Tag Archives: Nutanix
Why Nutanix Acropolis hypervisor (AHV) is the next generation hypervisor – Part 8 – Analytics (Performance / Capacity Management)
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Acropolis provides a powerful yet simple-to-use Analysis solution which covers the Acropolis Platform, Compute (Acropolis Hypervisor / Virtual Machines) and Storage (Distributed Storage Fabric).
Unlike other Analysis solutions, Acropolis requires no additional software licensing, management infrastructure or virtual machines/applications to design/deploy or configure. The Nutanix Controller VM includes built-in Analysis which have no external dependencies. There is no need to extract/import data into another product or Virtual appliance meaning lower overheads e.g.: Less data is required to be stored and less impact on storage.
Not only is this capability built in day one, but as the environment grows over time, Acropolis automatically scales the analytics capability; there is never a tipping point where you need to deploy additional instances, increase compute/storage resources assigned to Analytics Virtual Appliances or deploy additional back end databases.
For a demo of the Analysis UI see the following YouTube Video from 4:50 onwards.
Summary:
- In-Built analysis solution
- No additional licensing required
- No design/implementation or deployment of VMs/appliances required
- Automatically scales as the XCP cluster/s grow
Lower overheads due to being built into Acropolis and utilizing the Distributed Storage Fabric
Why Nutanix Acropolis hypervisor (AHV) is the next generation hypervisor – Part 7 – Agility (Time to value)
Deploying other hypervisors and management solutions typically requires considerable design effort and expertise in order to ensure consistent performance and to help minimize risk of downtime while enabling as much agility as possible. Acropolis management requires almost no design at all as the In-built-in management is optimized and highly available out-of-the-box. This enables much faster deployment of AHV than any other hypervisor and associated management components.
Regardless of the starting size on an AHV-based environment, all management, Analysis, Data Protection and BC/DR components are automatically deployed and suitably sized. Regardless of the AHV cluster, no management design effort is required. This results in a very fast (typically <1hr for a single block deployment) time to value.
AHV also provides numerous features which ensure customers can deploy solutions in a timely manner:
- In-Built Management & Analytics
The fact that all tools required for cluster management are deployed automatically with the cluster means time to value is not dependant on design/deployment/validation of these tools. There isn’t even a need to install a client to manage AHV, it is simply accessed via a Web Browser.
- Out of the box hardened configuration with In-Built Security/Compliance Auditing
Being hardened by default removes the risk of security flaws being introduced during implementation phase while the automated auditing ensures in the event security settings are modified during business as usual operations that the setting/s are returned to the required security profile.
- Intelligent cloning
The Distributed Storage Fabric combined with AHV to allow near instant clones of a Virtual Machine. This feature works regardless of the power state of the VM, so it’s not restricted to VMs which are powered off as with other hypervisors.
For a demo of this capability see: Nutanix Acropolis hypervisor acli cloning operations
Note: Cloning can be performed via Prism or acli (Acropolis CLI)
Summary:
- Minimal design/implementation effort for AHV management is required
- Where Multi-cluster central management is required, only a single VM is required (Prism Central) which is deployed as a virtual appliance
- No additional appliances/components to install for Analytics, Data Protection, Replication or Management High Availability
- No Subject Matter Experts required for an optimal Acropolis platform deployment