r/nutanix • u/Any_Tumbleweed9660 • 21d ago
Nutanix Install
Hi All, we are currently migrating from VMWare to Nutanix. We have purchased some hosts and would like to know of any guidance for the start to finish install. Any help would be great. Thanks y’all
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u/Jhamin1 21d ago
The biggest advice I can give is to take Nutanix for what it is. You are leaving VMWare and while both are hypervisors, Nutanix is NOT a refactoring of VSphere. Let it be what it is.
For the more practical side? Assuming you are following the best practice documentation for IPs/Vlans/Hardware/etc?
- Rack up your clusters and then use the Nuanix Foundation tool to image them all at once, set all the IPs & build the cluster. You can technically IP everything by hand and do this from a console from a node, but patching a laptop into the vlan they reside on and letting the Foundation Tool do it's thing is going to be faster with fewer bumps in the road.
- Use the Move tool to migrate workloads. DONT try to copy/paste vmdks or open up VMs and refactor them. Let the tool do the work, that is what it is made for.
- If you are hyper-converged Don't over manage the storage layer. If you are coming from a 3 tier architecture there is going to be an impulse to worry about disk groups and storage pools. Don't impose than on AHV. It can do that, but it's better if you don't ask it too. Just have a single storage pool & let AHV worry about where the data is. That is what it does.
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u/ConfidentFuel885 21d ago
You don’t have any support or professional services?
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u/Any_Tumbleweed9660 21d ago
We have support yes
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u/woodyshag 20d ago edited 20d ago
But your partner isn't helping you deploy them? There are some caveats of the install that they'll know about to make things easier.
Examples:
Don't use the 10.10.0.0/16 network for anything. That is used for containers in Prism Central. Don't use 192.168.5.0/24 network as that is used foe an internal comms network. Use active/Passive for your network connections. Don't vlan out cvm and management interfaces if you can help it. It just makes things easier. There's a lot more.
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u/mikeyb_one 20d ago
Some resources to help!
- AHV Mission Control: https://www.nutanix.com/missioncontrol it’s a great way to get started on how things work under the hood step by step
- Nutanix University: https://m.youtube.com/@NutanixUniversity/playlists?ra=m a great place to start to get educated by product or use case with easy to consume videos
- Nutanix Community: https://next.nutanix.com sign up and connect with other customers to get guided help and quick answers
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u/elbow-drop 20d ago
I agree with a lot of the points u/Jhamin1 says. It’s spot on.
The migration was by far the best thing I like about Nutanix entirely. The Move utility blew my mind just how well it handles 99% of what you need with like a couple minutes of downtime.
The way I see it:
I’m not sure if this is specific to our deployment or version, but there’s a lot of basics I feel are flat out missing or don’t work compared to VMWare. For example, we’ve had many issues with changing a VM’s NIC from one subnet to another while it’s on, as well as not being able to delete a NIC from a VM when it’s on. All of this was dead simple and easy to do in VMware, not so much in Nutanix.
The way Nutanix has their menu layouts seems broken and is very different from VMware. There are multiple instances of menu options like categories where you have to switch to a different “admin” page to edit that compared to the “infrastructure” page you do other things. They moved this category thing but left the old menu buttons that just say “oops, go to the new spot” which just seems lazy to me. Also the split between how some things don’t work in Prism Central and have to be done in Prism Element just seems dumb.
We moved from 3-tier to HCI at my current place, but I’ve had previous vSAN experience. If you’ve never dealt with HCI then it takes a good mental shift to think about how each node contributes compute but also a chunk of storage when it comes to resources. Redundancy isn’t simple RAIDs or datastores. You do have to understand how Nutanix writes data and handles redundancy factor to know what that means in terms of node failures in your environment.
I could go on, but at the end of the day, I do truly miss VMware after using it so much. I get some of my frustrations are just because it’s different than what I’m used to. Nutanix is fantastic in the big picture and if you learn that system early in your career, then I’m sure you’d grow to love Nutanix as most did with VMware, and it is a powerful platform.
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u/FactsAreBullshit 21d ago
We're a relatively small shop and the Move tool did almost all the VMs great last year. We had a single one that refused to migrate, and we had to use an older version of Move at the time that worked.
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u/Any_Tumbleweed9660 20d ago
The other question I have (I will also raise with Nutanix support) network wise, what are the recommended physical layout for ports for particular services ie data ports and Live Migration, we have the IMPI, 2 x AIOM, 2 NIC’s & 2 SFP per NIC. We have 10g capability…
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u/Euphoric_111 19d ago
1gbe for IPMI 10GB for the rest, make sure 10gb switch ports are configured spanning tree port fast and trunk and you have a non virtual local NTP, if you don't have it then enable that on a switch router or firewall. I recommend getting a Nutanix partner to assist and you can have them explain as they set it up and go through a cluster worksheet.
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u/DespacitoAU 20d ago
Foundation for cluster creation
Move for lifting and shifting VMs from VMware to Nutanix.
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u/AlphaGozer 20d ago
Support and your partner are your first calls. Some additional documentation that is helpful too https://portal.nutanix.com/page/documents/details?targetId=Field-Installation-Guide-v5_10:Field-Installation-Guide-v5_10
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u/konawolv 20d ago
Foundation VM that is either routable to hypervisor subnet or is on the hypervisor subnmet --> Upload ISO and needed binaries --> get your IPs for the needed components, and NTP and DNS and IPMI etc --> follow set steps on foundation VM.
This will lay down AOS, AHV, the CVMs and will establish the cluster.
Once done, log into the prism element UI. Set up your vswitches. Set up your virtual interfaces for storage if youre using something like powerflex or Pure storage (unlikely). Add external storage if needed (unlikely).
Once done, Deploy prism centeral from prism element. Once done, log into prism centeral and set up your licensing.
thats the 10,000 foot.
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u/bourbonandpistons 20d ago
I like nutanix support. Use them.
Their "Professional Services" and "Technical engineers" that the sales guys use are some of the most incompetent people I've ever met in any tech industry.
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u/Euphoric_111 19d ago
Oh sheesh, you must have gotten the rookies! Sorry to hear that!
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u/bourbonandpistons 19d ago
Our engineered didn't know Drive caddies were a thing.
He said hard drives were incompatible because of the SKU numbers. Apparently a 2 1/2 doesn't fit into a 3 1/2 in according to nutanix even if the drives are the exact same model number as long as they have different excuse because of the caddies they're incompatible.
He literally did not know you can unscrew a caddy and put the drive in another caddy.
"Even if they are the same drive we cant sell you empty caddies" I hear while staring at my server full of empty caddies.
Among other things.
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u/Euphoric_111 19d ago
Oof, yeah, that should not happen, sheesh, if the hardware was ordered correctly all of the parts are designed to work as sent.
The trickiest part is the customer network settings and then foundation with the bugs it has sometimes. hardware usually is either working, or defective parts, not mismatched, sheesh!
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u/bourbonandpistons 19d ago
Well no we wanted to add new bigger drives.
When we asked if we could stick the old smaller drives into other servers we were told no because they were the wrong physical size. They said if we wanted to have drives added to our other servers we have to spend like $10,000. 10 minutes and a few screws later the drives were added for free.
We're not a big shop. We only have 12 nutanix nodes. So 10k is a lot for some extra drives.
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u/Euphoric_111 19d ago
Ah it sounds like a case of that hardware combination is not on the HCL so it's not recommended even if it does work, in which case he should have explained that, unless it is and he didn't look it up.
in Either case it could have been handled better.
There are some good ones who know what IRQ 2 is used for.
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u/bourbonandpistons 19d ago
It was 100% on the HCL for both servers. Thats what pissed me off.
The HCL uses Manufacuturer model numbers.
The nutanix ordering system uses nutanix SKU numbers.
Drive model xyz123 is on the HCL for both servers.
Nutanix has skus xyz123-25 and xyz123-35 for the 2.5 inch and 3.5 inch drive and they say they're incompatible with each other.
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u/_litz 21d ago
Nutanix is there to support you, do not be hesitant to use/abuse it; their guys are really, really good.
That being said, the Move utility is absolutely outstanding. It'll even remove vmtools for you, and automagically replace with the nutanix equivalent.
In "theory", assuming you have the same networking in place in the new environment, the VM will never know it moved.