Probably four of the best virtual platform developers are VMware (vSphere), Microsoft (Hyper-V), Red Hat (KVM), and Citrix (XenServer).
While they are all comparable, each with its own set of advantages, the two who seem to cause the most ruckus are VMware and Hyper-V.
There’s a lot of talk about which is better and in what way, so let’s dive into the two a little deeper.
Whether you’re just beginning to look into virtualization platform options for your company, or you’re a new Hyper-V user trying to get up to speed, it can be a challenge to find all the information you need in one place. That’s why I created this guide—to give you an all-in-one resource you can bookmark and refer back to as often as you need to, so you can get up and running on Hyper-V more smoothly. Continue reading
If you’re new to Hyper-V and wondering how to back up your virtual machines (VMs), there are different ways you can approach the task. But like most things—some options are better than others.
Below are the most common ways Hyper-V users attempt to preserve data on their VMs, with one caveat: Some of these methods should not be relied upon as your sole backup strategy. But they do serve a purpose, and they can be useful in the right situation.
Continue reading
As a Microsoft Evangelist at Nutanix, I am always asked….”How would you monitor your Nutanix Infrastructure and can I use System Center suite. And my answer always is, “YES, with SCOM”….What is SCOM you ask?
System Center Operations Manager (SCOM) is designed to be a monitoring tool for the datacenter. Think of a datacenter with multiple vendors representing multiple software and hardware products. Consequently, SCOM was developed to be extensible using the concept of management packs. Vendors typically develop one or more management packs for every product they want plugged into SCOM.
To facilitate these management packs, SCOM supports standard discovery and data collection mechanisms like SNMP, but also affords vendors the flexibility of native API driven data collection. Nutanix provides management packs that support using the Microsoft System Center Operations Manager (SCOM) to monitor a Nutanix cluster.
The management packs collect information about software (cluster) elements through SNMP and hardware elements through ipmiutil (Intelligent Platform Management Interface Utility) and REST API calls and then package that information for SCOM to digest. Note: The Hardware Elements Management Pack leverages the ipmiutil program to gather information from Nutanix block for Fans, Power Supply and Temperature.
After the management packs have been installed and configured, you can use SCOM to monitor a variety of Nutanix objects including cluster, alert, and performance views as shown in examples below. Also, I check out this great video produced by pal @mcghem . He shows a great demo of the SCOM management pack…Kudo’s Mike….also, check out his blog.
Views and Objects Snapshots 
Cluster Monitoring Snapshots
In the following diagram views, users can navigate to the components with failure.
The following provides an high level overview of Nutanix Cluster with Components:
The following sections describe Nutanix Cluster objects being monitored by this version of MPs:
Monitored Element |
Description |
|
Version |
Current cluster version. This is the nutanix-core package version expected on all the Controller VMs. |
|
Status |
Current Status of the cluster. This will usually be one of started or stopped |
|
TotalStorageCapacity |
Total storage capacity of the cluster |
|
UsedStorageCapacity |
Number of bytes of storage used on the cluster |
|
Iops |
For Performance: Cluster wide average IO operations per second |
|
Latency |
For Performance: Cluster wide average latency |
Monitored Element |
Description |
|
ControllerVMId |
Nutanix Controller VM Id |
|
Memory |
Total memory assigned to CVM |
|
NumCpus |
Total number of CPUs allocated to a CVM |
A storage pool is a group of physical disks from SSD and/or HDD tier.
Monitored Element |
Description |
|
PoolId |
Storage pool id |
|
PoolName |
Name of the storage pool |
|
TotalCapacity |
Total capacity of the storage pool Note: An alert if there is drop in capacity may indicate a bad disk. |
|
UsedCapacity |
Number of bytes used in the storage pool |
Monitored Element |
Description |
|
IOPerSecond |
Number of IO operations served per second from this storage pool. |
|
AvgLatencyUsecs |
Average IO latency for this storage pool in microseconds |
A container is a subset of available storage within a storage pool. Containers hold the virtual disks (vDisks) used by virtual machines. Selecting a storage pool for a new container defines the physical disks where the vDisks will be stored.
Monitored Element |
Description |
|
ContainerId |
Container id |
|
ContainerName |
Name of the container |
|
TotalCapacity |
Total capacity of the container |
|
UsedCapacity |
Number of bytes used in the container |
Monitored Element |
Description |
|
IOPerSecond |
Number of IO operations served per second from this container. |
|
AvgLatencyUsecs |
Average IO latency for this container in microseconds |
Monitored Element |
Description |
|
Discovery IP Address |
IP address used for discovery of cluster |
|
Cluster Incarnation ID |
Unique ID of cluster |
|
CPU Usage |
CPU usage for all the nodes of cluster |
|
Memory Usage |
Memory usage for all the nodes of cluster |
|
Node IP address |
External IP address of Node |
|
System Temperature |
System Temperature |
Monitored Element |
Description |
|
Disk State/health |
Node state as returned by the PRISM [REST /hosts “state” attribute ] |
|
Disk ID |
ID assigned to the disk |
|
Disk Name |
Name of the disk (Full path where meta data stored) |
|
Disk Serial Number |
Serial number of disk |
|
Hypervisor IP |
Host OS IP where disk is installed |
|
Tire Name |
Disk Tire |
|
CVM IP |
Cluster VM IP which controls the disk |
|
Total Capacity |
Total Disk capacity |
|
Used Capacity |
Total Disk used |
|
Online |
If Disk is online or offline |
|
Location |
Disk location |
|
Cluster Name |
Disk cluster name |
|
Discovery IP address |
IP address through which Disk was discovered |
|
Disk Status |
Status of the disk |
Monitored Element |
Description |
|
Node State/health |
Node state as returned by the PRISM [REST /hosts “state” attribute ] |
|
Node IP address |
External IP address of Node |
|
IPMI Address |
IPMI IP address of Node |
|
Block Model |
Hardware model of block |
|
Block Serial Number |
Serial number of block |
|
CPU Usage % |
CPU usage for Node |
|
Memory Usage % |
Memory usage for node |
|
Fan Count |
Total fans |
|
Power Supply Count |
Total Power supply |
|
System Temperature |
System Temperature |
Monitored Element |
Description |
|
Fan number |
Fan number |
|
Fan speed |
Fan speed in RPM |
Element |
Description |
|
Power supply number |
Power supply number |
|
Power supply status |
Power supply status whether present or absent |
If you would like to checkout the Nutanix management pack on your SCOM instance, please go to our portal to download the management pack and documentation.
This management pack was development by our awesome engineering team @ Nutanix. Kudos to Yogi and team for a job well done!!! 😉 I hope I gave you a good feel for Nutanix monitoring using SCOM. As always, if you have any questions or comments, please leave below….
Until next time….Rob
Hey everyone…I wanted to share a very cool update (and maybe a little of hero-worship 😀 ). Well, anyways, my job at Nutanix had another highlight recently. As many of your know, I love reading, breathing, consuming Microsoft technology. During my consumption of education, there number of people I follow, but there are few that stand out…and one that I spent a lot of time listening to via podcasts; Symon Perriman
He takes complex technology subjects and explains it extremely well on many levels so everyone understands..He believes in the community….all things as technologists, we can all strive to achieve.
I recently had the lucky chance to interview him for the Nutanix .Next Community Podcast. It was great honor to interview him with my colleague\buddy @NutanixTommy as we both had different points of views.
Symon joined 5nine Software earlier this year as Vice President, Business Development & Marketing and is how I came to meet Simon as part of my job in Technical Alliances at Nutanix.
For those of you who are not familiar with 5nine Software, 5nine has a great alternative management product for Hyper-V with benefits of simplified vCenter type management without the footprint of System Center. They also are the only vendor with agentless security product via the Hyper-V extensible virtual switch. Think vShield for Hyper-V…Very cool… 😎
For those that are not familiar with Symon…a brief history…
With more than 12 years of experience in the high-tech industry, Symon is an internationally recognized expert in virtualization, high-availability, disaster recovery, data center management, and cloud technologies.
As Microsoft’s Senior Technical Evangelist and worldwide technical lead covering virtualization, infrastructure, management and cloud. He has trained millions of IT Professionals, hosted the “Edge Show” weekly webcast, holds several patents and dozens of industry certifications, and in 2013 he co-authored “Introduction to System Center 2012 R2 for IT Professionals” (Microsoft Press). He graduated from Duke University with degrees in Computer Science, Economics and Film & Digital Studies.
Enjoy the show……
Until next time, Rob…
I get asked this all the time….and here is my answer. Microsoft’s virtual hard disk format, VHDX, has some important advantages over the legacy VHD format, as this VHD vs. VHDX comparison shows.
The release of Windows Server 2012 brought many new virtualization improvements, but one that caught the eye of many IT pros was the introduction of the VHDX file format. Windows Server 2012 supports the new format but also lets Hyper-V administrators use the legacy VHD format. With two virtual hard disk formats to choose from, let’s take a minute to talk about VHD vs. VHDX.
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