A good way to get some knowledge on new things is to try directly, so I thought it was useful to write down how to start with Nutanix Community Edition in a Nested environment (VMs format).
Requirements:
– Nutanix Community Edition ISO
– Decide which kind of configuration you want to have, if a single node cluster or three nodes cluster (in the case of this blogpost I’ll go with 3 nodes)
– Reserve 2 IPs for every VM/Node (1 for AHV, 1 for CVM)
– Reserve 1 IP for Cluster IP
– Reserve 1 IP for Prism Central (VM)
– CPU, Memory and Storage resources: at least 4 CPU, 32GB Memory, 64GBs Boot Disk, 200GBs Hot Data Disk, 500GBs Cold Data Disk
– PortGroup used for the Nutanix Management must have Promiscuous mode, Forged transmits and Mac Address change Activated.
VM Creation
- Guest OS Family: Linux
- Guest OS Version: Centos 7 (64bit)
- CPU: 4 with Expose hardware assisted virtualization to the guest OS enabled
- Memory: 32GB
- Hard Disk 1: 64GBs
- Hard disk 2: 200GBs
- Hard Disk 3: 500GBs
- Network Adapter 1 – VMxnet3
- Network Adapter 2 – VMxnet3
- CD/DVD Driver – Connected the Nutanix CE ISO
- Boot Options – Firmware – BIOS
- VM Advanced Settings add: disk.EnableUUID=TRUE
Power ON the VM and go on the Web Console, configure if needed the disk information as showed below, and fill in the network parameters
On the next page, go to the end of the EULA and then accept and go next to start the installation
Push “Y” at the end of the installation to reboot the Node
At this point you need to wait a good 5 to 10 minutes to have all the nodes ready as a part of the cluster creation.
Connect via SSH to one of the CVMs using the IP or the name if you have registered them to DNS already:
user:nutanix
password: nutanix/4u
then create the cluster using this command:
cluster -s 172.20.10.202,172.20.10.204,172.20.10.206 –cluster_external_ip=172.20.10.200 create
then when everything is done, you can connect to your cluster using the external ip used on the previous command with the port 9440:
https://172.20.10.200:9440
username: admin
password:nutanix/4u
at the first login the system will ask you to change with a new password.
Then for properly activate your cluster you need to have a Nutanix Next Account, if you don’t have it you can create a new one here.
This concludes this first article regarding nutanix community edition on a nested environment, I hope it was useful, let me know in the comments!
