Nutanix

Nutanix has just released the long-awaited Life Cycle Manager (LCM) 2.5 version.

What is Nutanix LCM?

Nutanix LCM is the infrastructure framework that upgrades Nutanix software and component firmware on Nutanix cloud platforms.

Rather than manually installing one component at a time, LCM efficiently inventories and programmatically handles the deployment dependencies and order of operations for upgrades.

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LCM can handle upgrades such as:

On Prism Element (Per Cluster) – LCM supports AOS, AHV, Prism, Files, Foundation, and component firmware.
On Prism Central/Nutanix Cloud Manager (Centralized Management) – LCM supports the native Nutanix offerings for PC/NCM. such as Files, Objects, Karbon, and Calm.
Hardware vendor-specific firmware upgrades for appliances from Nutanix (NX), Lenovo, HPE, Fujitsu, Dell, Inspur and Intel.

For a good read on “How Upgrades Work at Nutanix”, please refer to this link to understand possible implications to downtime (spoiler alert: None! 😯), performance impacts, order and compatibility – https://bit.ly/HowNutanixUpgradesWork

On September 21, 2022, Nutanix release Life Cycle Manager Version 2.5. 🥳
– Release Notes – https://bit.ly/NutanixLCM25

In addition to dozens of fixed and improved issues, Nutanix introduced a New Feature that should make the VDI/EUC community jump for joy: 😎

GPU support
LCM 2.5 adds inventory and update support for NVIDIA GRID drivers for GPU cards. For details on using LCM with NVIDIA GRID drivers, see the Life Cycle Manager Guide.

Upgrading NVIDIA GRID drivers traditionally required a very delicate upgrade process, ensuring that the guest and host driver were compatible. Then, complex CLI commands were required to upgrade the AHV host driver, one host at a time.

Not any longer! Now, LCM 2.5 will – in a single reboot – auto-uninstall the old driver, install the new driver, all while vGPU VMs are transparently live migrated to other nodes during the upgrade process.

No user downtime ✅
Automation and operational efficiency ✅

Here is the NEW way to update your Nutanix AHV Host NVIDIA GRID Drivers:
https://portal.nutanix.com/page/documents/details?targetId=Life-Cycle-Manager-Guide-v2_5:top-lcm-ngd-update-t.html

Customers should download the vGPU AHV host driver bundle from the Nutanix Portal
*Manually downloading drivers from NVIDIA is still required for EULA compliance reasons.
Upload the NVIDIA bundle via Direct Uploads on each Nutanix Cluster where AHV GPU host drivers are required.
Perform an LCM inventory and proceed

Much better!

It is difficult to put into words what I just experienced…again. I just returned from a 4-day whirlwind conference, surrounded by some of the most talented technical minds I have had the privilege of spending time with. This is my second consecutive year of having the honor of being welcomed to the Nutanix Global Tech Summit conference.

What used to be an internal, engineer-only event was opened last year to strategic Nutanix partners. This year, with the abundance of new engineering hires and involvement of other Nutanix employees (CSM, TME, and many other acronyms), it was massive in comparison. At nearly 1,000 strong – this was an incredible event to be a part of.

The conference itself was a great mixture of time spent bonding with Nutanix engineers, product managers, directors and VPs. And, as I mentioned above – partners. Yes, the same partners that I and Helient Systems may compete with on a daily basis, both in my territory and in other geographies. But, it is a massive world, with billions of dollars of opportunity out there.

What I came here for is to learn the ins and outs of every Nutanix product — past, present and future 👀. I never want to sell a ‘product.’

I want to sell solutions.

My goal when working with customers is to help understand your organizational business and technical needs and ensure there is a solution that will compliment those goals.

Riiiiight says the industry. Nutanix is a just a hyperconverged infrastructure (HCI) replacement for your traditional 3-Tier Server and Storage.

Sure…it was…in 2011. Then 4 years later, Nutanix AHV released, giving customer’s choice at the hypervisor layer. So what did the last 4 years bring? This blog post would scroll nearly indefinitely trying to list all of the released features and capabilities. Shout out to Jake Tame for taking care of this already – Nutanix AOS / Product Release Timeline.

Today, we’re here – offering solutions for more than just HCI – Objects, Databases, Application Orchestraction and Automation, EUC/VDI Solutions, Disaster Recovery, Public Cloud cost control and security elimination, and more.

Where do things go from here? Let me share with you everything that was revealed this week at Nutanix GTS 2020…

Sorry…I’m under a Non-Disclosure Agreement (NDA) – 🤫- but let me tell you this — the roadmap is unbelievable. The concept of One-Click did not originate with marketing. This is real stuff!

Deployments, upgrades, conversions, provisioning, cloning, migrations, automation, isolation, quarantine, security, backups, failover, private cloud, public cloud – all able to be performed at the server or database level. 😲

If you have followed recent news around Tesla, another disrupter in their own industry, you would have read the headlines indicating Tesla is years ahead of the competition.

https://electrek.co/2020/02/17/tesla-teardown-6-years-lead-over-toyota-vw/

The sheer amount of intelligence, innovation, and forward-thinking capacity put into the Nutanix solution(s) is incredible. What is about to be announced in the upcoming weeks, months, and years will continue to shape the evolution of IT infrastructure as we know it.

🗣️🗣️ A big shout out to all of the people I was able to spend some quality time with this week. And, a big thank you for your commitment to what you do. 🙏

Where Did I Read That

Nutanix Life Cycle Manager (LCM) 2.5 Released – GPU Support!

Nutanix Global Tech Summit 2020