Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure is the Hyperconverged Infrastructure which brings together the Virtual Compute, Storage and Networking of the physical nodes into a single resource pool of the cluster which can consumed by applications hosted on top of it.
Hyperconverged Infrastructure brings the power of simplicity by providing a single console to manage your computer, storage and networking. HCI also enables Enterprises to manage their Infrastructure and utilise their Resources more efficiently.
Components of Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure includes:
Acropolis Hypervisor (AHV): Acropolis Hypervisor is Nutanix’s Type-1 Hypervisor installed on Bare Metal on-prem Hosts or on the Bare Metal Instances of Public Clouds to deliver the Virtualization capabilities.
Acropolis Operating System (AOS): Acropolis Operating System (AOS) is the software which runs inside the Controller Nodes (CVM) of Nutanix and delivers the storage capabilities
Prism: Prism is the Management software which provides the capabilities of managing an individual cluster using Prism Element UI and the functionality of managing multiple clusters using Prism Central UI.
Flow Network Security (FNS): Flow Network Security is the Network Security stack which helps Enterprises to secure their network by enhancing Application security and protecting the user workload
Disaster Recovery: Nutanix Disaster Recovery which was formerly known as Leap delivers the Synchronous, NearSync and Asynchronous replication capabilities for the workload to protect from site failures
Lifecycle Manager (LCM): The capabilities of managing the updates and upgrades of the Hyperconverged Infrastructure & for the HW Firmware is delivered using Lifecycle Manager.
Nutanix Kubernetes Enginer (NKE): Nutanix Kubernetes Engine is a kubernetes Management Platform which provides the capabilities of provisioning Kubernetes upstream conformant clusters and to manage the lifecycle of these K8s clusters.
Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS): Nutanix Unifies Storage is responsible for providing highly scalable enterprise level unified storage platform which can deliver Block, File and Object Storage.
Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure has its own SKU of Software Licenses which can be applied to the Nutanix environment with respective editions to leverage the above mentioned features.
In the upcoming blogs we’ll talk about each of these Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) components in greater details along with demos. Happy Learning!
Nutanix is one of the leaders in cloud software which helps their customers in building Hybrid Multi-Cloud. Nutanix was founded in the year 2009 and as per the latest public data available, Nutanix is serving around 25000 customers across the globe.
Nutanix is based on Hyperconverged Infrastructure Technology which delivers services like virtualisation, software defined storage, software defined networking, security, database management and Kubernetes Management.
In this series of Blogs we’ll cover some of the key features and functionalities offered by Nutanix Cloud Platform. On a High level, Nutanix Cloud Platform Comprises of two components: Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure and Nutanix Cloud Platform. Nutanix Cloud Platform delivers Hybrid Multi-Cloud capabilities through a unified Control Plane. We’ll talk about some of the key components of Nutanix Cloud Platform and we’ll also cover some of the How-To Blogs on Nutanix Platform. Stay Tuned!
In the previous post we talked about Configuring Load Balancer for vRealize Automation 8 and VMware Identity Manager in a NSX-V environment. In this post we will take you through the process of Deploying vRealize Lifecycle Manager, Clustered vRealize Automation Appliances and VMware Identity Manager appliance
Ensure that all DNS Records and IP Reservations are in place
Keep DNS server and NTP server details handy
Now we re ready to deploy to deploy our new appliances, the steps to deploy vRSLCM, vRA and vIDM appliances are as follows:
1. Mount the Easy Installer ISO and Launch installer.exe located under F:\vrlcm-ui-installer\win32\installer.exe
vRealize Easy Installer Launch Screen
2. Please go through the Introduction and Accept the End User License Agreement. Click Next
End User License Agreement Screen
3. Enter the Appliance Deployment Target details like vCenter Server Hostname, Administrator Username and Password.
Appliance Deployment Target Screen
4. Select a Target Location, Target Cluster and Datastore.
Select a Target Location ScreenSelect a Target Compute Resource ScreenSelect a Destination Storage Location Screen
6. Enter the details of Network Configuration which includes Target Network, IP Assignment Type, Subnet Mask, Default Gateway, DNS Servers, Domain Name and NTP Servers.
Network: DC_MGMT_VLAN100 IP Assignment: static Subnet Mask: 255.255.255.0 Default Gateway: 192.168.10.1 DNS Servers: 192.168.10.50, 192.168.10.51 Domain Name: mycloud.lab Provide NTP Server for the appliance: 192.168.10.70,192.168.10.71
Network Configuration Screen
7. Enter your Password. This password will be used for vRSLCM admin & root account, vRA root account, vIDM admin, sshuser, root user and default configuration user.
Password Configuration Screen
8. Enter Virtual Machine name, IP Address, FQDN, Datacenter Name and vCenter Name for vRealize Suite Lifecycle Manager. Set Increase Disk Size in GB to 20 and Leave FIPS Mode Compliance to deafult.
Virtual Machine Name: VRSLCM IP Address: 192.168.10.11 Hostname: vrslcm.mycloud.lab Data Center Name: MYCLOD-DC vCenter Name: MYCLOUD-VC Increase Disk Size in GB: 20 FIPS Mode Compliance: Enabled
Lifecycle Manager Appliance Configuration Screen
9. In Identity Manager Configuration, we will initially configure a Single Node VMware Identity Manager deployment which will be expanded to a clustered deployment in next blog in this series. Select Install New VMware Identity Manager and Enter the details of Virtual Machine Name, IP Address, FQDN, Default Configuration Admin, E-mail Address and Node size as per your environment’s requirement. Tick Sync Group Members to the Directory When Adding Group checkbox.
Virtual Machine Name: VIDM1 IP Address: 192.168.10.17 Hostname: vidm1.mycloud.lab Default Configuration Admin: configadmin Default Configuration Email: configadmin@vsphere.local Node Size: Medium Sync Group Members to the Directory When Adding Group: Enabled
Identity Manager Appliance Configuration Screen
10 a. Under vRealize Automation Configuration section select Clustered Deployment. Enter vRealize Automation Environment Name, License Key, Turn Off FIPS Compliance Mode and Select the Node size.
vRA Environment Name: MYCLOUD-VRA8 License Key: XXXXX-XXXXX-XXXXX-XXXXX-XXXXX FIPS Compliance Mode: Disabled Node Size: Medium
10 b. Enter vRealize Automation Load Balancer IP Address, Load Balancer FQDN and leave SSL terminated at Load-Balancer unchecked. In the vRealize Automation Primary Node Details section, enter Virtual Machine Name, IP Address and FQDN for the vRA Primary Node.
10 c. Enter vRealize Automation Secondary Node-1 and Secondary Node-2 Details, Virtual Machine Name, IP Address and FQDN. Leave Advanced Configuration for vRealize Automation to default.
vRealize Automation Node Details: Primary Node Virtual Machine Name: VRA1 IP Address: 192.168.10.13 Hostname: vra1.mycloud.lab Secondary Node-1 Virtual Machine Name: VRA2 IP Address: 192.168.10.14 Hostname: vra2.mycloud.lab Secondary Node-2 Virtual Machine Name: VRA3 IP Address: 192.168.10.15 Hostname: vra3.mycloud.lab Internal Pods and Services Configuration: Use Default
vRealize Automation Configuration – Secondary Node-1 and Secondary Node-2 Details
11. Review Configuration details on the Summary screen and click Submit.
vRealize Easy Installer Summary Screen
12. Installation Process goes through 5 stages: Initializing, Installing vRSLCM, Moving Binaries, Initiating install vIDM and vRA and Finish vRA Install.
Installation Process Screen
13. Once the Installation Process has passed the stage of vRSLCM Installation, we can login to vRSLCM UI using the username as admin@local and Password which we entered during the Password Configuration stage.
Installation Process – vRSLCM Services Started Screen
14. In vRealize Suite Lifecycle Manager select Lifecycle Operations under My Services and then to the Requests section. You’ll find 2 requests: globalenvironment – Create Environment (IDM Installation) and MYCLOUD-VRA8 – Create Environment (vRA Installation).
vRealize Suite Lifecycle Manager – My Services Screen
15. VMware Identity Manager Installation Request goes through 8 Stages before your vIDM deployment is ready.
16. vRealize Automation Installation Request goes through 13 Stages before your vRealize Automation Deployment is setup and ready to use. Our vRealize Automation Installation failed twice during the setup process but the process was intelligent enough to provide intuitive insights into error and to allow us to resume from failed stage.
MYCLOUD-VRA8 – Create Environment Screen
The entire Deployment and Setup process took us around 1 hour and 35 mins and we were using Enterprise Grade Hardware for this setup. In the next part of this series Part-3: Scale-Out VMware Identity Manager Deployment, we will discuss the process of Expanding vIDM Environment by Adding Two Secondary Nodes.
