Recently we got access to a 16-node Nutanix cluster with vSphere on top of it. The datastore which was supposed to be used by us was created with Replication Factor 2 and we decided to create another one with RF=3, which provide higher level of data availability by keeping 3 copies of the data across the nodes.
The main purpose of the post is to describe how easy is to provision a brand new NFS datastore and attach it to your ESXi hosts.
Some facts about my cluster:
- Already configured
- All disk are added in a single Storage Pool
- I have access to the Prism GUI for Nutanix cluster management
Create new Storage Container from Prism
- Open your Prism console
- Navigate to Home -> Storage
- Click on +Containter
- Type a Name and select a Storage Pool. Here you have to choose if you want the datastore to me mounted automatically on all hosts or on specific hosts.
- Choose a Replication Factor. You can choose between 2 and 3. There is also possibilities to turn on ‘Erasure Coding’, but in my version of Nutanix OS (NOS) it is in Tech Preview, so we are not going to use it at this point.
- You can reserve capacity for your datastore or you can leave it ‘0’, which means that it can grow until the physical free space is over. You can also set an advertised capacity, which is how the capacity will be displayed in your vSphere console.
- You can turn on Data Deduplication and Compression. You can choose on which layer you want the deduplication to occur – SSD (online dedup) and HDD (offline dedup). With both of them turned on we were able to get 3:1 savings with full cloned virtual desktops (without compression). Compression also could be configured for inline or offline.
- For additional security or restriction you can use Filesystem whitelist and define the IP or IP range of the machines with access to the storage container.
- After clicking Save, you can your NFS datastore mounted to all your ESXi hosts within a second or two.
That’s it. It can’t be easier.
For more detailed information about the terminology which I have used (SC, RF, etc) you can take a look Here.
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Nikolay Nikolov
VDI Engineer
Nikolay has 9 years work experience in IT and 5 of them in the Virtualization technologies mainly based on VMware products. Currently works as VDI Engineer at MSD IT Global Innovation Center and he is an ex-member of VMware CoE at IBM. He holds VCIX6-DCV, VCIX6-DTM and VCP on DCV, DTM, NV and Cloud, Nutanix NPP certificate and also Master Degree of Computer Systems and Networks. Honored with vExpert 2015/2016 by VMware and Nutanix Technology Champion 2016/2017.
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