Category: News

What’s new at Nutanix University? New certification NCP-CN and beta exams opportunities

Nutanix released a new anticipated training and certification related to the Nutanix Kubernetes Platform, or NKP.

First, the new course, Nutanix Kubernetes Platform Administration (NKPA), is available for free online at Nutanix University! The course is based on AOS 6.10, Prism Central 2024.2, and Nutanix Kubernetes Platform 2.12, and teaches you how to deploy, configure, and manage the Nutanix Kubernetes Platform (NKP).

New certification Nutanix Certified Professional – Cloud Native (NCP-CN) developed to test your abilities in deploying, managing, and troubleshooting NKP.

For now, the certification is in a beta state and available totally free for the first 250 participants, just use the discount during checkout: NCPCN610BETA. You can find this certification on the PSI certs lists. The first test date is January 28, 2025, and you have time to prepare. The last test date is March 10, 2025.

Keep in mind, that during the beta state, you won’t get your results immediately after completing the exam. Usually, it takes a month or two after beta is over, and I can guess that the results of the exam could be at the end of April or in May.

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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.

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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.

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Veeam Backup & Replication 12.2 Release

A new Veeam release brings us a lot of new features including:

  1. Long awaited Proxmox VE Support!;
  2. Integration with Nutanix Prism Central;
  3. Support for backup and recovery for MongoDB;
  4. Full vSphere 8.0 Update 3 support;
  5. VeeamONE Proxmox VE, RedHat KVM, and Oracle KVM support;
  6. And more more!

You can check the Release Notes for VBR here and for VeeamONE here.

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VMware vSphere 8.0 Update 3 is out

Today, a new version of VMware vSphere 8.0 has been released. It is a major update that contains tons of new features in different areas, including live patch management, partial maintenance mode, embedded vCLS, and more and more.

I do not want to copy all well-written info here but to share a few links.

What’s New in vSphere 8 Update 3?

What’s New with vSphere 8 Core Storage

What’s New in vSphere Update 3 for vSphere IaaS control plane?

VMware ESXi 8.0 Update 3 Release Notes

VMware vCenter Server 8.0 Update 3 Release Notes

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Nutanix .NEXT 2024 the first-day Announcements

A bunch of links with announcements happened during the first day at Nutanix .NEXT 2024 in Barcelona.

Nutanix and Dell Technologies Collaborate on New Joint Solutions for Hybrid Multicloud

Nutanix and NVIDIA Team Up to Accelerate Enterprise AI

Nutanix Accelerates Hypervisor Innovation to Drive Enterprise Modernization

Happy 10th Birthday AHV!

Nutanix Announces Nutanix Kubernetes® Platform to Remove Cloud Native Complexity to Speed Innovation Across the Enterprise

GPT-in-a-Box 2.0 is Here With Four Ways to Get Started with GenAI

Empowering Sustainability with a Modernized Infrastructure

Accelerate your Gen AI journey with Nutanix Unified Storage

Nutanix Widens Coverage for Cloud Native Users With Expanded Project Beacon

Nutanix and EDB Partner to Deliver a Modern Data Platform

Nutanix and Red Hat Expand Collaboration to Power the Next-Generation of Virtualized and Cloud-Native Workloads

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Veeam Backup & Replication 12.1.2 Release

On May 21, Veeam Backup & Replication 12.1.2 has been released.

This update contains important security bug fixes for the Enterprise Manager, including CVE-2024-29849 with a score of 9.8 and CVE-2024-29850 with a score of 8.8.

Please note, that CVE-2024-29849 allows an unauthenticated attacker to log in to the Veeam Backup Enterprise Manager web interface as any user. So, consider to update ASAP.

In addition to the security bug fixes, there are many new improvements and features. I won’t post all of them here, but a few are interesting for me:

Improved VMware NBD (Network Transport Mode) transport mode performance by up to 2x;

AlmaLinux 9.3 and Rocky 9.3 are supported for use as Linux-based backup repositories and backup proxies;

VMware Cloud Director 10.4.1 and 10.4.1.1 support;

Veeam Agent for Linux 6.1.2.1781 – AlmaLinux 9.3 & 9.4, RHEL 9.4, Rocky 9.3 & 9.4, and Ubuntu 24.04 Linux distributions support.

In total, there are about 100 improvements and fixes. So even if you don’t use the Enterprise Manager, consider installing this update to add support for new systems’ versions and bug fixes.

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VMware ESXi 8.0 Update 2b is out

VMware ESXi 8.0 Update 2b is out and contains a lot of bug fixes. One of the fixes I want to mention is a bug in CBT:

Changed Block Tracking (CBT) might not work as expected on a hot extended virtual disk:

In vSphere 8.0 Update 2, to optimize the open and close process of virtual disks during hot extension, the disk remains open during hot extend operations. Due to this change, incremental backup of virtual disks with CBT enabled might be incomplete, because the CBT in-memory bitmap does not resize, and CBT cannot record the changes to the extended disk block. As a result, when you try to restore a VM from an incremental backup of virtual disks with CBT, the VM might fail to start.

As a workaround, there were two options: not to use hot extend and perform disk extend operations when the VM is powered off, or create periodically full backups to reset the CBT.

So, if you’re running ESXi version 8.0 Update 2, you should consider updating to the 8.0 Update 2b as soon as possible.

You can read about other release notes here.

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What’s new at Nutanix University?

Good news for Nutanix Cloud Clusters (NC2) users – two new courses and certification tracks have been announced.

Two free online courses:
Nutanix Cloud Clusters on AWS Administration (NC2A-AWS) – Configuring and administrating NC2 in the AWS environment;
Nutanix Cloud Clusters on Azure Administration (NC2A-Azure) – Configuring and administrating NC2 in the Microsoft Azure environment.

Both courses include a theoretical part and Hands-on Labs as well.

And there are new certifications – Nutanix Certified Professional – Cloud Integration for AWS and Azure.

NCP-CI-AWS 6.7;
NCP-CI-Azure 6.7.

As usual, both exams are in beta state, and you can take them for free. Use discount code NCPCIAWS67BETA for NCP-CI-AWS 6.7 exam and NCPCIAZURE67BETA for NCP-CI-Azure 6.7. This offer is only available to the first 250 participants, and the last day to test is March 10, 2024.

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Veeam Hands‑On Labs

You may not know, but last year Veeam launched a set of Hands-On Labs (HOL) to demonstrate the product’s capabilities. One thing I like is that it’s not just a point-and-click Labs, but a whole preconfigured environment.

Example of labs available (and more):

  • Test drive Veeam Backup and Replication V12;
  • Test Drive Veeam Recovery Scenarios;
  • Protect and Enhance your Kubernetes applications with Kasten K10 by Veeam.

You can get access to the HOL as an End user and as a Partner as well.

Notice, that depending on the region the lab set may be different.

After registering to the Lab you will receive an email with instructions on connecting to the environment. It could take a while.

During the test, my overall experience was excellent. The HOLs has clear instructions and a non-lagging environment. So check this out.

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