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Nutanix AOS 5.6 Release!

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Good day friends! I don’t typically write about software releases, however this is a big one for Nutanix. There are some great features that customers will be able to take advantage of. Lets go through a few of them!

AOS

  • Network Microsegmentation goes GA for AHV!
    • Managed through Prism
    • Stateful distributed firewall – app isolation
    • Nothing additional to install
  • 80TB Nodes now available
  • Erasure Coding update
    • Lower Garbage collection and background jobs
  • Volume Group (VG) vDisk Load Balancing meaning splitting up the vDisks in same VG on multiple CVMs. Will give you better performance.
  • Prism Central Scale-Out
    • multiple instances of PC forming a resilient and distributed control plane.
  • Two-node Cluster

AFS – This is what I’m most excited about!

  • Support for NFS v4 in addition to SMBv2 and 2.1
  • A single fileserver will support both SMB and NFS exports (AFS can now be used for NON-Windows use cases)
  • Incremental File backup support
    • Change File Tracker based backups
      • HUGE benefit – no fileserver scans needed for incremental backups, super efficient
  • File Activity Monitoring
    • Use external syslog server
    • This opens AFS up to vendors who conduct file auditing. Varonis maybe?
  • AFS Cluster Network Change
  • Share and Export Statistics Now Available

Useful Links

 

Nutanix – AFS Deployment and Replication to DR

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Nutanix Acropolis File Services (AFS) has been available to organizations utilizing the Acropolis hypervisor for a while now. With the release of AOS 5.0, it is now available for organizations who utilize VMware ESXi. This is great for organizations that currently utilize Windows file servers or standalone NAS devices. This solution provides a single interface for virtual machines, as well as file services.

Before deploying AFS, I would recommend that you are on the latest version of AOS and AFS.

Prerequisites:

  • Ensure vSphere DRS is enabled
  • Ensure you have downloaded the BITS from Nutanix portal
  • Ensure you have configured your “External Data Services IP”
  • Have two Networks setup –
    • Client Access Network – Users will connect to this IP to access the File Server
    • Storage Network – I prefer to put this on the same network as your CVM’s.

Deploying the File Server

  1. Go to Menu and Select “File Server”
  2. Click “+File Server”
  3. You will be presented a list of prerequisites, ensure all items are “Checked” prior to the next step
  4. Click on “Download or Upload AFS Software
    1. Upload the Metadata file as well as the AFS Bits
    2. Click “Upload Now”
  5. On the “Basics” screen, you will enter name, file server size and FileServer VM specs. This should be sized to Nutanix Best Practices – Found Here.
  6. On the “Client Network” screen, you will enter IP Addresses that your end user / services will connect to
  7. On the “Storage Network” screen. This network will be used for backed communication between the CVMs and the FSVMs
  8. On the “Join AD” screen – enter the information needed to join your local AD environment
  9. On the “Summary” screen – it will show information you entered on previous screens – click Create – this will create AFS on this cluster. 

Once the File Server has been created, you can then go on to create shares and begin copying data/using your file server

Replication to DR

In this scenario, we will be replicating to another Nutanix Cluster at our DR environment. I will also assume you have setup and configured the “Remote Site”

  1. Go to “Data Protection” on the menu
  2. Click on the file protection group that was created when you created your file server. It will be named “NTNX-<FileServerName>
  3. Click Update
  4. Click to create a new schedule –
  5. Configure your local schedule – Select your Remote Site and select how many snapshots you would like to keep at the DR Site. 
  6. Click Create Schedule | Click Close

Go to the “Remote Site” tab and click “Update”. You will need to configure you vStore mapping – Select your local container, in this example, I have chosen “Nutanix_files_ctr” to be mapped to the “Prod-Site–Files” container. Click Save

On the next snapshot schedule, your file server will be replicated to the DR Site.

In this walkthrough we have accomplished the following items. 

  • Deployed a Nutanix AFS File Server
  • Configured Nutanix AFS Replication to your DR Site

Nutanix – Restore VM from Snapshot

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We previously went over how to configure Data Protection for your data through Prism. In this walk through, I will show you the steps to restore or clone one of your virtual machines.

Restore

There are multiple reasons you would restore a VM from a snapshot. The number one reason you would restore a VM from a snapshot would be if something catastrophic happened to the virtual machine. To restore a virtual machines, follow these steps.

  1. Select “Data Protection” in the menu
  2. Select the Table tab and select the Protection Domain that has the VM that you want to restore.
  3. Click on Local Snapshots and select the snapshot you would like to restore the VM from
  4. Click “Restore” to overwrite to existing VM – 

Clone

As mentioned, we also have the option to clone a virtual machine. A few reasons we would do this would be:

  • You need to restore a file from a snapshot state
  • You want to clone a machine at the remote site to check system state.

To clone a machine, you would follow steps 1-4, listed above, except chose “Clone” and click OK. 

When you no longer need the clone, you can power off the virtual machine and delete the clone.

Nutanix – Data Protection to Remote Site- ESXi

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Mike Dent (the “doctor”) over at Etherbacon did a great walk through on how to setup Data Protection when utilizing the Acropolis Hypervisor. I wanted to go walk through how to setup Data Protection when you are using ESXi as the hypervisor, and how to failover to another Nutanix Cluster (remote site).

 

  1. Setup the “Remote Site” in Prism.
    1. Prism | Data Protection
    2. Click on “Remote Site”
    3. Fill in the remote site name – I typically use “SiteName-DR” and remote cluster IP Address
    4. On the settings page, you are given the options for Bandwidth Throttling, compression and mappings. You will notice when utilizing ESXi, you are not given the option for Network Mapping. Once complete, click “save”.
  2. Create Protection Domain
    1. Click on “Protection Domain” and select “Async DR”
    2. Enter a Protection Domain Name – 
    3. On the Entities page, select the virtual machines you would like to protect. Two things to note on this page.  A). Make sure when you select your VM’s to scroll down 0n the screen and click “Protect Entities”. B) I would recommend installing Nutanix Guest Tools on the virtual machines that you machines if you are utilizing “application consistent snapshots” – NGT is a little more efficient when it comes to taking the snap of the VM – otherwise it will use the VMware Tools to snap the VM.
    4. On the Schedule Page, you can create the schedule for your Protection Domain. Currently (as of 01/27/2015) the shortest amount of time between snaps is 1 hour. Because we want to send this protection domain to our remote site, be sure to put a check mark in the remote site box. On the Retention Policy side of the box, select how many snaps you would like to keep local and how many you want on the remote side. 

 

Once configured a snapshot will be taken. You will also notice after the initial snapshot has been taken the replication to DR will begin.

Failover to DR

At some point, you will want/need to fail over to your DR environment. To do so, using ESXi, complete the following steps.

  1. Select “Data Protection” on the menu screen
  2. Select the Data Protection group you would like to migrate to the remote site | Click Migrate
    • Note: If this was a “TRUE” DR situation, you would log into the DR Cluster and click “Activate” – this will used the last snapshot available on the Remote Cluster
  3. Since Nutanix allows you to replicate to multiple sites, you can now choose which site you would like to migrate the VM to. 
  4. Once you click migrate, it will take a snapshot and replicate it to DR and bring up the VM at the DR Site. You will notice that the machines you migrated will now show up as “orphaned” in vCenter. This is expected.
  5. To bring the machine into production at DR, you will need to change the Network port group to the port group used at DR.
  6. To bring the machine back to Production, log into the DR cluster, Data Protection and select the Data Protection Group. You can now follow steps 2 and 3 from this section

When the DR situation is complete and you have migrated back to the production site, you will again notice that the VM is now orphaned at the DR site. At this point, since it has been migrated back to production, you can delete the orphaned VM.

The below video will show how to migrate a VM from one site to a remote site, and then back.

In this walk through, we have completed the following items:

  • Created a Remote Site under Data Protection
  • Protected Virtual Machines
  • Created a DR Schedule
  • Failed over to the Remote Site
  • Failed back to Production

Nutanix – Self Service Restore

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Since Nutanix Acropolis Operation System 4.6, Nutanix has offered the Self Service Restore function for virtual machines running Nutanix Guest Tools. This feature allows VM admins to complete a recovery from the Nutanix data protection snapshots with minimal administrator intervention. There are a few ways to accomplish this, I will be walking you through using the Web Interface.

This is a great feature that I believe any organization that runs on Nutanix should take a look at and utilize. Many organizations only back up data once a day, which leaves gaps in data protection during business hours.  With this functionality, you are given additional restore points to restore files for end users throughout the day without additional backups.

Just a few things before we get started.

  • Linux VMs are not supported at this time.
  • VMs must be utilizing Nutanix snapshots that are a part of a protection domain.
  • Snapshots created with AOS 4.5 or later are only supported.

Installing Nutanix Guest Tools

  1. Go to “VM” from Menu
  2. Click on the virtual machine you would like to install Nutanix Guest Tools (NGT) on
  3. Click on “Manage Guest Tools”
    1. Select “Mount Nutanix Guest Tools”
  4. Log into the virtual machine and run setup from the DVD Drive – Accept the EULA and click next.

*Please see video for a full video walkthrough on how to install Nutanix Guest Tools (NGT).

Enabling Self-Service Recovery

  1. Add your VM to a Protection Domain
  2. Go back to the VM screen and click “Manage VM Guest Tools”,  “Enable Nutanix Guest Tools” and Enable “Self Service Restore”

Restoring a File with Nutanix Self Service Recovery

  1. Log into the virtual machine that you have enabled “Self Service Recovery” on
  2. Click on the “Nutanix SSR” icon
  3. Log into the portal with an administrator account
  4. You will see all of the available snapshots available to restore files from – Click on the snapshot you would like to explore
  5. Click on the disk you would like to explore | Click on “Disk Action” and click on “Mount”
  6. After the snapshot is mounted, SSR will show what drive the snap was mounted to
  7. Open Windows Explorer and explore the drive. From here, you can restore the file to the original location
  8. When you are complete, go back into SSR select the disk and click “Disk Action” and “Unmount”

I will go through these steps in the below video.

Note: I will delete a folder and restore it using SSR.