NutanixOS 4.7 - what's new in the latest release

Only 4 months have passed since the previous release, 4.6, and now at the .NEXT partner conference in Las Vegas they already talked about the features of the new big release, 4.7, which will be "rolled out" in a few days.
Well, since the leadership was happy to publicly tell at a conference about features on the eve of the release (usually we are not very much praised for this), we will talk about them here, too, in Russia.

But first, briefly go over the features that appeared in release 4.6 , quite seemingly recently:

• "File server" for external users, with support for the SMB 2.1 protocol, single namespace, distributed, etc.
• A significant, at times (2.5-1.5 times, depending on the I / O profile) increase in productivity, including on already installed systems. Even more - on AllFlash, actually comparing closely with the top allflash storage systems.
• Volume Groups - the ability to connect block LUNs to VMs via iSCSI hosted in Nutanix cluster storage
• Self-Service Restore through our Guest Tools, the user can independently access files on a snapshot made by him.
• 1-Click Upgrade for the hardware platform, which does not interrupt VM operation on the cluster; updating BIOS, BMC, disk firmware, hypervisors and NOS.
• Metro Availability does not require a restart of the migrated VM on the DR site.
• Cross-Hypervisor DR, which allows you to support different hypervisors in different data centers (for example, vSphere on production and AHV on DR)
• Technical review of the automated conversion of a hypervisor with all VMs from vSphere to AHV cluster.
• Integration with OpenStack
• Integration in Citrix XenDesktop.
• Support for VM configuration scripts in clusterinit and sysprep format
• AHV VLAN Trunking
• A new Prism Pro product that extends Prism (now Prism Element), including services for estimating and predicting resource requirements (location, CPU cores, RAM or cluster nodes), custom dashboards, etc.
• Ability to change the Replication Factor (FTT) level on a live system
• Application-consistent Snapshots

So, one of these days we have plans to roll out a new release in production, 4.7, then, in the beginning of autumn - 4.8. The next big change, which is most likely to become “5.0”, we expect in the first quarter of 2017.
In this, as well as in the next, 4.8 release, we will have:

Support for a hardware update of the platform and the transition to Intel Broadwell, which will be completed by the end of the summer, and, approximately, in the same time frame, will be held at our OEM- partners, Dell and Lenovo . This will be our Generation 5 (G5) platform line.

Support for our Special Edition for SMB users , SX-1065 / Xpress.



ABS - Acropolis Block Services- a feature that allows you to use the space on the volume of the Nutanix cluster to connect third-party physical hosts "outside", for example, if some individual applications do not support working under a hypervisor and cannot be migrated to the cluster environment of the Nutanix node, or restrictions on licensing (as well as their price, for example, Oracle DB), prevent the transition to Nutanix.
Starting with version 4.5, we have already tested this mechanism, and in the form of the so-called Volume Groups, block sections accessible from inside Nutanix, the VM located in it, connecting to them using iSCSI. This allows you to organize the work of those OS and applications that need block access to disks (example: MS Exchange, quorum disk in MSCS). Now, such connection to the storage via the iSCSI block protocol is also possible for third-party hosts.
More about ABS was the other day here: http://blog.in-a-nutshell.ru/abs-acropolis-block-service/
By the way, a rather interesting demonstration of the implementation of the “live” project was shown .


100 desktop VDIs in XenDesktop, 3 heavy MS SQL Server databases in a virtual environment (plus any infrastructure canoe, such as AD) and 2 Oracle RAC hosts connected via ABS.
Performance Results:



UPD: Video that has more details on this demo configuration.


Further development and improvement of AFS - Acropolis File Services - that is, the use of space on the Nutanix cluster as a NAS service, for example, for highly reliable, distributed storage of user files (example: home folders and user profiles in a VDI system). Among these new features in AFS are TRIM support, which makes it easier to free up space after deleting files, and “thinning” the storage, improving performance, gradually adding various SMB 2.1 features.
Today AFS is suitable for hosting file services with the number of stored files about 10 million per node, which, along with an unlimited number of nodes in the cluster, allows Nutanix to be used as a very large file storage, for example, for HPC applications.

The solution for the situation of a “poorly working node” , its so-called degraded state. Now Nutanix has a situation where the node in the cluster is “working, but crooked” (memory failures, corrected by ECC, “flickering” hardware failures, degradation of SSDs, etc.) can potentially cause health problems for the cluster as a whole. If she refused completely, then, OK, we “get her out of circulation”, and the problem goes away with her. But the situation when “it seems to be alive, but somehow poorly alive” was not automatically processed. Now we will have such behavior monitored, and based on automatically assigned “points”, we can detect such nodes and accept automatic “organizational conclusions” at the OS level, for example, automatically remove VMs from it and notify the administrator as the simplest and obvious.

Acropolis Hypervisor continues to evolve, our own free-to-use hypervisor based on Linux KVM code. Upcoming releases will feature the (long-awaited) DRS (Dynamic Resource Scheduler) , as well as affinity and anti-affinity rules .

In release 4.7, to support the deployment of Azure Pack for Hyper-V on Nutanix, our tool developed in collaboration with Microsoft , CPS Standard (Cloud Platform System), will be included .
Azure Pack for Hyper-V is a private Azure for your Hyper-V infrastructure, a self-service portal, and that’s all you’re used to using Azure on the web.
Deploying the Azure Pack prior to this release was a manual and fairly lengthy process. Now it is automated.




Integration with OpenStack , which appeared in release 4.6(drivers for Nova, Cinder, Glance and Neutron), it will be supplemented by the Nutanix Self-service Portal, which will make it more convenient to implement a “cloud” in a multi-tenant infrastructure, that is, when a “cloud” based on Nutanix will have many heterogeneous users, for example, this can be useful for AWS-like service providers and hosting providers built using the cloud service. Such service users, being isolated from each other, will be able to independently deploy data containers on dedicated resources, create virtual machines from the template catalog, integrate the resulting infrastructure into private and hybrid clouds.


Nutanix begins supporting Dockerin our Acrpolis Container Services. This solution is designed so that you can fully deploy and use Docker in a Nutanix cluster environment.



About the work and support of Docker in Nutanix, I plan to write a separate article. In the meantime, I mention that this development includes the Acropolis DSF Volume Plugin for Docker and the Docker Machine Driver. In the video you can understand how and what we did.
In 4.7, these functions are available only in the CLI, but in 4.8 integration into Prism will be ready.

In release 4.8, Prism will also include our network connection visualization system in the Nutanix infrastructure, it’s easier to show than to describe what it is:



Diagnostic tools will be included in the visualization system to find problems at the network level (high level of lost packets, incorrect MTU settings, VLAN configuration)




In release 4.8 we will also have an extended What-If analysisallowing the admin to better plan resources. It will help answer questions like “What if we deploy 10 more copies of this VM?” Or “What if the load on this database grows by 25% next month?”



So, if you already use Nutanix, wait online updates through 1-Click, if you are still thinking about it - pay attention to the new and planned features in the next three months.