Nutanix OS 4.0 – Prism Central

One of the features that has been announced for Nutanix OS 4.0 (also called NOS), is something called Prism Central.

So what does Prism Central do? Well, perhaps things are more obvious if we speak about the internal name we once used. It was referenced as our Multi-Cluster UI, and that is exactly what it is. Instead of having to open multiple tabs in your browser and switching between tabs to actually manage your Nutanix clusters, you can now open one tab, register multiple clusters, and manage them all from one interface, or get a basic overview of what is going on across all clusters.

First things first: Disclaimer – Keep in mind this is based on an early code version, and things will most likely change before you can download the software.

I spoke to our developers, and received a version to play with, so I’ll walk you through the process. Prism Central comes as an OVF, and you simply deploy this VM in your infrastructure. The requirements for the VM are the following (again, this might change):

8GB RAM
2 vCPUs
260GB disk space
With that configuration, you can monitor 100 nodes while we assume that you can go up to 100 VMs per node.

With that said, the installation itself is quite easy. We deploy the OVF from vCenter:

We give the VM a name:

And follow the normal steps for any OVF. Things like selecting a resource pool, datastore, and then selecting the disk format and network mapping. You will only need one interface, but I’d recommend deploying the Prism Central VM in the same network as your controller VMs. Once that is done, you click on “Finish” and wait for the VM to deploy:

Now, my assumption is that we will be changing to the OVA format to make deployment a bit easier. In this version, I still had to configure the IP addresses manually (no DHCP in my network), and deploying from an OVA should make that a breeze, but I will outline the steps I used here anyway.

After connecting to the vSphere console of the VM, we log on to the console using “nutanix” as the user and “nutanix/4u” as the password. Then, you simply edit the file /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-eth0 and input the IP-address you would like to use. In my case it looks like this:

DEVICE="eth0"
NM_CONTROLLED="no"
ONBOOT="yes"
BOOTPROTO="none"
IPADDR="10.64.20.110"
NETMASK="255.255.255.0"
GATEWAY="10.64.20.1"

Simply save the file and restart your network services, and you should now be able to access the machine using your favorite ssh client. Now there is one thing left to do (and again, I’m assuming this should no longer be there in a final release, just trying to be complete):

cluster -f --cluster_function_list="multicluster" -s ip_of_your_prism_central create

Which should result in something like this:
nutanix@NTNX-10-64-20-110-A-CVM:~$ cluster -f --cluster_function_list="multicluster" -s 10.64.20.110 create
2014-04-17 05:50:37 INFO cluster:1469 Executing action create on SVMs 10.64.20.110
2014-04-17 05:50:37 INFO cluster:593 Discovered node:
ip: 10.64.20.110
rackable_unit_serial: 10-64-20-110
node_position: A
node_uuid: ed763914-2c16-4aff-9b6b-d4ea962af9fe

2014-04-17 05:50:37 INFO cluster:632 Configuring Zeus mapping ({u'10.64.20.110': 1}) on SVM node 10.64.20.110
2014-04-17 05:50:37 INFO cluster:650 Creating cluster with SVMs: 10.64.20.110
2014-04-17 05:50:37 INFO cluster:654 Disable fault tolerance for 1-node cluster
2014-04-17 05:50:39 INFO cluster:687 Waiting for services to start
Waiting on 10.64.20.110 (Up, ZeusLeader) to start: ConnectionSplicer Medusa DynamicRingChanger Pithos Prism AlertManager Arithmos SysStatCollector
Waiting on 10.64.20.110 (Up, ZeusLeader) to start: ConnectionSplicer Medusa DynamicRingChanger Pithos Prism AlertManager Arithmos SysStatCollector
Waiting on 10.64.20.110 (Up, ZeusLeader) to start: DynamicRingChanger Pithos Prism AlertManager Arithmos SysStatCollector
...
...
...
Waiting on 10.64.20.110 (Up, ZeusLeader) to start: DynamicRingChanger Pithos Prism AlertManager Arithmos SysStatCollector
Waiting on 10.64.20.110 (Up, ZeusLeader) to start: AlertManager Arithmos SysStatCollector
Waiting on 10.64.20.110 (Up, ZeusLeader) to start:
The state of the cluster: start
Lockdown mode: Enabled

CVM: 10.64.20.110 Up, ZeusLeader
Zeus UP [14429, 14442, 14443, 14447, 14453, 14466]
Scavenger UP [14660, 14675, 14676, 14793]
ConnectionSplicer UP [14690, 14703]
Medusa UP [14760, 14775, 14776, 14780, 14940]
DynamicRingChanger UP [15946, 15973, 15974, 15986]
Pithos UP [15950, 15980, 15981, 15994]
Prism UP [15969, 15995, 15996, 16004]
AlertManager UP [16019, 16049, 16051, 16079, 16102]
Arithmos UP [16029, 16080, 16081, 16099]
SysStatCollector UP [16041, 16092, 16093, 16178]
2014-04-17 05:51:07 INFO cluster:1531 Success!


And voila! You can now log on to your instance of Prism Central!

As you can see, it looks quite the same as the regular 4.0 version, except that if you click on the top left “Prism Central” text, a menu will fold out on the left hand side. But, since we want to monitor a cluster, let’s go ahead and register a cluster.

To do so, just connect to your NOS 4.0 cluster, and click on the small gear symbol on the top right corner, and select “Prism Central Registration”. There, fill out the Prism Central IP, the username and password for Prism Central, and click on “Save”

If all goes well, the cluster registers, and you will see an event in your Prism Central stating that a user has been added (we support single sign on in Prism Central), and that a cluster has been added to Multicluster. And, you should now be able to see the new cluster that was registered in Prism Central:

To now manage that cluster, simply click on Prism Central on the top left, and then select the cluster from the list on the left hand side:

From there on, you can manage the cluster just like you would in your regular interface. My colleague Suda Srinivasan was kind enough to create a video that walks you through the interface:

So, that’s it for now. If you have any questions, feel free to let me know.