NutanixCE – Cluster Installation and Configuration

In previous article I walked you through vSphere preparation for deploying NutanixCE. We enabled SSD option on disk/LUN, installed ESXi Mac Learning dvFilter and created virtual machines. Seems like everything is set up, and we can start installation. Before I begin, I ‘d like to remind that I’ll be deploying 3 node cluster, so you can clone already created virtual machine as many times needed; Depends on how many nodes you want to have. Having everything ready let’s,

Start the Installation

Power on first virtual machine. Wait until boots up to login screen and login with credentials:

  • user : root
  • pass : nutanix/4u

Before actual installation I would do some adjustments. First I will change default values such as vMem and vCPU which installer would use for creating controller VM. It works in the way it will check hardware and based on predefined values  CVM will be created; if you don’t fit in those models, it will create VM with defaults. There is no big deal to run installer now and make those changes later on but in my opinion is way less work. Edit installer values execute following line:

Now, here you can see options to change vMem and vCPU settings and also adjust read and write IOPS. I would only change control VM default model; My nested VMs will have 24GB of memory and allocating 16GB for CVM wouldn’t make much sense; After all I’d like to run few VMs on the Nutanix Cluster I’m preparing. However, read/write IOPS is a bit different story and all depends on what you have in your environment. I don’t have physical solid state disks but performance I get from back-end Xpenology is fairly satisfactory. Feel free to experiment here. Values I’ve in mind are 8GB vMem and 2 vCPUs.

VBD-ACP-016_on_vbd-esx-01_vbuffer_info

Once ready with changes, save and exit to login screen and type install

VBD-ACP-016_on_vbd-esx-01_vbuffer_info

Alright.  Now when you hit “Enter” disk initializing and performance test will start.

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When process is completed installation “wizard” will give you an option to select keyboard layout

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Choose whatever suits here and select proceed. Here comes part to configure IP addresses for your Acropolis hypervisor and CVM/SVM. Bare in mind that prerequisite is to keep both in the same network segment/network. Nutanix recommends static IPs but DHCP would work as well.

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Alright, read and accept license agreement, hit “Enter“. Now is the magic moment to go grab some coffee. Installation will take 10-15min depending on hardware you have.

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Whenever installation is done you should see messages like this above. So far everything is set, repeat this steps for all 3 Virtual Machines. Those are the things you need to get done before we can continue with.

Creating Nutanix Cluster

This is fairly simple, just verify connectivity between CVM to be on the save side. If everything looks fine let’s create the cluster. There is two possibilities to do that:

  • Web Interface – Open web browser and type http://ip_of_one_CVM:2100/cluster_init.html. Scroll down to Discovered Nodes. If you’re able to see all your nodes, fill up all details like Cluster Name, DNS, NTP, etc and click create on the bottom of the page.
  • Command Line – of course there is command line magic you can do . You will need to login to CVM over ssh or from VM console. One thing to keep in mind that if you use VM console you will first login to Acropolis hypervisor and then SSH to CVM on 192.168.5.2. Reason for that is when you deploying NutanixCE it installs Acropolis, deploys CVM and creates virtual switch for communication between CVM and hypervisor. Type following in CVM shell:

cluster -s CVM1_IP,CVM2_IP,CVM3_IP create

 

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Last but not least you can add DNS server/s and maybe external IP over shell or do that with Prism. Using command line you can do that with:

ncli cluster add-to-name-servers servers=<dns server>,<dns server>

 

Alright, Cluster has been is installed. Now go to http://CVM_IP_Addess:9440/console/#login and login to Prism with credentials user: admin and password: admin. You will be prompted to change password on first login and provide NEXT credentials.

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Well, pretty much that’s it. You’re ready to Rock ‘n’ Roll. Nothing extremely complicated but there were few specifics in installation on nested environment I tried to touch on in that article. In next article I will show you how you can to deploy Prism Central and do basic network configuration of your Cluster.

 

Posted in Nutanix.

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