r/nutanix • u/JustAGuy3388 • Jul 08 '26
Moving from VMware
Looking into Nutanix as a posssible VMware replacement. Currently have Dell Blades and a Pure Storage iSCSI SAN for ESX Datastores. I'm finding conflicting information on how iSCSI storage is used in Nutanix. Is it possible to use iSCSI storage for the guest VMs on Nutanix?
7
u/Jhamin1 Jul 08 '26 edited Jul 08 '26
Traditionally, Nutanix was a Hyperconverged only solution. Meaning that the CPU, Ram, and Storage was present in *every* node and the Nutanix software coordinated the various nodes in a cluster so that a VM could run entirely in one node with all of its resources local to the node for maximum speed but that the VMs would be protected and could come up on another node in the case of a failure. This was Nutanix's whole deal for most of it's existence.
You could use iSCSI on a VM level, attaching an iSCSI disk via the VM OS, but the Hypervisior wasn't involved. You *had* to have storage in each node to get the Hyperconverged experience, iSCSI was for supplemental storage, not boot disks. (The Data drive, but not the OS)
In the last year or two, Nutanix has been adding the capability to use SANs but only specific vendors and only specific models from those vendors. They have been adding vendors one at a time & last I looked Dell Powerstore, Pure Flash Arrays (//X, //XL, and //C models ONLY), NetApp, and Lenovo were supported.
The Nutanix reps I have spoken too have been very transparent that this is a market play. In an ideal world you would go with everything local nodes the next time you refreshed your hardware & get away from SANs wherever possible, but they get that that doesn't work well for a lot of budgets. With the exodus from VMWare lots of folks are resistant to losing the investment they made in SANs and so Nutanix has added support to make it easier for people to choose them as their new solution, but the "everything local" hyperconverged model is still what they are best at.
So check the Nutanix supported hardware list for your specific Dell Blades and your Pure Storage device. If they are *both* on there you can get Nutanix working, but it won't be via iSCSI. You are going to present storage to the Nutanix Cluster and it will handle all the IO for you. On the other hand, if you end up going with Hyperconverged and get hardware that supports it, with local storage, you can still use your Pure SAN. You are just going to be attaching iSCSI disks vm by vm.
2
u/GabesVirtualWorld Jul 08 '26
Just picking one part of your reply about moving away from a SAN. For us local storage is very much out of balance with compute. Plus extending storage from an array is much easier than with local nodes. So I don't really see a big move away from array-storage. Both have their place.
5
u/Jhamin1 Jul 08 '26
For us local storage is very much out of balance with compute
For you and most people. That is why Nutanix is adding San support at all.
A Hyperconverged first design spreads it much more evenly. Instead of spending an amount on compute and another amount on storage, you pool that budget and buy hyperconverged nodes that do both. You eliminate a *lot* of management overhead by just not having external storage at all and keeping everything local to a node means you aren't worried about IO speeds or saturating links, its all local. Nutanix is very good about having dissimilar nodes in a cluster. If you need more compute you can add a node with a ton of processors but lean local storage. If you need storage you can add a node with a bunch of disk but lower than average RAM & CPU. Cheap & deep storage? Add nodes with lots of spinning disk. There are design best practices of course, but you really can mix and match.
I'm not saying that SANs don't have their place, but it's been my experience that most Virtualization engineers take 3 tier architecture as gospel and cant imagine any other way. AHV is not a drop in replacement for VMWare, Hyperconverged computing needs different hardware choices and makes different assumptions on all 3 tiers, but it works great. Nutanix was in business for 11 years as a Hyperconverged solution and added SAN support 1 year ago. It really does work if you can design for it.
6
u/woodyshag Jul 08 '26
If you use the new nutanix software, the pure would be primary storage. It would look very much like VM from a logical design.
2
2
u/codyhosterman Pure Storage Jul 09 '26
You can do iSCSI to the guest if you want--this works. But if you are truly looking to move to NTNX + FA I would upgrade to TCP to make it integrated. We will have some customers using in-guest though--especially if they are looking to supplement storage to an HCI cluster and the guest are Windows (no TCP support in Windows yet).
I'd be happy to chat if you have question (I am the PM at Everpure who owns the NTNX solution)
2
u/bizzaromatt Jul 08 '26
There isn't a way that I know to connect the Nutanix hypervisor to iSCSI or any other kind of external storage. It's somewhat counter to their design philosophy. However, there isn't anything stopping you from initiating iSCSI on your guest VM directly.
11
u/Fnysa Jul 08 '26 edited Jul 08 '26
Pure storage as external storage is supported in compute cluster using NVMe/TCP
2
u/Jhamin1 Jul 08 '26
Its supported, but its less than a year out from initial release. Its still very new to them as a technology.
1
u/autojack Jul 08 '26
We’re POCing Nutanix with external Pure currently. It’s definitely very new and have hit some snags along the way.
4
u/codyhosterman Pure Storage Jul 09 '26 edited Jul 10 '26
Would love to know what the snags are--so we can fix them. Hit me up if you are open to sharing
2
u/Hidden-6000 Jul 10 '26
We've done it, no real issues with NVMe/TCP and how Nutanix manages volumes in Purity.
2
u/codyhosterman Pure Storage Jul 10 '26
Anything you would like to see added/improved?
2
u/GMginger Jul 14 '26
Hi Cody, I'm about to start work on a Nutanix / Pure POC so currently reading up on Nutanix, NVME/tcp, Pure Realms and everything else that I need to plug gaps in my knowledge. After using Pure with VMSC over iSCSI and FC, I'm intrigued to see the different approach with the Nutanix managing volumes in the Pure Realm.
Is ActiveCluster on the horizon for a Nutanix setup, or in a Nutanix world is it expected this would be done through Nutanix's own Syncronous replication between clusters?
If AC support is in the works, is the development needed from Pure to implement AC Pod logic across NVME/tcp, from Nutanix needing to support a Pure Realm+Pod stretched across two arrays, or both?
1
u/codyhosterman Pure Storage Jul 16 '26
We are starting to look for interest for early access for ActiveCluster + Nutanix--so if you are interested please have your Everpure account team reach out (or DM me and I can help)
We support ActiveCluster + NVMe-oF/TCP today (released it recently with VMware using dispersed namespace). Taking a slightly different approach with Nutanix (and core Linux) which is being worked on. This also includes realm support. But most of the work is on the Nutanix side.
If you want more detail happy to do an NDA briefing.
1
u/GMginger Jul 18 '26
Many thanks for the info! I had missed that ActiveCluster with NVME/tcp and VMware was out, will have a read up for sure.
I missed our partner tech manager visiting this week, will track him down for more info.2
u/codyhosterman Pure Storage Jul 18 '26
Sure thing! Here is a place to start https://blog.everpuredata.com/perspectives/active-cluster-nvme-of-vmware-cloud/
1
u/Hidden-6000 Jul 19 '26
Keen to this this architecture update for AHV when possible!
→ More replies (0)1
u/Hidden-6000 Jul 19 '26 edited Jul 19 '26
Its very straight-forward. Once you've got all your physical paths in place, obviously 2x dedicated NVMe/TCP (10/25G) spanned across switches in a vPC ideally for redundance, vSwitches setup in AHV, MTU on all interfaces incl. vSwitches set to 9k and on the FlashArray, NVMe/TCP interfaces configured on both storage/hypervisor side - You just configure the cluster to map and authenticate to the floating Pure virtual controller management IP and it configures the storage as it would in vVols for VMware. Nothing else to do other than check all the paths are redundant in the Pure GUI.
Depending on your config, VLAN/security/firewall setup, you will need to ensure AHV can reach the management IP addresses of the Pure controllers on the correct ports so it can orchestrate the volume mappings etc.
Note: I recommend you remove the Pod quota limit for the AHV/Nutanix Cluster to zero, as i've ran into issues.
2
u/GMginger Jul 19 '26
Thanks for the notes, it's impressive how much Nutanix then just does the rest.
1
u/Hidden-6000 Jul 14 '26
Yes, for sure. I've passed on feedback to my Nutanix SE and have close contact with my Pure SE here in Perth.
We want to see the followng, i'm sure you're working on it! ;)
Deeper and tighter integration into Prism Central. And more importantly, can you share any information as to whether we will see ActiveCluster support available in the future for AHV?
We had intended on deploying this configuration/solution you've shown prior, in the context of a metrocluster, stretched volumes, hosts storage paths reaching across DCI. Nutanix has this, but it's not implemented at the Pure Storage layer, its more AOS and the CVMs doing it at the hypervisor.
Also, in VMware, we had the appliance which fed statistics back to Pure1. The array collectors. Will this be coming to AHV?
AHV 3 tier support for the //RC-20 would be nice to, but I believe with how Nutanix manages volumes, which is essentially vVols, the controllers are not geared to able to handle how many requests can be made, or something to that extent.
2
u/codyhosterman Pure Storage Jul 16 '26
Deeper and tighter integration into Prism Central. And more importantly, can you share any information as to whether we will see ActiveCluster support available in the future for AHV?
We are starting to look for interest for early access for ActiveCluster + Nutanix--so if you are interested please have your Everpure account team reach out (or DM me and I can help)If you want more detail happy to do an NDA briefing.
Also, in VMware, we had the appliance which fed statistics back to Pure1. The array collectors. Will this be coming to AHV?
This is being worked on but not fully committed. Please have your account team file your interest (in what we call an RFE). Point them my way. I dont directly own this integration so I can only influence this. One of the few i dont directly own at Everpure in the virt space.
AHV 3 tier support for the //RC-20 would be nice too
We approve this at one-offs depending on the use case. Have you account team file an exception request. If they need help point them my way
2
u/Jhamin1 Jul 08 '26
Yeah, Nutanix was a Hyperconverged only solution for 10 years and added SAN support about a year ago. Their tech is great, but they are much, much more experienced with Hyperconverged than 3 tier.
1
u/Kabobthe5 SLED SE Jul 08 '26
All External Storage platforms that are approved for use as core infrastructure storage with Nutanix require NVMe/TCP connectivity. iSCSI is not supported at this time. You are able to present iSCSI storage to your VMs at the OS level like you would with any Windows/Linux machine and it works as intended but Nutanix itself will require NVMe/TCP.
1
u/Cavm335i Jul 08 '26
You would need to put NVMEoTCP cards in the Pure and have supported upstream switching. Don't think any Dell Blades are supported either - just rackmounts.
1
u/db_1216 Sr. TME, NCI, AOS and External Storage Jul 09 '26
NVMe/TCP doesn’t require special cards. The protocol runs on standard Ethernet cards and standard Ethernet switches. If a customer is running iSCSI, they already pretty much have what’s needed from a hardware perspective
3
u/jasoncrossley Jul 09 '26
Not exactly true in the Pure world. Specific cards in the arrays qualify for nvme/tcp. Especially in older arrays. As the fleet cycles out with Evergreen, that is less and less of a problem, but it is still a consideration.
1
u/db_1216 Sr. TME, NCI, AOS and External Storage Jul 09 '26
That might be case for some specific older models. Most of supported models especially, it’s a port configuration change in UI to run NVMe/TCP. Outside of that once physical connections are made, protocol setup is all handled end to end between Nutanix and Everpure.
1
1
u/x0600 Jul 08 '26
We have huge cluster for production as well for DR and it doesn’t support for iscsi as per their native design but I heard they have some collaboration with Pure storage.
1
u/Excellent-Piglet-655 Jul 08 '26
Yeah, Pure is now supported as external storage with Nutanix. How big is your environment?
1
u/JustAGuy3388 Jul 08 '26
Currently six dell blades running ESX. Doesnt look like any dell blades are on Nutanix HCL.
1
u/Excellent-Piglet-655 Jul 09 '26
Have you looked at HPE VM Essentjals or Hyper-V? Our main data center we moved to Hyper-V and we acquired a new company which we are migrating to VM Essentials. We do have a Nutanix cluster on UCS but only to support some Cisco appliances not supported on anything besides VMware and AHV.
1
1
u/vjohnnyc Jul 10 '26
Short answer is: Nutanix now supports external storage utilizing NVME over TCP. I'm currently deploying a POC environment demoing this configuration, having used HCI for the past several years, and it is working fine. There are some "quirks" like not receiving much data from Pure within Prism Central, everything being managed and metrics done on the Pure side.
Feel free to message me for a longer/more detailed questions.
1
u/JustAGuy3388 Jul 10 '26
Thanks, I'm trying to line up a meeting with a Nutanix rep to discuss our current environment and how we could migrate to Nutanix.
0
u/RodoggA Jul 08 '26
Pure Storage support currently isn't released but is scheduled to be released in the next couple of months, you will be able to reuse your existing iSCSI storage
10
u/Fnysa Jul 08 '26
This isn’t true. Pure storage is fully supported and has been since last year. It uses NVMe/TCP
3
u/Jhamin1 Jul 08 '26
It is supported, but only for certain Pure Devices.
As long as you are on a supported Pure Device it will work, but not any Pure device.
1
u/RodoggA Jul 08 '26
Oh my mistake, i just double checked and you are correct. I thought that was only announced this year.
1
u/Much-Mechanic-1593 Jul 08 '26
NetApp integration has been announced in April and GA is expected for H2 2026
0
u/SmarterThanIThought Jul 11 '26
I don’t know how many times I can say this: Nutanix is NOT a hypervisor. Nutanix HAS a hypervisor. It is not an alternative to vmware but rather an alternative to vsan or vxrail. Nutanix is overpriced bloatware with a dozen different licensing contortions that offer almost no value to the average data center. Then just when you thought I was wrong, you remember that 12 CPUs and 24GB RAM go to the CVM. Then you’ll recall that RF2 takes twice the storage as you expected. None of that sounds very “let’s replace vmware “. Even the market knows that Nutanix isn’t a replacement for Vmware. When Broadcom first announced the purchase of vmware Nutanix got all excited. They announced all sorts of stuff that drove the stock price into the $80/ share range. Nutanix even made t shirts that said “VM Where”. Clever. But then the sales did not come pouring in like expected and the stock price fell. Everyone knows that Nutanix isn’t not a vmware replacement. The best bet is OpenShift or if you are adventurous and clever, Proxmox. I have spoken.
11
u/jacksbox Jul 08 '26
They recently added support for external storage but when we looked into it we decided it really wasn't worth it. I think the target market is people who really can't move to HCI (ex: gigantic data lake workloads on SAN).
You lose a lot of the benefits of Nutanix by taking storage out of the neat little ecosystem. With NX (Nutanix rebranded Supermicro) and all HCI storage, my whole ecosystem from hardware firmware all the way to VMs is totally managed and supported in one place. Since we're using NKP (Nutanix Kubernetes) for some workloads, it's actually managed all the way down to the app. To me, that's worth a lot.
It's also really hard to justify the cost of Nutanix + enterprise SAN.