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Compared to a traditional 3-tier architecture, Nutanix offers the following benefits:

Elimination of Siloed Storage:

Nutanix consolidates file, block, and object storage into a single platform, eliminating the need for separate, siloed storage systems. This simplifies management and improves resource utilization.

Avoidance of Generational Infrastructure Silos:

Nutanix's modern lifecycle management allows for seamless upgrades and expansions, avoiding the creation of generational silos. This ensures that the infrastructure remains up-to-date and can easily adapt to new technologies and requirements without disruptive forklift upgrades.

References:

Nutanix Bible​

For deploying 5000 virtual desktops in an active/active deployment that ensures availability during maintenance or disasters, the minimum number of nodes required is 104. This configuration accounts for high availability and redundancy, ensuring that the virtual desktops remain operational even if an entire site becomes unavailable​​.

When the cluster RF is increased to 3, the resiliency factor for data becomes 3. This means that the system can tolerate up to 2 failures for data components. However, Zookeeper, which is a metadata component, typically maintains a separate RF. In Nutanix clusters, the default RF for Zookeeper remains 1 even if the cluster RF is increased to 3. Therefore, the values in the data resiliency dashboard for FAILURES TOLERABLE will be:

Zookeeper = 1

Extent Groups = 2​​.

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​​​​.

Zookeeper in Nutanix is responsible for distributing metadata to ensure availability in case of node or block failure. Metadata includes important information about the state and configuration of the cluster, which is crucial for maintaining cluster operations and consistency.

References:

Nutanix Bible

The Nutanix Collector provides performance data over the previous 7 days. This allows for a comprehensive analysis of the environment's performance trends and helps in making informed sizing and configuration decisions.

Data Collection:

Nutanix Collector gathers data points related to CPU, memory, storage, and network usage over a 7-day period.

Analysis Period:

A 7-day data collection period ensures that the analysis captures the variability and peak usage patterns, providing a reliable basis for infrastructure planning.

Usage:

This period is user-friendly and sufficient to identify performance bottlenecks, resource utilization patterns, and to validate that the proposed solution will meet the customer’s requirements.

References:

Nutanix Collector documentation and usage guidelines.

Best practices for performance monitoring and analysis.

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

In Sizer, when creating a multi-cluster scenario, the Summary Failover Capacity indicator (N+0, N+1) shows the worst resiliency level of any cluster in the scenario. This helps in identifying the weakest link in terms of failover capacity across multiple clusters. If any cluster within the scenario has a lower failover capacity, the indicator will reflect this to ensure that the overall solution can handle the identified worst-case scenario​​.

In an 8-node hybrid cluster configured with a Fault Tolerance level of 2 (RF3), the system can tolerate up to two simultaneous failures. However, if there are SSD failures on two different nodes and a CVM is powered off on another node simultaneously, the data availability is compromised. This combination results in losing the quorum necessary for maintaining data availability and integrity, leading to VM data becoming unavailable.

References:

Nutanix Bible

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​