes a successful evaluation.

Success criteria provide a benchmark to measure the performance, functionality, and benefits of Nutanix in the prospect's environment. It helps in objectively assessing the POC outcomes and making an informed decision.

Without clear success criteria, the POC could lack direction, and the results might be open to interpretation, leading to potential disagreements and an inconclusive evaluation.

Relocating an AHV cluster to a new datacenter while maintaining the same IPs requires careful preparation to ensure minimal disruption and data integrity. The following steps are essential:

Stop all Nutanix Files clusters:

Nutanix Files clusters must be stopped to ensure that there are no ongoing file operations that could be disrupted during the relocation. This prevents data corruption and ensures a clean shutdown of file services.

Shut down all user VMs in the cluster:

Shutting down all user VMs ensures that there are no active workloads that could be interrupted. This step is crucial to prevent data loss and ensure a smooth transition when the cluster is powered up in the new datacenter.

Reconfigure IPMI and Relocate LDAP (Not Required):

Reconfiguring IPMI is not necessary if the IPMI interfaces are not affected by the physical relocation.

Relocating the linked LDAP server is also unnecessary unless the LDAP server itself is moving or changing its network configuration.

By following these steps, the administrator ensures that the cluster can be relocated safely with minimal risk of data loss or service interruption.

References:

Nutanix Bible, Sections on cluster management and VM shutdown procedures​​.

Nutanix-Community-Edition-Getting-Started, Sections on maintenance and cluster relocation​​.

The ADS (Acropolis Dynamic Scheduler) service in AHV performs the following tasks for VMs:

Invokes workload movement if there is contention of resources: ADS dynamically reallocates resources to balance the load and prevent resource contention.

Balances VMs throughout the cluster when the VM is first powered on: ADS ensures that VMs are optimally placed based on available resources and load distribution when they are started​​.

Understanding Critical Requirements:

For critical business operations, high availability, performance, and redundancy are essential to ensure minimal downtime and robust performance.

NX-1065S-G5 Node Specifications:

Customer Requirement:

Failover capability to a secondary datacenter with an RPO and RTO of no more than 15 minutes.

Round trip latency between sites can reach up to 6ms.

Nutanix Feature:

NearSync: This feature provides a low RPO/RTO disaster recovery solution with support for low-latency inter-site communication.

Explanation:

NearSyncallows for frequent asynchronous replication with very low RPOs (as low as 1 minute) and ensures rapid recovery times.

It is designed to handle round trip latencies up to 6ms, making it suitable for the customer’s inter-site latency requirements.

Outcome:

NearSync will enable the customer to meet their stringent RPO and RTO requirements, ensuring that VMs can be powered on in the secondary datacenter quickly in the event of a primary datacenter failure.

References: For further details on NearSync capabilities and configuration, refer to Nutanix documentation on disaster recovery and NearSync features.

Customer Concern:

The customer is concerned about having a single-pane-of-glass management interface being a single-point-of-failure.

Nutanix Prism Architecture:

Prism: The management interface for Nutanix clusters, designed to run on every Controller VM (CVM) in the cluster.

Explanation:

Distributed Architecture: Prism is not a single-point-of-failure because it runs on every CVM within the cluster.

High Availability: If one CVM fails, Prism services continue to operate on the remaining CVMs, ensuring continuous management availability.

Outcome:

The distributed nature of Prism running on every CVM mitigates the risk of a single-point-of-failure, addressing the customer's concern effectively.

References: For more details, refer to Nutanix documentation on Prism architecture and high availability features.

Understanding the Scenario:

The customer has mission-critical applications that need to be backed up to a remote location with a latency of 7 ms.

Nutanix Technology Options:

AsyncDR: Provides asynchronous replication with typically higher RPO (Recovery Point Objective) than NearSync.

NearSync: Offers near-synchronous replication with RPO as low as 1 minute, suitable for low-latency connections like the 7 ms latency mentioned.

Metro Availability: Provides synchronous replication with zero RPO but requires a higher bandwidth and lower latency connection (typically sub-millisecond).

Leap: A comprehensive DR orchestration solution that includes AsyncDR and NearSync but is not a standalone replication technology.

Evaluation of NearSync:

NearSync is designed to provide low RPO (as low as 1 minute) by taking frequent lightweight snapshots.

It is well-suited for environments with moderate latency (like 7 ms) and can handle the backup requirements efficiently without the need for extremely low latency and high bandwidth required by synchronous replication solutions like Metro Availability​​​​.

Conclusion:

Given the latency of 7 ms and the need for short RPO, NearSync is the most suitable Nutanix technology to provide the shortest RPO.

References: Nutanix Bible and Nutanix NDB User Guide details on NearSync and its operational parameters.

Three valid configuration scenarios for deploying Prism Central include:

Environments use Network Address Translation (NAT): Prism Central can be deployed in environments where NAT is used to manage network addresses.

Prism Elements and Prism Central are in different subnets: It is possible to configure Prism Central and Prism Elements in different subnets as long as network connectivity is maintained.

Environments do not have Internet access: Prism Central can be deployed and operated in environments that do not have direct Internet access, relying instead on internal network configurations and management​​.

C. What is your process for evaluating new methodologies and technologies?

This open-ended question helps initiate a broader discussion about the customer's approach to technology adoption and evaluation. It allows the SE to understand the customer's decision-making process and criteria for adopting new technologies beyond their current VDI workload.

By understanding the evaluation process, the SE can tailor the conversation to introduce Nutanix's capabilities in other areas such as cloud integration, database management, and application development, thus expanding the scope of Nutanix solutions within the customer’s infrastructure.

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.

B. N+1:

Based on the sizing scenario and the configuration shown in the exhibit, the Failover option selected is "Standard (N+1)."

This indicates that the cluster is configured to provide N+1 resiliency, where the system can handle the failure of one node by having an additional node available to take over.

This level of resiliency is common in environments where a balance between cost and availability is required.

References:

Nutanix Sizer tool and Nutanix documentation provide detailed explanations on configuring clusters with different levels of resiliency, including N+1.

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​

When using Live Optics to assist with sizing a partial infrastructure refresh, it's crucial to capture data that accurately reflects the peak usage periods to ensure the sizing will accommodate the highest demands placed on the infrastructure. Here are the detailed steps and reasons:

Peak Utilization:

Capturing data during peak utilization provides a realistic picture of the maximum load the infrastructure needs to handle.

It ensures that the proposed sizing can accommodate the highest performance and capacity demands, reducing the risk of undersizing.

24-hour Window:

A 24-hour window captures a full day’s cycle, including peak and off-peak hours, providing a comprehensive view of the utilization patterns.

This duration helps in understanding not only the peak loads but also the variations and average loads throughout the day.

Combining these two factors, the most accurate and comprehensive data for sizing would be gathered during 24-hour windows at periods of peak utilization.

Understanding the Need for a Centralized Gateway:

A centralized gateway provides a single point of access for all necessary resources, making it easier for customers and partners to manage their interactions with Nutanix.

Portal.nutanix.com:

Explanation: The portal.nutanix.com website is designed to be the single gateway for various Nutanix-related activities, including deal registrations, forums, software downloads, product documentation, product alerts, and support interactions.

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​​.

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 .

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.

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 using the Sizer in Automatic mode, it can provide various configurations based on the specified workload and capacity requirements. The following configurations are possible:

6x NX-8055-G7:

Each node has 2 x 7.68TB SSDs and 10x 6TB HDDs.

This configuration balances high-performance SSDs with large-capacity HDDs, suitable for mixed workload environments.

4x NX-1075S-G7 + 4x NX-8035-G7:

NX-1075S-G7 nodes have 4x 3.85TB SSDs each.

NX-8035-G7 nodes have 6x 3.84TB SSDs each.

This combination provides high SSD storage capacity across different node types, optimized for performance-intensive workloads.

References:

Nutanix Sizer Documentation: Details on how the Sizer tool calculates and recommends configurations.

Nutanix Hardware Specifications: Specifications for different node models and their storage capabilities.

B. B (Manual Mode Selection):

In the exhibit, selecting "Manual" mode allows the SE to manually adjust the configuration to fit specific requirements, such as accommodating a specific number of physical host-based software licenses.

D. D (Limit Max Node Count Per Cluster):

Using the "Limit Max Node Count Per Cluster" option, the SE can specify the maximum number of nodes per cluster, ensuring that the configuration does not exceed the number of available licenses.

References:

The Nutanix Sizer tool provides various options to customize the sizing to meet specific requirements, including manual adjustments and limiting the number of nodes in a cluster.

Understanding the Requirements:

To improve the performance of an existing Nutanix cluster, it's important to consider the nature of the workloads and the configuration of the virtual machines (VMs).

Workloads are Multi-threaded (Option A):

Multi-threaded workloads can take advantage of multiple CPU cores, which helps in parallel processing and improves overall performance.

Nutanix clusters benefit from workloads that can efficiently utilize multiple threads since the underlying hypervisor (AHV or ESXi) can allocate multiple vCPUs to VMs, enhancing their performance capabilities.

VMs have more than one vCPU (Option D):

Assigning more than one vCPU to VMs allows them to process multiple instructions simultaneously, leveraging the multi-core capabilities of the physical CPUs.

This configuration is particularly beneficial for performance-sensitive applications that require more computing power and can significantly improve the performance of VMs on the Nutanix cluster.

Analysis of Other Options:

Option B: VMs have one vCPU configured:

This option limits the VMs to a single CPU core, which can bottleneck performance for multi-threaded applications and is not optimal for performance improvement.

Option C: VMs have multi-queue disable:

Disabling multi-queue can reduce the network performance by limiting the ability of the VMs to handle multiple network queues, which can be detrimental to performance.

Conclusion:

Therefore, to achieve greater performance, ensuring that workloads are multi-threaded and VMs are configured with more than one vCPU are the optimal strategies.

References: Nutanix documentation emphasizes the importance of configuring VMs with multiple vCPUs and supporting multi-threaded workloads to maximize performance in Nutanix clusters.

C. ABS (Acropolis Block Services):

Nutanix ABS (Acropolis Block Services) provides the ability to use Nutanix storage with external servers while leveraging the benefits of Nutanix’s distributed storage fabric.

This feature is particularly beneficial for Oracle environments where the organization has invested significantly in servers to save on licensing costs. ABS allows these existing servers to utilize Nutanix's all-flash storage without moving workloads entirely onto Nutanix nodes.

ABS can provide high performance and low latency storage which is critical for Oracle databases and helps address the customer's preference for all-flash arrays.

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.

Terminology

Availability Zone – it is represented by all resources (Nutanix Clusters) connected to Prism Central or Xi Leap Availability zone. Depends on the architecture, Availability zone can represent geographic territory, datacenter or server room in the datacenter. Protection policies – in protection policies you set up (RPO, Retention), rules to auto-apply policies to virtual machines

https://vmwaremine.com/2019/02/08/nutanix-leap-runbooks-part-1/#sthash.V wrzSzhQ.dpbs

During a 1-click, non-disruptive upgrade on a 3-node Nutanix cluster, if a VM on Node A overwrites an existing block of data while the CVM on Node A is rebooting, Nutanix AOS ensures data integrity by writing two copies of the data across the remaining nodes. This approach maintains data resiliency by ensuring that multiple copies of the data are available even when one of the nodes is temporarily unavailable​​​​.

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

Nutanix X-Ray is the tool packaged as a VM that uses realistic workloads paired with real-world test scenarios for HCI environments. It is designed to benchmark performance during typical workflows and failure events. X-Ray provides comprehensive testing capabilities, simulating various conditions and workloads to help evaluate the performance and resilience of the Nutanix infrastructure.

References:

Nutanix Bible

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.

Understanding POC Success Criteria:

A Proof of Concept (POC) must have clear, measurable success criteria to demonstrate the value and effectiveness of the proposed solution.

Measurable Criteria for POC:

Deployed 100 desktops on AHV using Citrix MCS plugin:

Explanation: Successfully deploying a significant number of desktops (100) using Citrix MCS on Nutanix AHV showcases the capability and scalability of the solution.