SE Academy

NCSE Level 1

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 Forward-Looking Statement Disclaimer
This presentation and the accompanying oral commentary may include express and implied forward-looking statements, including but not limited to
statements concerning our business plans and objectives, product features and technology that are under development or in process and capabilities of such
product features and technology, our plans to introduce product features in future releases, the implementation of our products on additional hardware
platforms, strategic partnerships that are in process, product performance, competitive position, industry environment, and potential market opportunities.
These forward-looking statements are not historical facts, and instead are based on our current expectations, estimates, opinions and beliefs. The accuracy
of such forward-looking statements depends upon future events, and involves risks, uncertainties and other factors beyond our control that may cause these
statements to be inaccurate and cause our actual results, performance or achievements to differ materially and adversely from those anticipated or implied
by such statements, including, among others: failure to develop, or unexpected difficulties or delays in developing, new product features or technology on a
timely or cost-effective basis; delays in or lack of customer or market acceptance of our new product features or technology; the failure of our software to
interoperate on different hardware platforms; failure to form, or delays in the formation of, new strategic partnerships and the possibility that we may not
receive anticipated results from forming such strategic partnerships; the introduction, or acceleration of adoption of, competing solutions, including public
cloud infrastructure; a shift in industry or competitive dynamics or customer demand; and other risks detailed in our Quarterly Report on Form 10-Q for the
fiscal quarter ended January 31, 2017, filed with the SEC, filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission. These forward-looking statements speak only as
of the date of this presentation and, except as required by law, we assume no obligation to update forward-looking statements to reflect actual results or
subsequent events or circumstances. Any future product or roadmap information is intended to outline general product directions, and is not a commitment,
promise or legal obligation for Nutanix to deliver any material, code, or functionality. This information should not be used when making a purchasing
decision. Further, note that Nutanix has made no determination as to if separate fees will be charged for any future product enhancements or functionality
which may ultimately be made available. Nutanix may, in its own discretion, choose to charge separate fees for the delivery of any product enhancements or
functionality which are ultimately made available.
Certain information contained in this presentation and the accompanying oral commentary may relate to or be based on studies, publications, surveys and
other data obtained from third-party sources and our own internal estimates and research. While we believe these third-party studies, publications, surveys
and other data are reliable as of the date of this presentation, they have not independently verified, and we make no representation as to the adequacy,
fairness, accuracy, or completeness of any information obtained from third-party sources.
Trademark Disclaimer (text to be inserted at the end of each presentation deck before the slides are made publicly available)
© 2018 Nutanix, Inc. All rights reserved. Nutanix, the Enterprise Cloud Platform, the Nutanix logo and any other Nutanix products and features mentioned herein are registered trademarks or
trademarks of Nutanix, Inc. in the United States and other countries. All other brand names and logos mentioned herein are for identification purposes only and are the property of their
respective holder(s), Nutanix may not associated with, or sponsored or endorsed by such holder(s).

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 Speed Dating

• Where are you from?

• What do you do?
• Experience with Nutanix?
• Selling
• Installing

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 Requirements

ANZ

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 Nutanix Certified Sales Engineer (NCSE)

Target audience:
• Partner Pre-sales engineers & consultants

Pre-requisites:
• NCSE Architecture Essentials Online Training

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 Agenda

• Quick Refresher
• Product Portfolio
• Licensing and Consumption Models
• Identifying Opportunities
• Architecture and Features
• Tools and Sizing (few example questions)
• Running a POC (and how to avoid them)

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Refresher

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 IT Complexity Is Hurting Business

Infrastructure Process People

Time consuming to provision Difficult to scale and upgrade Little time for innovation
Multiple points of failure Large upfront CapEx Requires IT specialists

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 Public Cloud: Enterprise IT has Competition

Rapid Time to Market Pay-as-you-Grow

I can deploy my application I use and pay for just what I

in minutes need, only when I need it

One-Click Operations Continuous Innovation

I don’t spend time on low-level My infrastructure gets better

infrastructure management and faster on a regular basis

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 Evolution of Infrastructure
App App

Virtualization

Compute Compute Compute

App App App

Fiber Channel Switch Fiber Channel Switch

Storage Storage
Controller Controller

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 … so much complexity

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@nutanix NCSE Training
 App App

Virtualization

Compute Compute Compute App App

Virtualization

Fiber Channel Switch Fiber Channel Switch

Storage Storage Storage Storage Storage Storage

Controller Controller Controller Controller Controller Controller

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Nutanix Product Portfolio

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 Hybrid-cloud architecture

End User Database Enterprise Apps Cloud Native ROBO & Edge Dev & Test Analytics
Computing/ VDI

NUTANIX CLOUD PLATFORM

Ensure Business Continuity

Automate Operations

Consolidate your Data

*
Secure your Environment

Modernize your Infrastructure

PRIVATE CLOUD Seamless Hybrid Cloud Operations PUBLIC CLOUD

CISCO

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*Under development.
 Foundation for Enterprise Clouds

Acropolis:
Hyperconverged Infrastructure

• Replaces enterprise SAN and

NAS storage

• Powers all apps – virtual and

container-based
Data
Server Storage
Protection
• Scale one node at a time,
with no limits

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 Foundation for Enterprise Clouds

All Popular Hypervisors

Virtualization

Acropolis

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 Foundation for Enterprise Clouds

AHV: Native Virtualization

• High-performance, secure
hypervisor

• Single console for managing

Native Virtualization
virtualization and full
infrastructure stack
Acropolis
• Included at no additional cost

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 Foundation for Enterprise Clouds

Era: One-Click Databases

• Database provisioning

• Full lifecycle management

Files: File Storage Services

Platform and Infrastructure Services • Integrated, easy-to-use file storage

AHV • NFS and SMB support

Acropolis Objects: Object Storage Services

• S3 Compatible REST-based APIs

• Massively scalable (petabyte scale)

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 Foundation for Enterprise Clouds

Prism: Single Pane Management

One-Click Operations
• One-click infrastructure
provisioning
Era Objects Files
• Machine learning-based
AHV
planning and scaling
Acropolis
• Full stack insight and reporting

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 Foundation for Enterprise Clouds

Flow: Native
Networking Services
Prism
• Microsegmentation and
Era Objects Files service insertion

AHV • Network automation and

orchestration
Acropolis
• End-to-end network visibility
Networking

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 Foundation for Enterprise Clouds

Native Cloud Services

Application Automation Calm: Application Automation

Prism • Application-centric orchestration

and lifecycle management
Era Objects Files
• Integrated application
AHV
marketplace
Acropolis • Self-service provisioning
Flow

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 Foundation for Enterprise Clouds

Native Cloud Services

Calm Nutanix Xi: Cloud Services

Prism
• Subscription-based Disaster
Era Objects Files Recovery

AHV • Cloud-based VDI services

with Nutanix Frame
Acropolis

Flow

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 Foundation for Enterprise Clouds

Calm: App-centric Cloud Management

Multi-cloud Management
• Abstract apps from cloud infrastructure

Xi Public Clouds • Deploy/manage apps on any cloud

Calm
Beam: Cloud Governance
Prism • Analyze and optimize spend
across clouds
Era Objects Files
• Security compliance for multiple clouds
AHV

Acropolis

Flow

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 Our Software Provides Maximum Choice and Flexibility

Prism
One-click Predictive Personalized
Automation Operations Experience

Acropolis
App Mobility Fabric
Intelligent Application Placement and Migration

Distributed Storage Fabric

High Performance Storage Services for All Applications

ESXi Hyper-V AHV Xenserver Public

Cloud

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 Security Configuration Management Automation
(SCMA)
Full-Stack Security Automated Validation
Development Lifecycle and Self-healing

Repeat Assess Measure

Update Test Report

Security Certifications Ecosystem

Firewall Anti-Malware Anti-Virus

Key Micro-
Encryption NCSE TrainingSegmentation
Management
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 Data Security

Native software encryption

(AES 256) for data at rest
ü FIPS 140-2 Level 1 certified
ü No need for SEDs
Encrypt

Manage Keys
Native Key Management
ü Eliminates 3rd party KMS
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Consumption models

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 Nutanix DNA

It was never a bo a
i x
n re
ut twa
NX-2400 NX OEM #1 OEM #2 COMMUNITY N f
So
EXPANSION EDITION

Initial Launch Additional internal Learn how to interact with Collect massive
platforms external platforms platform information

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 How to consume Nutanix software
SOFTWARE APPLIANCE

• Decoupled from hardware • Coupled with hardware

• Full portability across • Available through

validated platforms Nutanix or our OEM
partners
• Call Nutanix for all
software incidents • Call appliance
manufacturer for
support

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 Choice through Portability

Support 3YR

Pro / Ultimate License

NX

Support Renewal 3YR (SW + Pro/Ult + Support) 3YR

3YR
Support 3YR

Pro / Ultimate License (SW + Pro/Ult + Support) 3YR

NX

Appliance Nutanix Software

(NX, XC, HX, et. all)
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 Hardware and Firmware Compatibility List (HCL)

ASSURANCE

Protect Guarantee Architecture

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 Software Choice: Acropolis

Pro +
• Advanced Data protection (multi-site DR/orchestration)
Ultimate **
• At Rest Encryption
• Sync Rep

Starter +
• Unlimited node clusters
Pro • Data protection (Self service + Cloud Connect)
• Post process data reduction (compression/de-dupe/EC-X)
• Block services

Core functionality (up to 12 nodes)

Starter • Includes core storage, virtualization, and data protection
• Prism Central

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 Software Choice: Prism Central

Starter+
Prism • Capacity Optimisation
Pro • Runway Planning
• Performance monitoring and proactive anomaly resolution
• Operational Insights

Core functionality for single/multi sites

Prism
• Includes core infrastructure, virtualization management, network
Starter visualization, and self service

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https://www.nutanix.com/products/software-options/
 Software Choice: Calm, Flow, Beam

Calm • Annual subscription in packs of 25 VMs

Flow • Annual subscription on a per node basis (all nodes that need
microsegmentation

Beam • Annual subscription on a percentage of cloud spend basis

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https://www.nutanix.com/products/software-options/
Sell the “WHY” of Nutanix

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 Enterprise Cloud Journey

Enterprise
Cloud
Cloud Inspired
Hyperconverged Native Public Cloud
Infrastructure
Native Virtualization
Cloud Automation
Integrated
Compute & Multi-hypervisor Support
Application Mobility
Storage
Hybrid-cloud Services
VM-centric Storage Container Support
Machine Intelligence
Backup & DR
Services Systems and
Network Segmentation
Operations Management
Application Ecosystem
File and Block Storage
Object Storage

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 Enterprise Cloud with Freedom to Choose

Beam Calm Multi-Cloud Management

Xi AWS Azure GCP Clouds

… … … … … … …

Prism with Calm App and Infrastructure Management

Era Buckets Files Platform and Infrastructure Services

AHV ESXi Hyper-V Virtualization

Acropolis Hyperconverged

Flow Networking

NX Hardware Platform

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 Nutanix Key Differentiation
Simplicity
All intelligence in software

Mature Enterprise Class Features

One-Click Infrastructure Management

Built for virtualization

One-Click Operational Insights

Continuous Innovation
One-Click Remediation

Differentiated Models
Self Healing Systems

Rapid time to value

Rich Automation and Analytics

Lower TCO 90+ World Class Global Support

NPS

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Identifying Opportunities

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 First: Understand the ‘Land’ 4
3

What--use cases What was it sold for?

• VDI, ROBO, Splunk
etc
• Technology
Where was it sold?

How was it sold?

Who--Sold Where--division
• Direct sale LAND • Corp IT Who did the selling?
• Partner-led • Line of Biz
• Services-led • Other

What are the next steps?

• Customer education
• Relationship building and expansion
How--pathway • Advocacy and engagement
• Direct
• VAR
• SI / SP
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 Plan the ‘Expand’ – Grow, Upsell, Cross sell
Support and Services

Upsell (SW, Support, Services) Beam

oice
Acropolis Ch
HW
Prism hes/
fres des
e
R gra
n ts
AHV Up
me
loy
Calm ation
g dep
Uti
liz
stin
exi
Flow w
Gro New
use cases
Platform

Cross Sell
LAND
New
groups
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 Opening the Door to More

In General/Operational
• Check on how they plan (cycle time)
• Understand mergers or rapid business
transformation DB N

VDI Environments
• Pursue opportunities around file serving and home
directories

Enterprise Applications
• Evaluate if they have a need to automate VM
deployment (and discuss multi-cloud)
• Investigate their data protection and disaster
recovery solution
Industry story
• Identify projects with remote sites
• Talk about securing environments (and discuss
encryption)
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 Know What Triggers Infrastructure Purchase

In General
• Hardware or software refresh
• Uptime and compliance issues
• Development/Test infrastructure reference
• Mergers or rapid business transformation

Microsoft SQL Server

• Upgrade (2005/2008 to 2012+)
• High performance dev/test

Microsoft Exchange
• Exchange 2010/2013 upgrade cycle
• Physical consolidation / hybrid deployments

Microsoft SharePoint
• Migration from other collaboration platforms /
applications
• Consolidation and refresh
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 Know What Triggers Infrastructure Purchase

Oracle Databases
• Re-platforming
• High performance dev/test
• Consolidation and license reduction

SAP Classic (NetWeaver ->Yes – we are certified)

• Upgrade or new SAP install
• New SAP modules (e.g. CRM, BW, SCM)
• HANA Dev/Test
• Re-platforming

Mainframe/Unix-to-Linux Migration
• Cost-cutting or end of lease
• Changing DB platform (e.g. DB2 to Oracle/SQL)

Enterprise Java/Cobol
• Scalability issues (e.g. parallelism or data latency)
• Application downtime due to frequent NCSE Training
upgrades
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 Upsell Scenarios – Matching Pain to Solution

Identified VDI project Upsell AFS

• Ask about user profiles and home directories storage Upsell Flow

Identified ROBO/Retail opportunity Upsell Ultimate

• Ask about security concerns
• Ask about disaster recovery and data protection
Upsell Prism Pro
• Ask about IT staff and remote management Upsell Flow

Identified existing customer with growth plans but no

budget Upsell Prism Pro
• Ask how hard it is to plan for new workloads Upsell Beam
• Ask if providing reports to management will help
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 Upsell Scenarios – Matching Pain to Solution

Identified a customer who has a cloud first strategy

• Ask how they plan to deploy applications on the cloud Upsell Calm
• Ask if they plan to automate cloud deployments Upsell Beam
• Ask how they will address hybrid as they transition

Identified a customer who is up for refresh

• Ask about application performance Upsell All-Flash
• Calculate renewal cost. Calculate replacement node cost
and savings
Upsell New HW
• Ask about their approach to purchasing – particularly for Upsell SW ELA
big deals

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 Architecture and Features

• Basic architecture
• Data write and read
• (Disaster) Recovery
• Hypervisor
• Volumes
• Files
• Leap (Xi)
• REST API

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 Basic Architecture
Tier 1 Application Inter CVM network
VM network

A Node A Node A Node

VM VM VM VM CVM VM VM VM VM CVM VM VM VM VM CVM

DATASTORE DATASTORE DATASTORE

Hypervisor Hypervisor Hypervisor

H H H
X86 B X86 B X86 B
A A A

S S H H H H S S H H H H S S H H H H
S S D D
S S D D
D D D D
D
D
D
D Distributed
StoragepoolStorage Fabric
S S D D
D D D D
D
D
D
D D D D D
D
D
D
D

ü Tiering ü Compression ü Erasure Coding ü Snapshots

ü Locality ü Clones ü Resilience ü Deduplication

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 AOS Services
CVM software components that perform specific tasks:

• Curator – Map reduce cluster

management/cleanup
Hypervisor/ Browser/ • Zookeeper – Cluster configuration
Client Orchestration
NFS/iSCSI/SMB HTTP(s)
manager
Requests REST API
• Cassandra – Distributed metadata store
• Medusa – Abstraction for Cassandra
Stargate Prism
• Prism – UI/HTML5, API
Medusa Stats
Zeus Stats
Zeus
• Stargate – Data I/O manager
• Zeus – Abstraction for Stargate
Cassandra Zeus Zookeeper • Genesis – Cluster Component and service
management
Medusa Zeus
• Chronos – Task Scheduler
Curator
• Cerebro – Replication/DR Manager
• Pythos – vDisk Configuration Manager
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 Data write and reads (Recap)

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 Data Locality – Write IO

Feature Overview
• Data written locally to where
compute is running - Replicated for
Node 1 Node 2 Node 3 resiliency (RF)
Guest Guest Guest • Completely distributed model
VM 1 VM 2 VM 3 (Webscale)
1
CVM CVM CVM

Hypervisor Hypervisor Hypervisor Benefit

• Reduced latency
Storage Storage Storage • Increased performance for BCA’s

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 Data Locality – Write IO

Feature Overview
• Data written locally to where
ack received compute is running - Replicated for
Node 1 Node 2 Node 3 resiliency (RF)
Guest Guest Guest • Completely distributed model
VM 1 VM 2 VM 3 (Webscale)
1
CVM CVM CVM

Hypervisor Hypervisor Hypervisor Benefit

• Reduced latency
Storage Storage Storage • Increased performance for BCA’s

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 Data Locality – Read IO

Feature Overview
• All reads occur locally to where the
VM is running
Node 1 Node 2 Node 3 • Integrated with hypervisor
Guest Guest Guest • Intelligent tiering utilizes RAM, SSD
VM 1 VM 2 VM 3 and HDD
1
CVM CVM CVM

Hypervisor Hypervisor Hypervisor Benefit

• Reduced latency
Storage Storage Storage • Increased performance for BCA’s
• No administrative intervention
required

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 Data Locality – VM Migration

Feature Overview
• After migration the CVM will take
ownership of the migrated VM
Node 1 Node 2 Node 3 • All IO Requests served locally
Guest • Previously written data will be
VM 1 forwarded to source CVM and
localized
CVM CVM CVM

Hypervisor Hypervisor Hypervisor Benefit

• Consistent performance and
Storage Storage Storage availability
• Integration with hypervisor feature
set

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 Data Locality – VM Migration

Feature Overview
• After migration the CVM will take
ownership of the migrated VM
Node 1 Node 2 Node 3 • All IO Requests served locally
Guest • Previously written data will be
VM 1 forwarded to source CVM and
localized
CVM CVM CVM

Hypervisor Hypervisor Hypervisor Benefit

• Consistent performance and
Storage Storage Storage availability
• Integration with hypervisor feature
set

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 Data Locality – VM Migration

Feature Overview
• After migration the CVM will take
ownership of the migrated VM
Node 1 Node 2 Node 3 • All IO Requests served locally
Guest • Previously written data will be
VM 1 forwarded to source CVM and
localized
CVM CVM CVM

Hypervisor Hypervisor Hypervisor Benefit

• Consistent performance and
Storage Storage Storage availability
• Integration with hypervisor feature
set

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 Erasure Coding in Operation

• Erasure Code engine waits

b a d c Node
until data is cold, then
for recovery
c d b a block*
computes Double-Parity
b d c a (2xP) for all data copies

=
• Once the two parity (P)
a XOR b XOR c XOR d P + P
blocks are in place, the 2nd
Node
and 3rd
b P a d P c
for recovery
block*
data copies are removed
• Results in storage savings
of %50
7-node cluster set to RF3

(four data blocks and three copies of data)

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 EC-X Workloads

Ideal Not ideal

• Workloads without high • Write/overwrite-
I/O requirements; write- intensive loads that add
once, read-many overhead for software-
(WORM) workloads defined storage
Examples: Backups, Example: Write-intensive
archives, file servers, log processes such as VDI
servers, email (depending
on use)

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 (Disaster) Recovery

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 (Disaster) Recovery

Anatomy of Nutanix Snapshots

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 Near Sync One-Minute RPO

What
• Replication optimization that allows one minute
RPO for Mission-critical Applications. Requirements and Limitations
• No restrictions on latency or distance • Minimum 3 nodes in each site
• Leverages existing Protection Domain-based
workflows • Only 1-15minute snapshots
• No restrictions on latency or distance
• Minimum SSD size 1.2TB (unless all
• Works on all hypervisors
flash)
• Included with AOS Ultimate
• Max of 10 VMs (or Volume Groups)
Benefits NEAR SYNC • Max 40TB per node
• Minimal data loss in case of disaster
• Highly granular restore capabilities. • ESX and AHV Only
• Extremely simple to setup and failover
• Comparable RPO to high end arrays
• Simple configuration with time based retention
policy
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 DR Sizing

Disaster Recovery
Business continuity planning is traditionally a complex space, but sizing a Nutanix
solution to account for compute and storage requirements is defined by a small
number of key metrics:
Daily Change Rate (%) - The change rate is the percentage of new or overwritten
data that will be created every 24 hours.
Retention - Retention defines how long hourly, daily, weekly, and monthly snapshots
are stored. Different applications or groups of VMs may have different retention
plans. Also if replicating to one or more remote sites, the remote site retention may
differ from the local site retention.
Example: 3TB VM, 2% Daily Change, 15 Snaps
VM + (VM * %Change * Snapshots)
3TB + (3TB*0.02*15) = 3.9TB

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 Metro Availability / Synchronous replication
Characteristics:
• Synchronous replication between two sites
• RT between sites < 5ms
• Interoperability with NTNX DR solutions
Datastore A (active) Datastore B (active)
• Supported for ESXi and Hyper-V (AOS 5.9)
• AHV support 5.17 for Sync Rep
• Witness max latency 200ms

Use Cases:
• RPO=0 customers
• Data must be very high available
Real-time
replication of
data between
sites

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 Hypervisor

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 Foundation of the Enterprise Cloud OS

+ + =

Virtualization Enterprise Amazing Cloud OS

Kernel Features Management Foundation

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 AHV Conversion in Minutes

3-Tier Architecture to AHV in Minutes

tract

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 High Availability (HA)

ALWAYS ON
Default: Best Effort VM Restarts

Optional: Reserved Segments

Advanced: Reserved Host(s)

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 Acropolis Dynamic Scheduler (ADS)

HANDS-FREE
Hot Spot Remediation

VM Initial Placement

Affinity Rules Control

AHV Cluster

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 Intense Graphics

vGPU GPU

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 Turbo Mode, Achieving Blazing Speed

virtIO Driver virtIO Driver

QEMU AHV Turbo

OLD NEW

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 Hypervisor

Convert Cluster

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 Cross Hypervisor

Development QA Staging Production

Acropolis
Hypervisor
Acropolis Acropolis
Hypervisor Hypervisor

Dev/Test/Q&A Scenario

Primary DR Site
Datacenter

Acropolis
DR Scenario Hypervisor

Customer

Acropolis
Service Provider Hypervisor

Customer
DRAAS Solution

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 AHV - Limitations

Parameter Limitation
Nodes in a cluster No limit
VMs per cluster Limited by the hardware available
vDisk size No limit
vCPUs per VM Limited by the hardware
vRAM per VM Limited by the hardware
Containers 256 max per cluster
Container size Limited by the size of the storagepool
Max. Volume groups No limit, but max 128 LUNs per Node or 256 LUNs per
Volume Group

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 Acropolis Block Services

(Nutanix Volumes)

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 What is Acropolis Block Services (ABS)?

Native scale-out storage solution

Enables cluster to provide block
storage or LUNs
VM VM
Provides access via iSCSI
Presents LUNs as vDisks

Volume 1 Volume 2 Volume 3

Volume Group

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 Use Cases ABS

• Shared Disks (Oracle RAC, Microsoft Failover Clustering)

• Disks as first-class entities—execution contexts are ephemeral and data is critical
• Guest-initiated iSCSI supports bare-metal consumers and Microsoft Exchange on
vSphere
• Protect existing investments
• Lower costs
• Deliver performance
• Simplify management
• Leverage benefits of hyper-convergence

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 Acropolis File Services

(Nutanix Files)

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 AFS- A Web-Scale Approach to File Services

Day 0 to Day N Simplicity

• Easy deployment within minutes

• Simple Prism based management

• Scale out/in or scale up/down on

demand

• One-click performance optimizer

• One-click capacity planning

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 Nutanix Files - Details

The file services feature is Minimum of 3 FSVMs deployed for

typical scenarios
composed of multiple File Services
VMs (FSVM) for distribution and FSVMs run as agent VMs and are
scale transparently deployed
Cluster Single FSVM supported for ROBO /
segmentation
File File Max 16 FSVMs in a single name space
Server Server

Share Share Share

Folder Folder

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 Nutanix Files – Software Defined File Server for the Cloud
Era

• AHV and ESXi supported

• Multiple file server clusters can exist

on same Nutanix cluster

• CIFS2.1/SMB3 for Windows

• NFS4 For Unix

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 Change File Tracking (CFT) – Backup

AFS
Take snapshot of AFS-FS1
Backup Server
AFS-FS1: Snapshot Taken
Get diff of current and prev snapshot

AFS-FS1: AFSSnapshotDiff
Mount share & get data/ metadata changes

Data & Metadata of changes files & directories

Backup Target

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 PRISM Central and PRISM Pro

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 Prism Central - One-Click Prism Central Deployment

PRISM WHAT IS IT?

ELEMENT
PRISM PRISM § 1 Click scalable PC deployment from
ELEMENT
PRISM CENTRAL Prism Element
ELEMENT § Deploy 1 VM instance or 3 VM cluster of
Prism Central
§ Manage up to 500 clusters

BENEFITS:
§ Instantly highly available and scalable
§ Manage large multi-cluster deployments
with Prism Central
§ Eliminate complex design/deploy as
environment scales

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 Prism Central - Centralized Image Service
Management

WHAT IS IT?
§ Global catalog of images across all
managed clusters
§ Batch operations on images
§ Upload / Delete
§ Basic RBAC support
§ AHV only
§ License: Prism Central Starter

BENEFITS:
§ Provide single location for all AHV
image management

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 Prism Central - Self-Service

WHAT IS IT?
§ Self-service access to IT resources
§ IT sets policies and provides access to
end users such as developers
§ Components:
§ Admin Portal: Create projects, set
policies, assign users
§ End User Portal: Deploy and
monitor applications

BENEFITS:
§ Frictionless service delivery
§ Developers empowered to get AWS like
experience

@nutanix #NEXTconf NCSE Training

 Prism Central - VM Right-Sizing
WHAT IS IT?
§ Automatically detect VMs that occupy
unused resources, or have performance
issues due to non optimized resource
consumption
§ Provides guidance for correct VM
resource (RAM, CPU) allocation based on
behavioral analysis and machine learning
§ Generate reports of idle (zombie) VMs to
enable simple resource reclamation or
reallocation to other VMs.
§ Requires Prism Pro License

BENEFITS:
§ Eliminate waste by optimal utilization of
resources
§ Improve VM performance by detecting
any performance issues
§ Generate reports of idle (zombie) VMs to
enabled simple resource reclamation or
reallocation to other

@nutanix #NEXTconf NCSE Training

 Prism Central - Scheduled Reporting

WHAT IS IT?
§ Create scheduled custom reports with
email delivery
§ Leverages existing dashboards and
widgets
§ Requires Prism Pro License
BENEFITS:
§ Easily socialize reports / KPIs to
broader audience
§ Allow application owners and other
external stakeholders access to valuable
performance data
§ Easily share evidence of waste or
resource constraint

@nutanix #NEXTconf NCSE Training

 Prism Central - Dynamic Alerting (Anomaly
Detection)

WHAT IS IT?
§ Anomaly detection
§ Automatic creation of KPI alerts based
CPU UTILIZATION + on behavioral analysis not static
CPU UTILIZATION DETECTION thresholds
§ Easily see when most important metrics
deviate from the norm
§ Requires Prism Pro License

BENEFITS:
§ Provides early warning signs of
performance issues in VMs
§ Efficient Monitoring – predictive
§ Lower admin overhead – Focus on
what’s important
§ Eliminates manual alarm creation

@nutanix #NEXTconf NCSE Training

 Prism Central – Centralized VM Customization

WHAT IS IT?
§ Wizard / guided guest customization in
PC
§ Customization catalog for reuse
§ Separate roles & workflows for
preparation and application
§ Available via SSP in Prism Central
§ No Prism Pro license required
BENEFITS:
§ No need for script writing or manual
configuration
§ Control over customization applied

@nutanix #NEXTconf NCSE Training

 Leap (Xi)

@nutanix #NEXTconf NCSE Training

 Hybrid Cloud Deployments Are Complex

Siloed Tools

Complex
VMDK/OVF, vDisks, VLANs, VXLANs, AMIs, VPCs, Subnets,
Any Sized VM Volumes Firewalls, ACLs Management T-shirt Sizes
EBS, S3
Security Groups

Disjointed
Constructs

Private Cloud

@nutanix #NEXTconf NCSE Training

 Initial Geo Footprint: U.S. (2 regions and 4 AZs)

NTNX:
NTNX: USEAST REGION
USWEST REGION
Ashburn 1, VA
Oakland, CA
Ashburn 2, VA
Santa Clara, CA

@nutanix #NEXTconf NCSE Training

 Key Phases of DR / BCP

Planning & Onboarding Continuous Testing Failover & Failback

• Proven NX storage • Test as frequently as • One-click failover

replication technology needed • IP Address preserved
• ESX or AHV on source • 1-hr RPO SLA & few
• NX VPN or bring your minutes RTO
own or Direct Connect

@nutanix #NEXTconf NCSE Training

 REST API

@nutanix #NEXTconf NCSE Training

 REST API

Scripting and API’s

• Clone 21 VMs from an existing VM (TEMPLATE) and Power them On
• Open the consoles of the VMs (API call) within Safari
• Reboot the created VMs after the consoles have been opened

API Call:
curl -k -X GET
'https://172.16.100.100:9440/PrismGateway/services/rest/v2.0/vms?sortCriteria=name&searchString=DEMO&searchAttributeList
=name' -H 'Authorization: Basic YWRtaW46WENAQ29yZUVkdSEz' -H 'cache-control: no-cache' | ./jq -r '.entities[].uuid' | while
read uuid ; do open -a safari
"https://172.16.100.100:9440/console/lib/noVNC/vnc_auto.html?path=vnc/vm/$uuid/proxy&title=$uuid&uuid=$uuid&uhura=true
&attached=false&noV1Access=false&useV3=true” ; done

ACLI Commands used:

acli vm.clone MyTest[0..20] clone_from_vm=TEMPLATE
acli vm.on MyTest*
acli vm.reboot MyTest*
@nutanix #NEXTconf NCSE Training
Technical Mastery Certification Tour
NCSE L1 – PoCs, Tools & Sizing

APRIL 2019 | CONFIDENTIAL

PoC Management Skills
Miles is happy to do a POC for every customer…
Don’t do a POC!!
 PoC Management Skills

The certification assesses the capabilities of the system engineer to manage

the Proof of Concept process (PoC) of Nutanix solutions including:
• How to try to avoid PoC?
• What are the prerequisites of a PoC?
• How to define the success criteria of a PoC?
• How to influence the success criteria of a PoC?
• What are the milestones of PoC?

@nutanix NCSE Training

 Try to avoid a PoC ... or qualify it! | 109

The PoC phase, although sometimes necessary, slows down the sales cycle of the
solution.
Countermeasures in response to avoid a PoC request are:
• Nutanix Technology Bootcamp (Workshop).
• Miscellaneous Documents (will be detailed later in this course).
• EBC.
• Sponsoring of an existing customer (in the same market or with the same use case).

@nutanix NCSE Training

 Prerequisites of a PoC | 110

Ensure that the PoC prerequisites are there:

• What are the success criteria of the PoC.
• Which team will be in charge of the PoC? (commitments on people and time)
• How long will the PoC be (30 days max is a good practice).
• Which location and which hardware (switches, wires)?
• Is there a test plan.

Define success criteria:

• First point to validate before going further.
• Must be relevant and measurable.
• Examples:
• Deploying a hundred of VDI VMs
• Restore VMs in a Protection Domain.

@nutanix NCSE Training

 Target of the PoC | 111

The target of the PoC must be defined and aligned with the PoC duration and
number of people involved on the customer’s side.
Even if the target is already defined, try to influence success criteria on Nutanix
differentiating elements
• Example: Nutanix versus VxRail versus Hyperflex :
• Good criterias:
• Simple Cluster expansion process by adding an additional node.
• A single pane of glass to manage the entire infrastructure.
• Bad criterias:
• Use a benchmark tool to measure the maximum I/O that can be addressed by each
platform.
• Enable all storage footprint optimization features and compare platforms’ results.

@nutanix NCSE Training

 And at the end of the PoC … | 112

What should be done when the loaned hardware must be released after the PoC
phase?
• Reclaim any used licences.
• Stop the cluster using CLI (cluster stop)
• Destroy the cluster (cluster destroy)
• Shutdown the cluster and power-off the hardware.

@nutanix NCSE Training

Leverage existing resources &
Tools
 Leverage existing resources

The certification assesses the engineer's ability to use the various tools and
resources available through Nutanix portals to manage the opportunity.
Starting the Nutanix portals:
• my.nutanix.com – portal.nutanix.com

• Single point of entry to access to: § Notifications in case of major problems impact a
Nutanix solution (Documentation / Security
• Documentations
Advisories).
• Downloads
§ Escalate a case (through the View Case section).
• Products alerts
• Support
• Forums
• DR
• … and all the other Nutanix portals …

@nutanix NCSE Training

 Leverage existing resources

An SE should also use the different documents available:

• Reference Architecture :
• Make customer confident about the fact that the designed architecture is
matching a third-party application requirements (ex: Avaya IP Office).
• Best Practice Guide
• KB
• Reports from Gartner Magic Quadrant, IDC, Forrester, etc.
• Net Promoter Score
• Case/Customer Studies:
• Shows how Nutanix helped a customer in the same sector or with the same use-
case to achieve its goals.

@nutanix NCSE Training

X-Ray
 X-Ray: Not just-another-iops-benchmark
Enterprise Cloud

Hyperconverged
Systems

Storage Spaces
Direct
m s
Nutanix AHV
for
Hypervisors

la t
vSAN d P
rg e
n ve
HyperFlex e rco s
y p fo r m
H e P l at
SimpliVity a rd wa r
H

Test Scenarios

Infrastructure Application Data Infrastructure Infrastructure

Performance Performance Protection Resiliency Scalability
@nutanix NCSE Training
 Test Scenarios

Infrastructure Data Infrastructure

Performance Protection Scalability

• Four Corners Benchmark • Snapshot Impact • Database colocation

• Throughput Scalability • VM Clone Impact • HCI Workflow

Day-0 Day-1 Day-2 Day-30 Day-N

• VDI Simulator • Seq. Node Failure

• OLTP Simulator • Rolling Upgrade
• Extended Node Failure

Application Infrastructure
Performance Resiliency

@nutanix NCSE Training

 X-Ray Sample Screen shot

@nutanix NCSE Training

 Failures: The Inevitable Reality (and how your system handles?)

@nutanix NCSE Training

 X-Ray Sample Screen shot

@nutanix NCSE Training

 3 Key takeaways about X-Ray

✓ X-Ray is designed to support all HCI vendor platforms

• There are no NX-specific workloads or tuning

✓ X-Ray is now available as open source

• Others can submit new capabilities for consideration

✓ X-Ray focuses on real-life scenarios

• Hero numbers are useless statistics if you can’t meet business requirements

@nutanix Nutanix Confidential – DO NOT DISTRIBUTE

NCSE Training
Move
 Infrastructure Migrations Are Messy

Manual
Replace or Rebuild

u re 3
Automated
c t
t r u r ic Migration Tools
a s nt
n fr Ce
Legacy I Go / No-Go Nutanix
Production Workload Production
on Nutanix
Start 1 2 4 5 Stop
Migration Planning A Validation
• Engage Business Stakeholders pp • System Integration Testing
Ce lic Automated
• Gather Requirements n t at i Migration Tools • User Acceptance Testing
• Create Project Design r ic o n • Load Testing
App Deployment Tools
• Document Test Plans • Workload Tuning
3
• Finalize Sizing • Final Go / No-Go to
• Engage Project / Production
Change Management
Manual
Rebuild or Re-Architect
@nutanix Nutanix Confidential – DO NOT DISTRIBUTE
NCSE Training
 Xtract Migration Process

@nutanix NCSE Training

 Key Takeaways:

● Short Time-to-Value: Migrate quickly & consistently

● Automate: Eliminates manual tasks

● De-Risk Projects: Easily roll-back to source VM

● Cost Effective: Bundled with all Nutanix AOS license

@nutanix Nutanix Confidential – DO NOT DISTRIBUTE

NCSE Training
Sizing
 Sizer – Trusted Advisor on what to sell

Sizer Scenario
• Optimal Solution
• Sizing Details
Workload Inputs
• Budgetary Quote
• BOM Download
• Financial Analysis
Workloads
• VDI
• XenApp Product Info
• Server Virtualization
• SQL Server
• RAW OEMs
• Splunk • Nutanix (NX)
• File Services • Dell EMC (XC)
• Lenovo (HX)
@nutanix • Cisco (UCS) NCSE Training
• Others
Prepare a sizing
 Prepare a sizing

Certification assesses the engineer's ability to well size a Nutanix

architecture regarding the needs of the client and the workloads that will
run on top of it.
• Qualify the possible infrastructure to replace at the customer.
• What are the details?
• What is allocated versus what is currently consumed? (in the certification exams,
always size the infrastructure to what is really consumed, unless it is said to
consider keeping a margin for future workloads or to size based on the allocated
resources)
• Is there one or more competing solutions to Nutanix considered?
• Determine the metrics to be used for sizing.
• Identify the sizing mistakes done by a competitor.

@nutanix NCSE Training

 It’s All About the Applications

Business VDI Remote and Messaging, Dev/Test Big Data Server

Critical Branch Office Collaboration and Virtualization
Applications UC and Private Cloud

@nutanix Nutanix Confidential – DO NOT DISTRIBUTE NCSE Training

 Workload Demand Characteristics
Performance Intensive or Storage
Intensive
Enterprise
I/O Intensive and/or Applications
Storage Intensive I/O Intensive and/or
Private & Graphics Intensive SMB
Hybrid Clouds VDI Light compute

Big Data Data Protection &

I/O Intensive and Disaster Recovery
Storage Intensive Storage Intensive
Collaboration & Branch
@nutanix
UC Office NCSE Training
I/O Intensive and/or I/O Intensive
Storage Intensive and light compute
 | 134

Infrastructure Refresh - Qualification

When refreshing an existing infrastructure, you must use a collection tool to retrieve
the necessary metrics for sizing:
• RVTools:
• Know the tabs of the export and what they are useful for.
• Calculate the storage capacity required based on the vInfo or vPartition tabs.
• Calculate the vCPU:pCore ratio.
• Dell Live Optics:
• Collector limitations: 24h max if the customer does not exist in the Dell CRM, or 7 days if he
is.
• Collection should be running when the peak utilization happens.
• Oracle
• Collect relevant information for sizing through an AWR (Automatic Workload Repository)
report.
• Nutanix Collector - Great free tool to collect performance data (not required for exam
but you should know about this)

@nutanix NCSE Training

 | 135

Infrastructure Refresh - Qualification

Calculate the relevant metrics for sizing:

• Working Set:
• Difference between two monthly full-backup size, multiplied by the average R/W ratio.
• Example :
• Monthly full-backup size:
• January: 10To
• February: 11To
• March : 12 To
• Average ratio R/W : 80/20
• Working set : (12To – 11To) * 80/20 = 4To

• Weigh the ratio of vCPU: pCore according to the benchmarks’ scores of each processors
(source vs destination).

@nutanix NCSE Training

 | 136

Identify specific needs

Identify workloads that require specific needs:

• Make sure that the Monster VMs are supported on NUMA architecture (the core number
of a CPU must be greater than the largest Monster VM).
• Ensure that a specific workload will have the right resources to reach the level of
performance desired by the client (ex: working set of a critical DB must fit with the SSD
amount of a node).

Identify the sizing mistakes done by a competitor:

• Configuration and number of nodes in the sizing results of a competitor.
• Example:
• The competitor’s target HCI platform has multiple nodes but only 1Gbit/s network cards.

@nutanix NCSE Training

Dealing with Monster VMs &
NUMA
 NUMA! (non uniform memory access)
NUMA increases performance by localizing memory to the
individual cpu sockets in multi socket architectures

Inter-socket
bridge

Socket A Socket B

Memory A Memory B

NCSE Training
@nutanix a NUMA node = cores(socket) + pRAM/sockets
 In the NUMA world there are two things to avoid

vCPUs > pCores(socket)

vRAM > pRAM(NumaNode)

@nutanix NCSE Training

 NUMA compliant VM

16G
B
vCPU 1 vCPU 2

Hypervisor
scheduler
1 2

16GB
Inter-socket
bridge

Socket A Socket B

Memory A Memory B
(128GB) (128GB)
@nutanix NCSE Training
 Non-NUMA compliant “monster” VM

128G
16GB
vCPU 1 vCPU 2 vCPU 3 vCPU 4 B
vCPU 5 vCPU 6 vCPU 7 vCPU 8 vCPU 9 vCPU 10

Hypervisor
16GB scheduler 16GB
16GB 16GB
16GB 16GB
1 2 6 7

16GB 3 4 8 9
16GB
5 10

Inter-socket
bridge

Socket A Socket B

Memory A Increased memory latency due Memory B

(128GB) to frequent Inter-socket bridge (128GB)
@nutanix crossing NCSE Training
 So do you really want a 16vCPU and 256GB VM?

2 3
1 1
1 4 5 6
1
1 1
1 7 8 9 10

1 1
1

1 1 1 1 1 2 2 2 2 1
1

1 1 1 1 3 3 4 4

1 1
1 1 1 1 1 5 5 6 6

1 1
1 1 1 1 1 7 8 9 10

1 1
1

Socket A Socket A
1
1

(16 core) (16 core) Memory B

Memory A
(256GB) (256GB)
NCSE Training
@nutanix
 The Monster VM’s immovability
2 major problems with this sizing:
• Unable to move Monster VM in case of node failure or
maintenance without massive vMotions (DRS), could
take hours to rebalance the cluster
• Could not accommodate growth on initial purchase
N+1 reserve N+1 reserve N+1 reserve N+1 reserve
Growth reserve Growth reserve Growth reserve

Database

384 GB 384 GB 384 GB 384 GB

@nutanix NCSE Training

 Required minimal scaling with less movement restriction

N+1 reserve N+1 reserve

N+1 reserve N+1 reserve

Growth reserve Growth reserve Growth reserve

Database

512 GB 512 GB 384 GB 384 GB

@nutanix NCSE Training

 Scale out on application level

Split up database:
4x 4vCPU,
64GB RAM per server
N+1 reserve N+1 reserve N+1 reserve N+1 reserve
Growth reserve Growth reserve Growth reserve Growth reserve

DB VM 1 DB VM 2 DB VM 3 DB VM 4

384 GB 384 GB 384 GB 384

GB
@nutanix NCSE Training
Sizing the infrastructure
 Perform a sizing

The certification assesses the engineer's ability to well use the Nutanix
Sizer:
• Know how to use all the Nutanix Sizer’s features.
• Content of a BOM.
• Know all the settings of each kind of workloads.
• Multi-site sizing (Replication, DR, etc.).

@nutanix NCSE Training

 Nutanix sizer usage ...

What are the default values in automatic mode?

• Cluster Type : Homogeneous
• Failover : Standard (vs Aggressive vz Conservative)
• Storage : Any (vs All Flash or Hybrid)
• Server models: Datacenter Node Models (vs ROBO or Velocity)

Redundancy levels:
• N + 0 = Aggressive
• N + 1 = Standard
• N + 2 = Conservative

@nutanix NCSE Training

 Sizer: which information do you need?

To properly size a Nutanix platform, you need to know the profile of each workload
that is going to run on the platform:
Type of workload: Server, VDI, DB (SQL Server, Oracle), File Services, Splunk, …
Number of VMs and/or VDI

Per VM:
1. CPU Speed
2. Memory Usage
3. Disk Capacity
4. Working set size
Space optimization services: deduplication, compression, …
Protection mechanisms needed to guarantee SLAs (DR, Replication, etc.)

@nutanix NCSE Training

 Workloads settings

What are the settings requested by a specific type of workload in the

Nutanix Sizer?
• Splunk :
• Data retention time.
• Number of concurrent search users
• Search Factor and Replication Factor

• Citrix :
• Provisioning Models:
• Provisionning Services (PVS) : Desktop streaming technology over the
network. Independent of the hypervisor
• Machine Creation Services (MCS) : Kind of Linked Clone technology

@nutanix NCSE Training

 What to ask for? Workload: VDI

• VDI Broker being used?

• What type of Users and many of each type? (Task Worker, Knowledge, Power User,
…
• What provisioning techniques will be used (if any)
• Linked clones, full clones, MCS, PVS, …
• Graphical details (vGPU)
• vCPU to pCPU Consolidation ratio (If known)

More Advanced Sizing:

• vCPU and RAM (Mhz used, GB Ram)
• Disk OS + Apps Size
• N+1 Cluster?
@nutanix NCSE Training
 What to ask for? Workload: Servers

• Categorize VM’s into workloads.. Test/Dev, BCA etc

• What are the applications ? Find out as much as possible about them
• RAM
• CPU (Mhz)
• OS Drive Size ?
• Data Drive Size ? (Hot / Cold data)

• vCPU to pCPU Ratio - start with..

• BCA’s 1:1 (sometimes 2:1)
• General Server 4:1

• RPO’s, RTO’s, Availability, DR requirements?

• What is the plans for the networking design?

@nutanix NCSE Training

 What to ask for? Workload: Databases

Databases / IO Intensive
• Number of Database VMs, DB’s, Schemas etc
• Profile of each Database VM (#vCPUs, vRAM, #disks, size of all
disks)
• How many of each database profile
• Database VM IOPs
• Database VM working set size/Change rate
• Type – OLTP, Batch, DSS
• Are they using Failover clustering ?
• How are they licensed?
• Size of the largest Database
• What is the RPO/RTO/Availability and DR Requirements

@nutanix NCSE Training

 What to ask for? Workload: Exchange

• Version of Exchange (2010, 2013)

• Number of Mailboxes
• Messages/Day averages for mailboxes (if unknown, can assume 100 or 150
msgs/day)
• Average email size (if unknown, can assume 75Kb)
• Average mailbox size
• Availability and DAG design (Active/Passive Multi-site, Active/Active Multi-site and
then DAG=2 or DAG=2+LAG)
• External devices – iphones, activesync, blackberry etc.
• Utilize the exchange role requirements calculator
• Utilize the Processor Query tool to determine megacycle requirements

• Use the Microsoft Exchange Calculator sheet. (In the Package)

@nutanix NCSE Training

 What to ask for? Workload: File Services (AFS)
Use Case:
• Home Shares
• # users
• Total Storage
• Departmental Shares
• # users
• # shares
• Total Storage
• Application Data
• Sequential Read / Write
• # shares
• Total Storage

Data protection - AFS Snapshots

Hourly – Daily – Weekly # snapshots Retained % change rate

@nutanix NCSE Training

 Splunk Search Head Sizing

1. Calculate the Estimated Number of Search Heads

a) by Users (assuming 16 users per search head)
b) by Number of Indexers (assuming a ratio of 8 indexers per search head.)

Required minimum search heads = MAX (1a, 1b, 3 (if using search head
clustering))
1. Example:
Estimated search heads by users = 48 users / 16 = 4 search heads
Estimated search heads by number of indexers = 16 indexers / 8 = 2 search heads

Required minimum search heads = MAX (4, 2, 3) = 4 search heads

@nutanix NCSE Training

 Content and purpose of a BOM?

Content of a BOM?
• Common to all hardware vendors:
• Workloads details.
• Target Architecture.
• Rack Layout.
• Specific:
• Nutanix NX :
• Financial Analysis.
• Cisco :
• Required Additional Components SKU based on the Cisco HCL.

@nutanix NCSE Training

 Multi-site sizing

Recommend the best replication mode and storage capacity for a backup
site?
• Metrics needed:
• Daily change rates.
• Max RPO required.
• Snapshots retention.
• Example:
• The customer has 100 VMs of 100 GB each, 4h RTO, 2h RPO, a daily change rate
of 5% and he wants two weeks of data retention.
• Solution :
• 2h RPO can be addressed with Asynchronous Replication.
• 100 VMs * 100 GB = 10TB for the initial replication.
• 5% daily change rate during 2 weeks = 5% of 10TB * 14 = 500GB * 14 = 7 TB
• Required on the recovery site: 17TB

@nutanix NCSE Training

Optimize storage footprint
 Sizing diskspace: a few pointers
• RAW vs Net Usable
• Replication Factor is main influencer of usable disk space
• RF 2: everything written two times so 50% usable
• RF 3: everything written three times so 33% usable
• Second influencer is your design of N+1 !
• Enabling EC-X reduces RF overhead significantly
• 4 nodes minimum with RF2,
• 6 nodes minimum with RF3

• Size SSD Tier to expected working set (rule of thumb: 10% of total dataset)
• Dividing SSD Tier by replication factor is not entirely accurate due to
metadata and curator taking some space
• AFA does not Tier, so everything can be considered “Hot”.
• Treat compression and deduplication as “after the fact” gains, i.e. bonus!
• Use compression and deduplication only on the appropriate workloads.
There is no use in deduping Linked Clones or compressing .jpg files
• Always accommodate for failure of the largest node
@nutanix NCSE Training
 Optimize storage footprint

Certification assesses engineer's ability to optimize the footprint of some

specific workloads:
• Splunk
• Erasure Coding
• Post Process Compression (48h)

• Microsoft SQL Server

• Storage Container compression (and native compression should be disabled).
• No deduplication.
• Use a minimum number of Storage Container (one is perfect).
• Disable Shadow Clone.
• ncli cluster edit-params enable-shadow-clones=false

@nutanix NCSE Training

 Optimize storage footprint

Certification assesses engineer's ability to optimize the footprint of some specific

workloads:
• Oracle
• Storage Container compression (and native compression should be disabled).
• No deduplication.
• Use a minimum number of Storage Container (one is perfect).
• Disable Shadow Clone.
• ncli cluster edit-params enable-shadow-clones=false
• Enable Erasure Coding if no more space on the storage container (until capacity of the
cluster is increased).
• Note : Oracle HCL mentions that Acropolis Block Service is supported for Oracle Linux
and Oracle VMs.

• SAP
• Storage Container compression.
• Note : SAP is a Nutanix Global Technology Partner and is certified on Nutanix NX, Lenovo
HX and Dell XC hardware.

@nutanix NCSE Training

Recommend the right target
 Recommend the right target

Certification assesses the engineer's knowledge about the supported

hardware and their characteristics:
• The SE should know all about the NX series.
• Example:
• NX-1065S-G5 : 1 CPU max, 1Gb network cards, 2 power supplies, 2 HDD and
1 SSD or 3 SSD.
• And also the limits about some specific series:
• Xpress Line (a.k.a SX Line)
• Unsupported features:
• Replication 1-to-many, many-to-1,
• many-to-many
• Block awareness
• RF3, EC-X, ABS, AFS
• Maximums:
• 4 nodes per cluster.
• 2 clusters per customer.

@nutanix NCSE Training

 Nutanix Model Number Convention
HW Type Product Series Chassis Form CPU Generation
Factor

NX – 3 4 6 0 – G7
No. of Nodes Disk Form
Factor

HW Type Product Family/Series Number of nodes Chassis form Disk Form Generation
in a chassis (at factor in nodes Factor (DFF)
Possibilities: Possibilities: sale) and rack units Possibilities:
SX – Xpress 1 = entry - 1SSD+2HDD 4 = Haswell
3 = balanced - 2SSD+2/4HDD
Possibilities: Possibilities:
NX – Nutanix 6 = capacity - 1-2SSD+4/5HDD Possibilities: 5 = 1N-2U 0 = 2.5" DFF 5 = Broadwell
HX – Lenovo 7 = GPU node
1, 2, 3 or 4 6 = 4N-2U 5 = 3.5" DFF 6 = Skylake
DX – HPE 8 = Ent apps 7 = Cascade
9 = all flash 7 = 1N-1U
XC – Dell Lake
XF - Fujitsu

@nutanix NCSE Training

 Nutanix Platforms
Platform NX-1000 NX-3000 NX-6000 NX-8000

Nodes

Target Workloads
ROBO / SMB Server Virt. Big Data Business Critical

§ Attractive price § Expanded flash

§ Storage only
point capacity for large § Flexible configs
option adding
working sets including CPU, SSD,
capacity without
§ Power & space Memory & 10GbE
licensing costs
Characteristics savings up to 80% § High VM density connectivity
§ High storage
§ Centralized § Integrates graphics § 4x SSD for larger
density at
management and intensive users in VDI active data sets
attractive costs
data protection deployments

• All flash options

• Available with FIPS-2 Level 2 encryption
@nutanix NCSE Training
 Recommend the right target

The certification assesses the engineer's knowledge of the requirements of

Nutanix solutions:
• The SE should know the minimum resources needed by Nutanix Core
Products.
• Nutanix Prism Central
• 1-VM
• Small: 2.500VMs / 4 vCPU / 16GB RAM / 500GB Disk
• Large: 12.500VMs / 8 vCPU / 32GB RAM / 2,500GB Disk
• 3-VM
• Small: 5.000VMs / 12 vCPU / 48GB RAM / 1,500GB Disk
• Large: 25.000VMs / 24 vCPU / 96GB RAM / 7,500GB Disk

• Nutanix AOS:
• RF2: 3 nodes min and 1 simultaneous failure max.
• RF3: 5 nodes min and 2 simultaneous failure max.

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 Getting to the Sizer

• Login through the Nutanix Partner Portal

• Click on the Sizer Tool option or go to

http://sizer.nutanix.com

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 3 most important sizing considerations:

• Start with automatic sizing first, then fine tune the

results using the manual option

• Always size for N+1 configurations

• Share it with your Nutanix SE!

For a deeper dive on sizing guidance, please check the

Nutanix Sizing Reference: http://ntnx.tips/sizingref

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 Sizer lab exercise
• Emailed copy of RVTools example

• Log into Sizer and create a new scenario

• Title = Your name NCSE Example

• Fill out the project description
• Create workload – RAW Input
• Rule of thumb vCPU : pCore is 4:1 unless other requirements dictate
• SSD (hot tier) typically 20% total storage

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 Final points…

• Review online training

• Book exam for 2 weeks out and work backwards from that date

• Ask questions

• PRACTICE USING SIZER!!!

• Review the Nutanix Bible

• PRACTICE USING SIZER… AGAIN!!!

• Pass the exam and get some sweet swag

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Thank you