Deep Dive on Thoughts and Ramblings by Mike

Nutanix Instant Restore: A Big Win for MST

Sun, 05 Apr 2026 09:00:00 -0400

Over the past couple of posts, I have covered what MST is and how to choose between Zero Compute and Pilot Light deployment models. Throughout that series, I mentioned that a new capability in Prism Central 7.5.1 was what prompted me to revisit MST in the first place. This is that post.

If you're new to MST, check out my earlier posts. If you have spent any time evaluating or working with MST for disaster recovery, you know the value proposition: replicate VM and Volume Group snapshots to object storage, keep costs down, and recover workloads when you need them. The architecture is sound, the durability is there, and the cost profile makes it easy to justify. But there has always been one conversation that got uncomfortable: "How long until my VMs are actually running again?"

MST Deployment Models: Zero Compute vs. Pilot Light

Fri, 03 Apr 2026 09:00:00 -0400

In my previous post, I covered what Multicloud Snapshot Technology (MST) is, the object stores it supports, and where it fits in your DR strategy. Now I want to dig into the decision that shapes most of your MST architecture: which deployment model to use.

Nutanix offers two distinct approaches, Zero Compute and Pilot Light, and they trade off cost against recovery speed in ways that matter a lot depending on the workloads you are protecting. Getting this decision right can mean the difference between a recovery that takes minutes and one that takes hours, with very different cost profiles along the way.

A Practical Look at Nutanix MST for Disaster Recovery

Mon, 30 Mar 2026 09:00:00 -0400

I have been recently revisiting Nutanix Multicloud Snapshot Technology, aka MST. What prompted the fresh look was the Instant Restore capability that shipped with Prism Central 7.5.1. When a feature fundamentally changes the recovery time story for an entire DR approach, it is worth going back and re-evaluating the technology as a whole. I will get to what started all this - Instant Restore - in a follow-up post, but first I want to walk through what MST actually is, what it supports, and why it deserves a closer look if you have not evaluated it recently.

Identity Is the New Perimeter (And It's Under Attack)

Tue, 03 Feb 2026 15:55:13 -0500

I've had more conversations about identity resilience in the past six months than in the previous five years combined. Something has shifted. Customers who used to treat Active Directory as "set it and forget it" infrastructure are now asking hard questions about recovery, integrity, and what happens when (not if) their identity systems get compromised.

That shift isn't paranoia. It's pattern recognition.

The Target Has Moved

For years, the security conversation centered on protecting data. Backup your files, replicate your databases, encrypt your storage. And those things still matter. But attackers have figured out something more elegant: why steal data when you can steal the keys to everything?

Omnissa Horizon 8 Architecture on AHV

Mon, 12 Jan 2026 14:00:00 -0500

Welcome to my first post of 2026! Now that Omnissa Horizon 8 on Nutanix AHV is fully GA as part of the Horizon 8 2512 release, I've been kicking the tires and working through deploying the stack on AHV. For those used to deploying and managing Horizon on ESXi, the workflow is slightly different on AHV, but in a good way. The integration with Nutanix recovery points makes rollbacks much cleaner than what we had before in my opinion, though the jury is still out... I've never been a fan of snapshots on the vSphere side, so I like the flexibility here.

Nutanix DR: Planned vs. Unplanned Failovers

Mon, 20 Oct 2025 13:42:28 -0400

Not all failovers are created equal. Planned failover enables zero data loss migrations for maintenance windows, while unplanned failover optimizes for speed when disaster strikes. This post explores how Nutanix handles both scenarios, recovery point selection strategies, cross-cluster live migration for zero-downtime requirements, and how replication type impacts data loss expectations during recovery operations.

Nutanix Recovery Plans: Orchestrating DR Failover

Sat, 04 Oct 2025 09:42:28 -0400

Recovery Plans are your automated DR runbooks, orchestrating the complex choreography of failover to bring applications back online in the right order with proper network configuration. This post explores power-on sequencing, network mapping, VM selection strategies, and non-disruptive testing—transforming disaster recovery from manual procedures into predictable, repeatable automation.

Nutanix Protection Policies: Async, Near-Sync & Sync DR

Fri, 26 Sep 2025 09:00:00 -0400

Protection Policies are the foundation of Nutanix DR, defining how recovery points are created, replicated, and retained. This post explores the three replication types—Asynchronous (1-24 hour RPO), Near-Synchronous (1-15 minute RPO), and Synchronous (zero RPO)—covering configuration, performance impacts, distance limitations, and how to align technical capabilities with business requirements across different workload tiers.

Nutanix Disaster Recovery: Modern Policy-Driven Protection

Sat, 20 Sep 2025 10:44:43 -0400

Nutanix offers two distinct approaches to disaster recovery: Protection Domains (the battle-tested foundation) and Nutanix DR (the policy-driven evolution). This post explores both methods, their capabilities, when to use each approach, and how they complement each other. Understanding the difference is crucial for building DR strategies that match your operational model and scale requirements.

Modern Disaster Recovery: Simplifying Business Continuity

Sun, 07 Sep 2025 08:00:00 -0400

Modern DR platforms have fundamentally transformed business continuity from complex, manual procedures into policy-driven automation. This post explores how platforms like Nutanix Disaster Recovery deliver hybrid cloud-native protection, non-disruptive testing, application-aware recovery, and simplified management—making enterprise-grade DR accessible to organizations of all sizes while eliminating the PhD-level complexity of traditional approaches.

Disaster Recovery in 2025: A Comprehensive Guide

Tue, 02 Sep 2025 13:42:28 -0400

Welcome to the Disaster Recovery Series

I've been sitting on writing a series about Disaster recovery (DR) for a while, but maybe the writing bug has caught me - more after some recent conversations with customers. DR has evolved from a nice-to-have backup plan to an absolute business necessity. In 2025, organizations face an unprecedented array of threats: sophisticated cyberattacks, climate-driven natural disasters, supply chain disruptions, and infrastructure failures that can cripple operations within minutes.

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.

Enhancing Disaster Recovery with Nutanix Hybrid Cloud and Nutanix Cloud Clusters on Azure

Thu, 15 Aug 2024 00:00:00 +0000

In today's digital landscape, where downtime can translate to significant financial loss and damage, having a robust disaster recovery (DR) strategy is no longer optional—it's essential. Organizations have many DR options at their disposal, each with its own advantages and considerations.

Traditionally, on-premises DR has been a go-to for many, offering full control over data and infrastructure, providing a sense of security. However, it often requires significant investment in hardware, software, and maintenance. Colo-based DR, where organizations utilize a colocation facility to house their backup infrastructure, presents a middle ground. It alleviates some of the overhead of on-premises solutions while offering a high degree of control and customization.

Zerto Virtual Replication - History and Capabilities

Wed, 07 Aug 2024 00:00:00 +0000

This is the first part of a series about Zerto Virtual Replication, starting with some history and capabilities of Zerto. Additional posts will follow and dive deeper into the full Zerto suite.

A Deep Dive into Zerto Virtual Replication: History, vSphere, Hyper-V, and Cloud Capabilities

In the world of disaster recovery and data protection, Zerto Virtual Replication (ZVR) has established itself as a leading solution, providing seamless business continuity and disaster recovery (BCDR) for businesses of all sizes.

Cisco Nexus 7K Design with Active/Active FEX

Mon, 06 Feb 2017 00:00:00 +0000

Back in November 2015 I wrote a post about FEX Topologies with the Cisco Nexus platforms, and at the time the Nexus 5K/6K line was the only model that would support the active/active FEX topology (FEX-AA), which was unfortunate in designing redundant connectivity for downstream devices.

But with the release of NX-OS code 7.2 and above, we now get FEX-AA support on the 7000 and 7700 series switches!

Recap

To recap, if you were running the 7k or the 9k switches with FEXs, you’d need single home (Straight Through) the FEX to the parent Nexus, much like the image below. The FEX was tied to the parent switch, and we’d rely on nic teaming or multiple nics on the servers/devices connected to the FEX to provide dual homing or redundancy for connectivity.

FEX Topologies for Nexus: Complete Configuration Guide

Thu, 19 Nov 2015 00:00:00 +0000

I’m a big an of the Cisco Fabric Extenders when it comes to getting more ports in a data center topology, I like the easy of management and simple layout for getting connections onto the FEX. However, after speaking with a few coworkers and friends, I came to the conclusion that the supported FEX topologies are still somewhat confusing between the Nexus line, and what is actually supported from a connectivity standpoint on the FEX’s.

Data Center Power 101: Infrastructure Fundamentals

Tue, 27 Oct 2015 00:00:00 +0000

I’m always having to look up power connectors when quoting equipment or reviewing with a customer, to make sure that PDU’s have the appropriate receptacles. I always feel like the information provided by equipment providers doesn’t match up with what’s on the PDU or what the customer states they have.

On the Packet Pushers blog, I ran across this post by John Kerns that provided great background and detail for those of us that occasionally or directly deal with Data Center power. He also came up with an amazing cheat sheet for power and cooling, with a great visual aide for receptacles and plugs!