Nutanix on Thoughts and Ramblings by Mike

PSA: Check Your Upgrade History Before AOS 7.5.1

Sat, 02 May 2026 09:00:00 -0400

You read the release notes cover to cover before every upgrade, right?

This one almost caught me. I was prepping a cluster for an upgrade to AOS 7.5.1 when a known issue in the release notes gave me pause. A quick look at the upgrade history confirmed the cluster was squarely in the affected population, and the upgrade plan changed on the spot. That is the moment that prompted this post.

Guest Customization for Windows in Prism Central 7.5

Tue, 28 Apr 2026 09:00:00 -0400

If you have ever cloned a Windows VM on Nutanix and watched five identical machines come up with the same hostname, the same SID, and a domain join you have to redo by hand, you already know why guest customization matters. For years my workflow involved hand-rolling an unattend XML file for each new template, version controlling them, and then attaching the right one at clone time. It worked. It was also one of those things I would dread refreshing whenever a new Windows release dropped or a customer asked for a slightly different deployment profile.

From Outage to Insight: Resilient Public Sector IT

Fri, 20 Mar 2026 11:30:11 -0400

Last week I had the opportunity to attend CentralSquare Engage 2026, and as always, it was a reminder of why this space matters. Representing eGroup at this event is something I genuinely look forward to. We have been supporting Public Safety and Public Administration agencies for over ten years, and conferences like this are where you get to have the real conversations, the ones that go beyond sales cycles and get into the operational realities these teams face every day.

Nutanix Automation Tools Compared: Finding the Right Fit

Sat, 14 Feb 2026 11:07:06 -0500

I've spent the past several months diving into automation for Nutanix, and the learning curve has been steeper than I expected. Not because the tools are bad, but because each one approaches automation differently, and figuring out which tool fits which task took more trial and error than I anticipated. My goal was simple: build useful automation that makes managing Nutanix infrastructure easier. Getting there meant learning PowerShell, Python, Ansible, and Terraform well enough to know when to reach for each one.

Purely Nutanix: The FlashArray Integration Expands Customer Choice

Mon, 15 Dec 2025 09:20:25 -0500

When Nutanix and Pure Storage announced their partnership at .NEXT 2025 in May, it turned heads across the industry. Two companies that had previously competed were now working together to deliver something customers have been asking for: the operational simplicity of Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure combined with the raw performance of Pure Storage FlashArray.

Some might question the motives behind this partnership. Is it a defensive play? A response to market pressures? I see it differently. This integration continues both companies' commitment to putting customers first. Nutanix has always been about giving customers choice and simplifying infrastructure. Pure has built its reputation on performance and customer experience. Bringing those philosophies together isn't a contradiction; it's a natural evolution.

Creating AHV-Ready Windows ISOs with Embedded VirtIO Drivers

Tue, 25 Nov 2025 11:02:40 -0500

Deploying Windows VMs on Nutanix AHV requires VirtIO drivers that aren't included in the standard Windows installation media. This means manually loading drivers during setup or mounting driver ISOs after installation. I've built a PowerShell tool that simplifies this process by injecting the VirtIO drivers directly into your Windows ISO, complete with both a GUI for ease of use and a CLI for automation.

Smarter VM Placement with Nutanix AHV - Part 2

Fri, 18 Jul 2025 10:01:46 -0400

Took me a bit longer to get back around to writing Part 2, life get's in the way sometimes!

Following up on Part 1 where I covered the benefits (and some pitfalls) of Affinity and Anti-Affinity polices with AHV, this post will cover the configuration and validation of these policies. Affinity and Anti-Affinity policies are crucial for ensuring application availability, performance, and compliance by controlling the placement of virtual machines on specific hosts or preventing them from residing on the same host.

Smarter VM Placement with Nutanix AHV - Part 1

Fri, 13 Jun 2025 15:54:28 -0400

In a virtualized environment, how and where your virtual machines (VMs) run isn't just a matter of resource availability. It's a key part of your resiliency, performance, and compliance strategy. That’s where Affinity and Anti-Affinity policies come into play.

With Nutanix AHV, administrators may gain granular control over VM placement through two types of rules:

VM-Host Affinity Policies: Define where VMs should run in relation to specific physical hosts. This policy checks and enforces where a VM can be hosted when you power on or migrate the VM.
VM-VM Anti-Affinity Policies: Ensure certain VMs are kept apart for availability or performance isolation. The VM-VM anti-affinity policy keeps the specified virtual machines apart in such a way that when a problem occurs with one host, you should not lose both the virtual machines.

This will be a two part post on Affinity and Anti-Affinity policies. This post will cover the background of when and where to use Affinity and Anti-Affinity policies with Nutanix AHV, and the second post will cover the configuration and validation of each scenario.

Scale Smart, Scale Fast: NC2 Scaling on AWS and Azure

Wed, 11 Jun 2025 10:30:21 -0400

The Need for Elastic Infrastructure

In today’s digital landscape, agility and resiliency isn’t just a nice to have, for many organizations it’s considered mission-critical. Whether you’re supporting seasonal growth, accommodating sudden spikes in analytics workloads, or preparing for disaster recovery, your infrastructure needs to scale with you. Nutanix Cloud Clusters (NC2) deliver just that, the ability to run the Nutanix Cloud Platform natively on AWS and Azure on bare metal services, and scale it elastically as your needs evolve. This post dives into how NC2 enables efficient and intelligent scaling across both clouds, whether you’re adding nodes or leveraging native cloud storage like Amazon EBS or Azure Elastic SAN. It will not cover the details of the NC2 deployment though.

Accelerating AI Adoption with Nutanix Enterprise AI

Wed, 04 Dec 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Disclaimer: I felt the need to write this post to highlight the work Nutanix is doing to bring a simple and powerful AI platform to the market, while also introducing some of the AMAZING work that the Data and AI team at eGroup Enabling Technologies, my employer for the last almost 12 years are doing for customers in their AI journey . The thoughts below are my own...

Beginning Adoption

For many organizations, the promise of artificial intelligence (AI) is clear: it’s going to be a key driver of digital transformation, unlocking insights, automating processes, and opening the door to new opportunities. But while the why of AI is well understood, the how can feel overwhelming.

Validating Performance and Resiliency with Nutanix X-Ray

Fri, 25 Oct 2024 00:00:00 +0000

So you just unboxed, racked, and deployed a new Nutanix cluster, and your boss comes to you and asks how we know it's ready to handle workloads. I mean, you can be confident in saying that it's ready, but what if you can provide them with results that show not only can we meet resiliency requirements but also handle the performance required of any workloads?

In the world of infrastructure, you don’t want to wait until something breaks to know if your platform is resilient. You also need to be confident that your systems can handle the workload they’re designed for. Enter Nutanix X-Ray—a powerful, automated testing tool that helps you validate the performance and resilience of your Nutanix platform before disaster strikes.

Weekly Tech Tip: Nutanix Centralized Local Password Management

Fri, 12 Jul 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Simplify and Secure: Centralized Password Management with Prism Central

In the ever-evolving landscape of IT security, managing passwords across various platforms can be a daunting task. However, Nutanix has released a Centralized Local Password Management feature designed to centralize password management, ensuring a more secure and standardized approach for organizations. We'll dive into how this feature can simplify your password management strategy and bolster your security posture.

The Challenge of Distributed Password Management

Before we explore the solution, it’s essential to understand the problem. Managing local account passwords across multiple systems and platforms can be chaotic. Without a centralized management system, organizations often face:

Mastering Maintenance Mode Operations: Part 2 - vSphere

Sat, 27 Jan 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Welcome back to my series on maintenance operations with Nutanix! In Part 1, I reviewed some scenarios on using maintenance mode with Nutanix AHV, using both Maintenance Mode functions within Prism Element and the CLI.

As a quick recap from Part 1, you can use both the GUI functionality in AOS 6.x+ to place a host in maintenance mode or use the CLI commands for a variety of reasons, including but not limited to the following:

Mastering Maintenance Mode Operations in Nutanix: A Guide for AHV and ESXi

Sat, 23 Dec 2023 00:00:00 +0000

As with years past, as we come to a close on year’s end, I take some time to clean up the As-Built documentation templates I maintain for deployments; as part of this activity, I always come across outdated sections based on current feature sets, or areas that I think can use some additional content.

This week, I noticed that my documentation about placing hosts into maintenance mode with Nutanix, whether running AHV or ESXi, is a bit outdated and could use some touching up.

Nutanix CE Refresh with Internal SSD Upgrade

Mon, 17 Feb 2020 00:00:00 +0000

It’s been a while since I’ve gotten any fresh content on this blog, hopefully I’ll get some content ideas to keep a regular cadence of updates going.

While I was updating the cabling on the garage lab, I realized it had been a while since I had done anything on my CE lab from a version perspective, in fact the last update I had done was March of 2019. So I figured now was as good a time as any to go ahead and upgrade the CE cluster.

Accelerate Migration to Nutanix AHV with Move

Fri, 15 Mar 2019 00:00:00 +0000

If you haven’t taken a close look at the hypervisor from Nutanix, AHV, well you might be missing out on something very valuable – that you already have access to as a Nutanix customer. AHV addresses the majority of the use cases people require with virtualization, and it does so very well with a simple deployment, simple management and POWERFUL features when Prism Central is added (and still powerful when it’s not).

Rebuild Time: Nutanix Community Edition 5.10 Released

Mon, 11 Mar 2019 00:00:00 +0000

I love the fact that Nutanix provides a Community Edition for those of us with home labs, I can bring the Enterprise Cloud I so enjoy deploying for customers close to home. Sure, would I love to have a small NX-1365 in the rack at home, who wouldn’t? Maybe someday…

But in the meantime, Community Edition provides me with the ability to troubleshoot, test, demo, etc specifics on the Nutanix Platform without needing to schedule a Hosted POC or use the Nutanix Demo site. Additionally, I can test out using Xtract, Protection Domains to Azure and even test out the Rubrik integration.

Nutanix Files for All: 1TB Free with Every Cluster

Mon, 28 Jan 2019 00:00:00 +0000

News Flash:

Always wanted to try Nutanix Files (Formerly Acropolis File Services or AFS) but didn’t have the license to do so? Well now you can! With 1TB of Files for every AOS Cluster!

Nutanix continues to release amazing features and products on their journey of the Enterprise Cloud Platform. While the release of new products such as Calm, Era, Beam and Xi have continued to highlight Nutanix’s position on the Gartner Magic Quandrant for Hyperconverged Systems, a tweak to the Files licensing announced today can be a huge gamechanger for customers looking to migrate away from expensive NAS storage solutions.

Installing Nutanix CE 5.6 with ISO Installer

Fri, 22 Jun 2018 00:00:00 +0000

Nutanix CE Version 5.6 is out, and it’s hot!!!

With the release of Nutanix Community Edition version 5.6, Nutanix has also provided a new installation mechanism as an alternative to the previous dd imaging method, now allowing for a .iso installer.

Previous CE Installs

With previous Nutanix CE installs, it required the use of the dd utility to take the .img file and write this out to either a USB drive or another boot drive.

ESXi Services Disabled in NCC Health Check

Thu, 10 Aug 2017 00:00:00 +0000

This week I had the pleasure of deploying 2 more Nutanix blocks on behalf of one our partners, who is now starting to highly recommend Nutanix for their customer deployments of critical systems.

The installation was pretty vanilla, 3 NX-1065-G5 nodes at the Primary site and matching at the DR site. For the VMware components, we went with the vCenter 6.5 appliance (I love the stability and speed of the 6.5 appliance by the way), and for the ESXi hosts we went with 6.5 (build 4887370).

Deploying and Configuring Prism Central on AHV

Thu, 22 Sep 2016 00:00:00 +0000

Continuing our journey with testing out Nutanix AHV functionality for one of our partners, one of things we wanted to get deployed was Prism Central. Prism Central is very similar to VMware’s vCenter, defining Prism Central as “software provides centralized infrastrcuture management, one-click simplicity and intelligence for everyday operations.”

The deployment and configuration of Prism Central differs slightly between ESXi/Hyper-V and AHV, but post deployment the configuration is similar. Deploying Prism Central when using ESXi is pretty simple – just download the .ova file and deploy onto the host, while for Hyper-V and AHV you need to create a VM and clone the disks for the VM. Regardless of which platform you’re deploying Prism Central onto, it’s a very simple process to get up and running.

Deploying Nutanix and Mellanox - Part 2

Wed, 21 Sep 2016 00:00:00 +0000

Welcome back to my Nutanix and Mellanox blog series! In Part 1, I went through the process of setting up the

"Technology"

tags:

"acropolis"
"ahv"
"mellanox"
"nutanix"
"networking"
"configuration"

Welcome back to my short series on our journey of testing Nutanix and Mellanox. Following up on Part 1 of the Nutanix and Mellanox Series, I’m going to dive deeper into the Nutanix network configuration for use with the Mellanox SX1012.

Deploying Nutanix and Mellanox - Part 1

Mon, 19 Sep 2016 00:00:00 +0000

As I wrote about in the last post that started our journey with Nutanix and Mellanox, we will be testing AHV DR replication for one of our partners while evaluating the use of the Mellanox SX switch platform for a lower cost 10/40Gbe switch.

The NX-1050 Block was pre-configured at another location, so all network subnets will be recreated in this lab. The NX-3050 block is net new, and that will be configured onsite.

Nutanix and Mellanox: A Journey in Integration

Sun, 18 Sep 2016 00:00:00 +0000

I’ve been given the opportunity to do some testing with 2 Nutanix blocks and a Mellanox SX1012 switch for one of our customers, who is looking to do some disruptive changes to the platform they deploy their software onto.

Background

Currently, we partner with this customer to do your typical 3-Tier infrastructure deployments with EMC VNX/VNXe for Storage, Cisco Catalyst and Nexus for switching, Cisco UCS or HP for compute and VMware vSphere for the hypervisor. While this solution has worked very well over the years, when we approached this partner a few years ago with Nutanix, the interest was there but the justification was hard to come by.