Month: December 2016

Nutanix + 10GbE Switches + DAC cables: Working Combinations

While Nutanix has only few types of cables to use and has way simpler cabling schematic than traditional 3-tier architectures, there are still cautions with cabling, especially with 10GbE cabling.

If I had to name one type of IT equipment that I really dislike, the award would definitely go to 10GbE DAC or TwinAx-cables. This dislike is not specific only towards Nutanix 10GbE DAC cabling, regardless of which vendor I happen to be working with, I usually feel pinch in my stomach, when someone suggest using DAC cables.

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Enabling Nutanix 2009 page access with allssh command, AOS 5.1 and older

On top of HTML5 based Prism GUI, Nutanix cluster has nifty web pages to give additional information on what is going on in your cluster. Under normal conditions there isn’t usually need to access these pages, but they can be handy in troubleshooting or in performance testing. By default these pages are not accessible, as they are firewalled with iptables rules. Example of such page is 2009 page, which contains information about I/O requests that process called “Stargate” handles.

Enabling access for a single Controller Virtual Machine (CVM)

You can allow access to these pages by modifying iptables rules per controller virtual machine (CVM) basis.

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Visio by DPTPB: ASIC failure with NetApp 12 Gbps SAS adapters and ports

NetApp is moving towards 12Gbps SAS or SAS-3 connectivity for disk shelves. DS224C shelves with IOM12 (12Gbps SAS) modules have been available for a while and now new generation controllers have onboard 12Gbps SAS ports as well separate 12Gbps capable SAS adapters.

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AHV vs Vmware, AOS 5.0 edition

 

UPDATE: This information is based on older AOS 5.0 version , for comparison between AOS 5.5 and Vsphere, plese read updated version

Few months ago I compared Vmware against Acropolis Hypervisor. At that time I listed ten use cases or features where Vmware was better or the only option as Hypervisor in Nutanix environment.

Now that Nutanix is about to release new version of their operating system, AOS 5.0, it is time to revisit this topic again.

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Cave Diving & IT

Some of you might think that the writer has officially gone mad now. What on earth does Cave Diving has to do with IT ?

When looking at surface (heh, another diving reference) not much, but on broader terms both have similarities. In order to survive in both disciplines, you have to manage risks and develop responses to situations where the risk has just been realized, a failure has just happened.

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