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Nutanix AOS 7.0 and AHV 10.0 release

New major versions of Nutanix AOS and AHV were released with a lot of new features. In addition to those major releases, a new version of Prism Central pc.2024.3 was also released.

AOS 7.0:

Cloud KMS support;
Optionally Disable CPU Hotplug on VMs – Check the documentation, and why it can be important;
Optionally Disable the SCSI Controller on VMs;
NVMe Software Serviceability;
One Node and One Disk (1N&1D) Cluster Fault Tolerance – I recommend to read more about this feature in the documentation;
Increased Maximum Supported Memory on AHV Hosts up to 8TB – By the way, you can find configuration maximums here;
Centralized Password Management for AHV System Accounts;
WSL2 Intra-Cluster Live Migration Support;
Support for Skylake server on ESXi 8.0 Update 3;
Support for Storage Policy for Volume Groups on ESXi.

AHV 10.0:

Added Support for the Intel Saphhire Rapids CPU instructions;
Semantic Versioning format for AHV;
PCIe Passthrough for Guest VMs;
Change Interface Ring Buffer Size on AHV;
Support of Repair Host Boot Disk and SS Repair functionality in Prism Element for Compute-Only and Storage-Only nodes;
Support for boot device order configuration from aCLI;
Support for NVIDIA A2 Tensor Core GPU card;
Support for NVIDIA H100 NVL GPU card.

Although both releases include a bunch of resolved issues.

Read release notes for AOS 7.0 here and for AHV 10.0 here (Requires authentication).

Prism Central pc.2024.3:

VM-VM Anti-Affinity Policies in Prism Central;
Multiple Cluster Configuration Through Prism Central;
Support for Flow Network Security Next-Gen with vLAN Policy Scope in Nutanix Disaster Recovery;
Cloud KMS Support;
Revamped Tasks Dashboard;
Centralized Password Management for AHV System Accounts;
Metro Availability with Nutanix Witness Service out of the Prism Central Instance: Automated Recovery of VMs and Volume Groups on Cluster Failure Across Prism Central Instances;
Multicloud Snapshot Technology (MST) DR with Zero Compute Deployment;
Node Maintenance Mode Management from Prism Central;
Protection and Recovery Scale Improvements for Nutanix Disaster Recovery;
Support for Flow Network Security Next-Gen in Nutanix Disaster Recovery ;(Clusters Registered to the Same Prism Central Instance)
Cisco Intersight Device Connector Integration;
Objects Lite;
Registration Dependency Removed Between Prism Central and the Hosting Cluster for Services Enablement;
Microservices Infrastructure Cluster Upgrade.

Read Prism Central pc.2024.3 release notes here.

You may have noticed that I didn’t mention the release type, STS or LTS. This is because the release model since AOS 7.0 has been changed and is now called the Unified ‘NCI Release Model’.

And this is not just a naming change, I recommend reading more here.

With the beginning of AOS 7.0, the new support cycle for release is 15 months of maintenance from GA, followed by 9 months of Support and we can expect two Unified releases per year.

Please note, that AOS 6.8 (eSTS) and AOS 6.10 (LTS) are under the Legacy Release Model and the End of Maintenance (EOM) and End of Support Life (EOSL) for AOS 6.10.x and pc.2024.2.x have been extended to align with the new NCI Release Model.

Backing up Proxmox Virtual Environment (PVE) using Veeam Backup and Replication

In this article, we will cover how to connect PVE hosts to the Veeam infrastructure, back up PVE VMs, and restore them.

Let me remind you that previously I wrote about how to deploy Proxmox Virtual Environment 8 as a nested virtualization on VMware vSphere for testing. Read it, if you’re interested in it.

Veeam Backup & Replication 12.3 Release

The new release of Veeam Backup is out today. It includes:

Support for Windows Server 2025;
Application-aware processing, Guest file system indexing, Suspicious file system activity detection for Nutanix AHV;
Enchantments in database and enterprise applications support;
Cyber Resiliency Enhancements and new features including Indicators of Compromise and Veeam Threat Hunter;
And more and more enchantments and new features.

For more info, please, check out the What’s New document(17 pages for minor updates!) and Release notes.

Download the latest version here.

VMware vSphere 8.0 Update 3 automated snapshot deletion

With the 8.0 Update 3 release of VMware vSphere, a new anticipated feature was added – an option to configure snapshot autodeletion.

This short article will look at how to use this feature.

What’s new at Nutanix University? Free NCA 6.10 and NCP-MCI 6.10 exams opportunities

Free Nutanix exams again? – YES!

About a month ago I wrote about two new Nutanix exams:
Nutanix Certified Associate 6.10 (NCA 6.10). Blueprint guide;
Nutanix Certified Professional – Multicloud Infrastructure (NCP-MCI 6.10). Blueprint guide.

Both exams are based on the recently released 6.10 LTS version of AOS.

Today both exams go live and are available to schedule with appointments starting December 10.

The good news is that you can take both exams for free, just register until December 13.

Use those discounts during checkout:
NCA 6.10 Discount Code: NXFRNCA24
NCP-MCI 6.10 Discount Code: NXFRNCP24

Recommended free online courses for preparing:
Nutanix Hybrid Cloud Fundamentals (NHCF) and Enterprise Cloud Administration (ECA).

Let me remind you that on this blog I have two prep guides for both NCA and NCP exams:
Preparing for the Nutanix Certified Associate 6.5 Exam
Preparing for the Nutanix Certified Professional – Multicloud Infrastructure 6.5 Exam

Both guides are based on version 6.5, but if you use the same documentation and courses based on the new version, and follow the methodology, you will be fine.

Using Veeam Hardened Repository ISO and creating Hardened Repository

Did you know about Veeam Managed Hardened Repository ISO? This is a Rocky-based Linux distro, which is already pre-hardened to comply with DISA STIG requirements. In addition, Veeam Hardened Repository ISO provides simplified installation and management; there is a text-based user interface that includes all the basic features needed to configure OS and use it as a Veeam Repository.

You can get more information about features, requirements, and limitations on the Veeam R&D Forum.

With the build 0.1.17, this ISO left the technical preview state and got the production-ready status, including Veeam Experimental Support, so you can consider putting it to use.

In this article we will look at how to deploy a server, using Veeam Hardened Repository ISO and how to create a hardened repository using this server.

QuickFix: ESXi 7 and broken vmsyslog

I encountered a situation where ESXi 7 Update 3g (build 20328353) stopped sending logs to a remote Syslog server. Upon further investigation, it turned out that it also stopped writing logs locally, and the logs in /scratch/log are not updated. Free disk space is not a problem.

During diagnostics, errors were detected in the /var/log/.vmsyslogd.err log:

vmsyslog.main            : CRITICAL] Dropping messages due to log stress (qsize = 25000)

I did not find adequate KB for version 7 on this topic, there was only KB for version 6.5/6.7 with a mention of this error, where it was written that “the problem has been fixed”.

The esxcli system syslog config get command correctly displays the status of the syslog settings, but esxcli system syslog reload does not lead to positive results, logs do not start to be written locally, and are not sent to the remote server.

Restarting the service from the host management interface with the Restart button also does not lead to any results. In the log, you can only see:

vmsyslog.main            : ERROR   ] reloading (3200395)

Which is similar to the result of esxcli system syslog reload.

Stopping and restarting the service from the ESXi interface fails because:

This service with 'vmsyslogd' is marked as 'required' and cannot be stopped.

All that remains is to stop it forcibly directly from the host:

ps -cC | grep vmsyslog
3418096  3418096  vmsyslogd             /bin/python /usr/lib/vmware/vmsyslog/bin/vmsyslogd.pyc 1

We determine the PID of vmsyslog, in this case 3418096, and kill it:

kill -9 3418096

The vmsyslog will show that the process was killed and then automatically restarted:

vmsyslog.main            : ERROR   ] Watchdog 3418095 fired (child 3418096 died with status 9)!
vmsyslog.main            : ERROR   ] Watchdog 3418095 exiting
vmsyslog                 : CRITICAL] vmsyslogd daemon starting (3418940)

After restarting, logs start to be written locally and sent to the remote server.

What’s new at Nutanix University? Free NCA 6.10 and NCP-MCI 6.10 beta exams opportunities

Great news from Nutanix University!

Two new beta exams are available for scheduling:
Nutanix Certified Associate 6.10 (NCA 6.10) Beta exam. Blueprint guide;
Nutanix Certified Professional – Multicloud Infrastructure (NCP-MCI 6.10) Beta exam. Blueprint guide.

Both exams are based on the recently released 6.10 LTS version of AOS.

If you don’t know, Nutanix offers beta exams for free, and the first 250 participants can take the exam at no charge! Just use those discounts during checkout:
NCA 6.10 Beta Exam Discount Code: NCA610BETA
NCP-MCI 6.10 Beta Exam Discount Code: NCPMCI610BETA

The main difference between a beta exam and a regular one is that the beta exam is larger. It includes more questions and you need more time to complete it. The time limit for NCA 6.10 beta is 120 minutes and for NCP-MCI 6.10 beta is 180 minutes.

The deadline is November 3, and this is the last day to test.

Also, one thing to mention, is that you will not get your results immediately! Usually, it can take two or even three months after the deadline, so be patient.

Recommended free online courses for preparing:
Nutanix Hybrid Cloud Fundamentals (NHCF) and Enterprise Cloud Administration (ECA).

Both guides are based on version 6.5, but if you use the same documentation and courses based on the new version, you will be fine.

Using Nutanix Prism Central Categories with Veeam Backup 12.2

Categories (in other systems they can be called labels or tags) are used to group entities based on a key-value pairing. For example, we can group a set of VMs and mark them as production environments and apply some policies, while another part of VMs will be marked as tests with a different type of policy applied.

With the release of Veeam Backup 12.2 and the added Prism Central integration, VBR is now aware of Prism Central Categories and can back up all VMs under the specified category in a backup job.

In this article, we will look at how to create a category in Prism Central, how to attach it to the VM, and, sure, how to use VBR with categories.

Veeam Backup 12.2 and Nutanix Prism Central integration

With the release of 12.2, Veeam introduced a new long-awaited feature: Nutanix Prism Central integration, which simplifies the management of large Nutanix clusters, managed by Prism Central instance.

In this article, we will look at how to connect the VBR Server to the Prism Central Instance and perform backup and recovery tasks.