Tag Archives: Nutanix

Upgrade to Nutanix OS 3.5.2.1 from 3.1.3

February 7, 2014 Josh Sinclair Leave a comment

My 1350 lab block came with Nutanix OS 3.1.3. A block refers to a 2U chassis with 4 nodes (or in my case 3, as that is the minimum number of nodes required to create a storage cluster) and Nutanix OS refers to the abstracted virtual storage controller and not the bare metal hypervisor.

Below is a node that I have removed that is sitting on top of the chassis.

The bare metal server node is currently running VMware ESXi 5.0 and the Nutanix OS runs as a virtual machine. All of the physical disks are presented to this VM through the use of Direct PassThru.

The latest version of Nutanix OS is 3.5.2.1, so I want to run through the upgrade procedure.

Log onto a Controller VM (CVM – another name for Storage Controller or Nutanix OS VM). Run the following command to check for the extent_cache parameter.
for i in svmips; do echo $i; ssh $i "grep extent_cache\~/config/stargate.gflags.zk"; done

If anything is returned other than No such file or directory, or a parameter match is returned, the upgrade guide asks you to contact Nutanix support to remove this setting.
We need to confirm that all hosts are part of the metadata store with the following command:
nodetool –h localhost ring

Hmm… Running that command seems to have returned a haven of errors. Maybe my cluster needs to be running for this command to work? Let’s try “cluster start” and try this again.

Ok, that looks more like what I’m expecting to see!
I’m skipping the steps in the guide that say to check the hypervisor IP and password since I know they’re still at factory default. Now I need to enable automatic installation of the upgrade.
Log onto each CVM and remove core, blackbox, installer and temporary files using the following commands:
rm –rf /home/nutanix/data/backup_dir
rm –rf /home/nutanix/data/blackbox/*
rm –rf /home/nutanix/data/cores/*
rm –rf /home/nutanix/data/installer/*
rm –rf /home/nutanix/data/install
rm –rf /home/nutanix/data/nutanix/tmp
rm –rf /var/tmp/*
The guide says to check the CVM hostname in /etc/hosts and /etc/sysconfig/network to see if there are any spaces. If we find any we need to replace them with dashes.

No dashes here!
On each CVM, check that there are no errors with the controller boot drive with the following command:
sudo smartctl –a /dev/sda | grep result
If I had replication, I would need to stop it before powering off my CVMs. However, since this is a brand new block, it’s highly unlikely that I have it set up.
Edit the settings for the CVM and allocate 16GB of RAM, or 24 GB of RAM if you want to enable deduplication. In production, this requires shutting down the CVMs one at a time, changing the setting, then powering the CVM back up, waiting to confirm that it is back up and part of the cluster again, and then shutting down the next CVM to modify it. However, since there are no production VMs running in the lab I can just stop the cluster services, shutdown all of the CVMs, make the change, and then power them all back on.
To stop cluster services on all CVMs that are part of a storage cluster log onto the CVM and use the command:

cluster stop

We can confirm that cluster services are stopped by running the command:

cluster status | grep state

We should see the output: The state of the cluster: stop.

We can now use the vSphere client, vSphere Web Client, PowerCLI, or whatever floats your boat to power off the CVMs and make the RAM changes.
Power the CVMs back on, grab a tasty beverage of your choice, then check to see if all of the cluster services have started using: cluster status | grep state. The state of the cluster should be “start”.
Next we need to disable email alerts:
ncli cluster stop-email-alerts
Upload the Nutanix OS release to /home/nutanix on the CVM. Or if you’re lazy like me just copy the link from the Nutanix support portal and use wget.
Expand the tar file:
tar –zxvf nutanix_installer*-3.5.2.1-* (or if you’re lazy tab completion works as well)
Start the upgrade
/home/nutanix/install/bin/cluster –i /home/nutanix/install upgrade
Here we go!
You can check the status of the upgrade with the command upgrade_status.

You’ll know the upgrade is progressing when the CVM that you’re logged into decides to reboot.

8 minutes later… One down two to go!

11 minutes in…

13 minutes later… up to date!
Confirm that the controllers have been upgraded to 3.5 with the following command:
for i in svmips; do echo $i; ssh -o StrictHostKeyChecking=no $i \cat /etc/nutanix/svm-version; done
Remove all previous public keys:
ncli cluster remove-all-public-keys
Sign in to the web console:

Behold the PRISM UI!

Nutanix, VMware

Copy files between ESXi hosts using SCP

February 6, 2014 Josh Sinclair Leave a comment

Need a quick way to move files on one datastore to the datastore of another host that is not within the same vCenter?

In a Nutanix environment SSH is enabled on the hosts so we can use SCP to do this. I needed to move an ISO repository from the production cluster to the TEST / DEV cluster. Log into the source host as root, change directory to the datastore folder (/vmfs/volumes/DATASTORE/FOLDER) and then run the following command:

scp –r * root@DESTINATION:/vmfs/volumes/DATASTORE/FOLDER

# The destination FOLDER must already exist on the destination DATASTORE.

Nutanix

Migrate VMs on Nutanix from one cluster to another without Live Migration

January 11, 2014 Josh Sinclair 2 Comments

One of the great things about Nutanix is that you can add nodes one at a time and grow your storage cluster. One of the bad things about Nutanix is that there really isn’t a way to remove a node from a cluster (yet) without doing a cluster destroy. Cluster destroy is basically game over for that cluster, it removes all of the nodes and puts them back to factory restore mode, as in they look as when they arrived from the factory.

So what happens when you buy a few more blocks from Nutanix, create a new cluster, and need to migrate your production VMs from the old cluster to the new cluster?

We ran into a situation where we had our production servers running on Nutanix 3450 blocks, and needed a bit more oomph, so we purchased Nutanix 3460 blocks which support 512GB RAM per node instead of 256GB and have 10 core CPUs instead of 8. We could have added these nodes to the same cluster except that we wanted to take the old nodes and add them to our VDI cluster. (We haven’t performed any performance testing on the solution of just having one cluster mixing VDI and server workloads, so we decided to play it safe and segregate the clusters).

So how do we migrate 6TB of production VMs all in one night and maintain application consistency? Live Migration!? Well, we could have tried it, but upgrading to vSphere 5.5 SSO seems to have killed our vSphere webclient. Support ticket opened… Yay VMware for not including live migration in the Windows client because it’s not like we still need that supported for SRM or Update Manager or anything because that is fully supported by the webcli…. oh. Also I’m sure that as soon as they get everything working in the webclient that 95% of their enterprise customers are going to ditch windows because finally it will be the year of the linux deskt… oh.

Meanwhile back at the ranch, we need to get these VMs over to the new cluster. I guess we’re going to power them off and do a storage migration. Luckily our production servers support a mission that only happens during the day, so powering them off for a few hours isn’t that big of a deal. Maybe we should test this first. Test VM created, power off, right click Migrate, start migration and… it’s moving at a whopping 33MB/s. Hmm… so 6TB/33MB/s = 58hrs 15 minute and 15 seconds to complete. Uh, I don’t think that’s going to work. VMware should really add storage migrations to the VAAI API and let the storage vendors figure out how to speed up transfers.

Still, I don’t have 58 hours of downtime to migrate these VMs. How can I get them migrated in a reasonable time? Nutanix DR to the rescue!

All of the gory details about how DR works is a separate blog post. Let’s suffice it to say that I did the following:

#Log into CVM and open firewall ports for DR
for i in svmips; do ssh $i "sudo iptables -t filter -A WORLDLIST -p tcp -m tcp –dport 2009 -j ACCEPT && sudo service iptables save"; done

#Create the remote site of new cluster on old cluster
remote-site create name=NEW_CLUSTER address-list="10.xxx.xxx.2" container-map="OLD_DATASTORE:NEW_DATASTORE" enable-proxy="true"

#Create the remote site of old cluster on new cluster
remote-site create name=KEN address-list="10.xxx.xxx.1" container-map="NEW_DATASTORE:OLD_DATASTORE" enable-proxy="true"

#Create the protection domain
pd create name="PRODUCTION"

#Add my production server VMs to the protection domain
pd protect name="PRODUCTION" vm-names=PROD01,PROD02,PROD03 cg-name="PRODCG"

#Migrate the production VMs
pd migrate name=”PRODUCTION” remote-site=”NEW_CLUSTER”

This operation does the following:
1. Creates and replicates a snapshot of the protection domain.
2. Shuts down VMs on the local site.
3. Creates and replicates another snapshot of the protection domain.
4. Unregisters all VMs and removes their associated files.
5. Marks the local site protection domain as inactive.
6. Restores all VM files from the last snapshot and registers them on the remote site.
7. Marks the remote site protection domain as active.

#Check that replication started
pd list-replication-status

You will see an output similar to below on the sending cluster:

ID	2345700
Protection Domain	PRODUCTION
Replications Operation	Sending
Start Time	01/11/2014 20:35:00 PST
Remote Site	NEW_CLUSTER
Snapshot Id	2345688
Aborted	false
Paused	false
Bytes Completed	2.72 GB (2,916,382,112 bytes)
Complete Percent	91.117836

On the receiving cluster you will see:

ID	4830
Protection Domain	PRODUCTION
Replications Operation	Receiving
Start Time	01/11/2014 20:35:00 PST
Remote Site	OLD_CLUSTER
Snapshot Id	OLD_CLUSTER:2345688
Aborted	false
Paused	false
Bytes Completed	2.72 GB (2,916,382,112 bytes)
Complete Percent	91.117836

If you want to watch the replication status a helpful command to know is the linux command watch. The command below will update the status every 1 second.

watch –n 1 ncli pd list-replication-status

Since the migration takes two snapshots you will see the replication status reach 100% and then another replication will start for the snapshot of the powered off VMs.

When it gets to 100% on the first snapshot the VMs we be removed from the old cluster in vCenter. After the 2nd replication completes they will be added to the new cluster.

For our migration the transfer seemed to reach 90% fairly quickly, then took about 1-2 hrs to get from 90-100%. Perhaps someone from Nutanix can shed some light on what is happening during that last 10% and why it takes so long.

Nutanix

Nutanix 1350

January 6, 2014 Josh Sinclair 2 Comments

I have been using the Nutanix Virtual Computing Platform 3450 and 3460 appliances on some of my recent projects. I have been wanting to do some testing to see what these appliances are capable of, I mean other than hosting 5000+ VMware View desktops, but it’s not like I can just go pull one out of production and fire up IOMeter, or install Hyper-V on it, or do some What-If-BadThingsTM happen like a hard drive accidently getting pulled or two nodes decide to power off at the same time.

Nutanix was kind enough to send me a Nutanix 1350 Virtual Computing Platform appliance to do exactly this. The 1000 series is the little brother to the 3000 series. Without having received Nutanix Official Sales Training(TM) I should clarify what the series numbers mean:

X (Series Number)
X (Number of Nodes)
X (Processor Type)
X (SSD Drive Capacity)

1 (1000 Series)
3 (3 Nodes)
5 (Dual Intel Sandy Bridge E5-2620)
0 (1-400GB SSD Drive)

Nutanix had also warned me that the appliance is rated to consume 1150W at 10-12A. With all of the other equipment that I have in the office, my 15A circuit didn’t look like it was going to cut it. Time for a power upgrade!

However, something seemed to be missing to complete this power upgrade… attic access! 5 days, 10 trips to Home Depot, a stud finder, 1 new reciprocating saw, and 4 holes in the wall later I had finally installed a new 20A circuit!

This is also probably where I should put the disclaimer:
I am a computer systems engineer and not a licensed electrician. Any work performed on your own structures must be performed according to your local laws and building codes. It is highly recommended to have any electrical work performed by a licensed electrician.

Found the back of the electrical panel!

Circuit breaker installed!

Time for unboxing!

Even though it came with rails, I don’t feel like moving everything around in my lab rack, I want to play! I’ll just set it on top and rack it later.

So now that I have it plugged in, let’s see what this thing is going to cost me to run. Thanks to Southern California Edison and the California Public Utilities Exchange Commission I’m in Tier 4 which costs $0.31 per kilowatt hour. At 1.15 kw/hr * 24 hrs per day * 30 days per month * $0.31, I’m looking at a $256.68 increase in my bill next month.

However, I plugged in my Kill-A-Watt meter and it shows me that these 3 nodes are only consuming 367 Watts. At 0.367 kw/hr * 24 hrs per day * 30 days per month * $0.31, it looks like I’m only going to be paying an additional $81.91. I realize that these numbers are at idle, so I’ll have to write another post once I get a load spun up. Also, this load probably could have fit on my existing 15A circuit. But at least I got to play Tim Taylor over the holiday break and get more power!

Technologist