VMware Host Isolation Response in a Nutanix Environment #NoSAN

I was recently discussing the Nutanix solution with a friend of mine and fellow VCDX, Michael Webster (@vcdxnz001) and he asked what the recommended Host Isolation Response is for Nutanix.

At this stage I must advise there is no formal recommendation, but an Official vSphere on Nutanix Best Practice guide is in the works and will be released asap.

Back to my conversation with Michael, Being that Nutanix is an IP Storage solution, my initial feeling is that Host isolation Response should be set to “Shutdown”, but I didn’t go into any more detail with Michael, so I thought it best to post a quick explanation.

This post also assumes basic knowledge of vSphere as well as the Nutanix platform, for those of you who are not familiar with Nutanix please review the following links prior to reading the remainder of this post.

About Nutanix | How Nutanix Works | 8 Strategies for a Modern Datacenter

So back on topic, in other posts I have written for IP Storage, such as (Example Architectural Decision – Host Isolation Response for IP Storage) I have concluded that “Shutdown” was the most suitable setting and recommended specifying isolation addresses of the NAS controllers.

But as Nutanix changes the game and has one virtual storage controller per ESXi host, so does this change the recommendation?

In short, No, but for those who are interested, here is why.

If we leave the default isolation address, (being the default gateway for ESXi Management), in the event the gateway is down, it will trigger an isolation response even if the rest of the network is operating fine, thus an unnecessary outage would occur.

If we configure das.isolationaddress1 & 2 with the Management IP address of any two Nutanix Controller VMs (192.168.1.x , 192.168.1.y in my below diagram) then an isolation response will only be triggered if both Nutanix Controller VMs (CVMs) are not responding, in which case, the VMs should be Shutdown as the Nutanix cluster may not be function properly with two Controllers offline concurrently as its configured by default for N+1 (or replication factor of “2” in Nutanix speak).

The below is a high level example of the above configuration.

NutanixHostIsolation

Related Articles

1. Example Architectural Decision – Host Isolation Response for a Nutanix Environment

2. Storage DRS and Nutanix – To use, or not to use, that is the question?

3. VMware HA and IP Storage

An exciting new adventure for this VCDX

I am very pleased to announce that I have decided to take on a new challenge and will be joining the innovative team at Nutanix starting July this year in the Solutions and Performance engineering team.

It was only a few short months ago when I first discovered what Nutanix was all about, after previously seeing the classic “No SAN” advertisements on various blogs and at VMworld in 2012, and embarrassingly I have to admit I did not make the time to look into the solution.

Since then, I have spent a lot of time looking into the Nutanix solution and have spoken to a number of people in the industry including several members of the Nutanix family. It has become obvious to me why Nutanix is one of the most successful and fastest growing start-ups in the industry, although im not sure I’d call Nutanix a “Start-up” any more.

The linearly scale out solution provided by Nutanix aligns perfectly with the virtualization best practices that most of us have known for many years, and combines PCIe SSD (Fusion-io) with SATA SSDs and high capacity SATA drives into a high performance , hyper-converged 2RU platform.

Over my many years in the industry I can recall countless scenarios where the Nutanix solution would have been a perfect fit, and solved numerous problems, both at the technical/architectural level and importantly at the business level for both SMB and Enterprise customers.

Now with the release of a wider range of Nutanix blocks including the NX-1000 and NX-6000, the solution is becoming more and more attractive.

In my role I will be part of the team who is responsible for creating high performance solutions and developing best practice guides, reference architectures and case studies for things like virtualization of business critical applications on the Nutanix platform.

A lot of people are already aware of how good the platform is for virtual desktops, but I am not only focused on showing how good the solution is for VDI, but for a wider range of workloads, including Business Critical Applications / server and Big Data workloads.

I am very much looking forward to being a significant part of this exciting company, which already boasts exceptional talent, including two VCDXs in Jason Langone @langonej & Lane Leverett @wolfbrthr . So I am very pleased to be working along side such talent and to be the third VCDX in the Nutanix family.

As I have been doing for the last year or so, I intend to continue to share my experience with the virtualization community via Twitter, Blogging, VMUGs etc, which will now include (but not be limited too) the Nutanix platform.

So stay tuned as the Nutanix team and I have a number of very interesting projects coming up in the next few weeks and months which I cant wait to share with you.

If your not already familiar with what Nutanix is all about, here are a couple of quick introductory YouTube videos which I highly recommend you take the time to watch (as I wish I had sooner!)

About Nutanix | How Nutanix Works | 8 Strategies for a Modern Datacenter

nosan

vCatchup – Craig Waters & Josh Odgers

I recently was asked by Melbourne VMUG leader and friend Craig Waters (@cswaters1) to do a vCatchup with him which I gladly accepted.

The vCatchup is approx 35mins in length and covers various topics including the tech community in Australia/NZ, VMUG , interesting developments in the industry in 2013 along with Software Defined Datacenter.

Other topics discussed include architecture and emerging technology such as Nicira , Nutanix and PernixData.

I hope you enjoy the vCatchup with Josh Odgers

vCatchup