Nutanix Technical Overview

What is Hyperconverged Infrastructure (HCI)

“a platform offering shared compute and storage resources, based on software-

defined storage, software-defined compute, commodity hardware and a unified
management interface.”
Source: Gartner - http://www.gartner.com/newsroom/id/3308017

x86

A software-defined Intel x86 based commodity Distributed unified

controller running in a hardware with local disks management plane delivered
virtual machine as a web app
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Nutanix AOS: Software Platform with Choice

App App AHV ESXi Hyper-V K8s

Virtualization

App Data

Virtualization & Containers

Compute Compute

Fiber Channel Switch Fiber Channel Switch

Storage Storage Storage Storage Storage Storage

Controller Controller Controller Controller Controller Controller

Integrated compute, storage, virtualization, network, and

security
Nutanix ADSF - Scalable, Distributed System Design
User Workloads Nutanix Controller VM

Node 1 Node 2 Node N

Hypervisor Hypervisor Hypervisor

Server Server Server

Acropolis Distributed Storage Fabric

 Snapshots  Deduplication and Compression  Intelligent Tiering  Data Encryption

Distributed Infrastructure Fabric

 Scalable, no SPOF management plane  Native Virtualisation

 Network Security and Orchestration  Data Protection & DR

Unified Platform for All Enterprise Workloads

ASE DB2

VM Services File Services Object Services Block Services

Enterprise Cloud OS

Public Cloud Private Cloud Distributed Cloud

Data Services – Files Storage
File Storage and Service Integration
Distributed File Server Nutanix Controller VM

N1 N2 NN

Hypervisor Hypervisor Hypervisor

Server Server Server

Acropolis File Services

 Integrated file services solution  Easy deployment and scale out

 Localized central shares to users  Centralized management

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Nutanix FSVM Connectivity – High Level

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Files Analytics
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Files Analytics
Flow
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Problem Solved by Flow

VLAN-11

. VLAN-10

VLAN-12

• Breach/Malware
• Slow
Perimeter Based Security Network Based Policy Lack of Visibility • Complex

New Approach Needed

• Simplify
• Secure
Ubiquitous Enforcement App Centric Policy Rich Visualization • Automate
Flow : Under the Hood
5 Centrally manage, operate, govern

Prism Flow
Define Policies for the Web, App, and DB
4 Policies automatically applied to all existing and
new VMs in the group
HTTP 80, 443 Allow 8890 Allow 1521

Web App DB
3 Group VMs based on App Topology (independent
of Physical Infra, VLANs, Subnets)

2 Flow comes with AHV: nothing to install

Works with your current infrastructure – no VLAN 10 VLAN 11 VLAN 12

1 Physical Network (VLANs/Subnets)
changes / configurations required
 Application Segmentation with Flow
AppType: MyApp, AppTier: Web Category: Shared Apps

Policies Policies
✅IN: Any HTTP/S ✅IN: Web, App, DB
✅OUT: App ❌OUT: None

• Identify VMs (3 Tier App and Services) – Any

❌ ❌ VLAN / Cluster / Host
❌ ❌
• Assign Categories
Apache, NGINX AD, DNS, Logs
• Define Inbound / Outbound Policies
AppType: MyApp, AppTier: App AppType: MyApp, AppTier: DB
• Define Intra Tier Policies
Policies Policies
✅IN: Web ✅IN: App • Secure with Flow
✅OUT: DB ✅OUT: Shared Apps
✅OUT: Shared Apps

✅ ✅ ✅ ✅

Django, Rails, Python mysql, MS SQL

 – Simple to Manage
Self Service Apps
Security

Server

Data Protection Virtualization

Storage
Why Nutanix ?
Flexibility to Choose and Flexibility to Scale
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Hypervisor
Choice

Nutanix AHV

Freedom to Platform
Choice
Choose More

Cloud Choice
 License portability, no cloud lock in

Native integration with cloud services

Private
Seamless movement and elasticity between clouds
Cloud
Single platform using consistent constructs and skillsets

Hybrid Multicloud Platform

Simple to Scale
• Start Small with 3 nodes and scale more

• Performance and capacity scale linearly

• Data automatically rebalanced

• Mix & Match node types

Compute Capacity IOPs

Storage Heavy Storage Only All Flash

Why Nutanix
Complete Hybrid Cloud Journey
 One Platform. Any App. Any Location.

Business Critical Analytics & Cloud Native Software

Database Apps Big Data Development EUC ROBO & Edge

NUTANIX CLOUD PLATFORM

Ensure Business Continuity

Automate Operations

Consolidate your Data

Secure your Environment

Modernize your Infrastructure

PRIVATE PUBLIC
Seamless Hybrid Cloud Experience
CLOUDS CLOUDS

CI SCO
AWS Azure Google Cloud
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Digital Transformation Journey

Why Nutanix ?
Performance , Reliability and Scalability
Performance : Data Tiering
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Ability to scale keeping hot data local and in most performing hardware
• Non disruptively
• Mixing different nodes in the same cluster
• While INCREASING
• Resiliency
• Performance
• Capacity

RAM
NVMe SSD HDD
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Performance – Data Locality

Flash Ne tw o rk
60 0 0 0

• Local reads avoid having network bandwidth,

3DXPoint
congestion becoming a bottleneck 50 0 0 0

• Flash helps to enhance the overall speed and

Thro ug hp ut in MB/ S
boost the performance. 40 0 0 0

• Reading I/O locally delivers the most

CONSISTENT performance 30 0 0 0

• Writing one replica locally and one remotely,

effectively removes 50% of the (write) I/O 20 0 0 0

from the network 100G

10 0 0 0
NVMe 40G

SSD 10G

0
Performance – More IOPS and Throughput
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• Every node provides additional performance to the cluster thanks to the Controller VM (CVM)
• ADSF intelligent replica placement ensures hotspots are not created in the cluster
• All nodes/drives/CVMs in the cluster contribute to read and write activity

Cluster balances node usage automatically

Cluster Availability and Tunable Redundancy

Tunable Redundancy with Replication Factor -2 ( RF-2)

or Replication Factor-3 (RF-3)

With RF-2 below would be the parameters

• 2 copies of each write
• 3 copies of metadata
• Sustains 1 failure without impacting availability up to
all drives within 1 node

With RF-3 below would be the parameters

• 3 copies of each write
• 5 copies of metadata
• Sustains 2 failure without impacting availability up to
all drives within 2 node
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Resilency
– Not constrained by traditional RAID
– Rebuild performance not limited to a single hot spare
– A single hot spare slows down restoration
of resiliency

Nutanix ADSF rebuilds:

– Are driven by all controller VMs (CVM) in a cluster
– in parallel
– Read and write from all drives, to all drives
– Low impact thanks to distributed storage fabric
Why Nutanix
Market leader and Other benefits
Unique Points About Nutanix Architecture 30

Category Details
Flexibility to choose among any industry leading hypervisors , AHV (Acropolis Hypervisor) , ESXi and Hyper-V.

Flexibility to choose among the Industry leading Hardware vendors (HPE, Lenovo, NX , Dell, Intel and many more)
Flexibility to Choose
Flexibility to intermix different configuration nodes, i.e Hybrid Storage nodes (SSD + HDD), all Flash Nodes.

Different configuration nodes are also supported (Homogeneous Nodes are not required) in the same cluster
Nutanix uses multiple SSD disks for caching & same can be utilized for capacity also thus providing better performance & optimize storage
utilization.

Performance and Capacity Nutanix combines usage of SSD drives for caching and capacity layer (Hybrid Nodes), ensures desired performance for business critical applications.

In Hybrid Nodes, Nutanix uses software intelligence to move hot and cold data between SSDs and HDDs. In this model, flash is not a separate bolt-on
caching tier, but is an intelligent part of the datastore where SSDs contribute capacity to the datastore.
Data locality is a unique Nutanix feature which allows data to be accessed by a VM from local storage resources.  Data locality helps to minimize
network utilization and improves the performance during reads
Nutanix offers inline and post process dedupe and compression on both hybrid and all-flash systems.
Data Management
Nutanix provides flexibility in terms of switching on/off de-dup / compression for different type of workloads in the same cluster
Supports Block, Files and Objects from same platform
Has integrated Key management Systems (KMS) for encryption
Single Management Pane for managing all Nutanix Solutions
One Click version upgrade with no downtime requirement
Ease of Management One Click performance monitoring
Capacity Planning, runaway recommendations and what-if analysis
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Undisputed Market Leadership

Gartner Forrester
Magic Quadrant for HCI, 2020 Wave HCI, 2020

Contenders Strong Leaders

Performers

Stronger Current Offering

Weaker Current Offering
Ability to Execute

Market presence

Completeness of Vision As of Dec 2020 Weaker Strategy Stronger Strategy

Gartner Magic Quadrant for Hyperconverged Infrastructure, The Forrester Wave™: Hyperconverged
Jeff Hewitt, Phil Dawson, Julia Palmer and John McArthur, Infrastructure, Q3 2020, Forrester Research, Inc.,
Published 7 Dec 2020 29 July 2020
References & Resources

Nutanix Bible
• https://nutanixbible.com/

Nutanix Contact Point

• Account Manager: Ujjwal.yadav@nutanix.com

• Solutions Architect: amrit.gaurav@nutanix.com

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Thank you