Leveraging ODX to deploy a VM from a template on Nutanix

The following information is provided “as is”, I have found it to work in my environment but I am not an official employee for Nutanix or Microsoft. If you want to learn more about Nutanix I can defintely recommend the following blogs:

• Steven Poitras aka the Nutanix god, creator of the nutanix bible: http://stevenpoitras.com/the-nutanix-bible/
• The Nutanix index: http://myvirtualcloud.net/?page_id=5770

Check out my previous blog post about Integrating Nutanix Hyper-V with SVMM 2012 R2: https://davyneirynck.wordpress.com/2014/04/17/integrating-a-nutanix-hyper-v-cluster-with-scvmm-2012-r2/

In this article I will explain and demonstrate what needs to be done to make sure you can deploy your virtual machines from a template using ODX. ODX stands for Offloaded Data Transfer and in short makes sure that the SAN or in our case Nutanix will be used to transfer the blocks instead of that those files needs to be transferred over the network. As you would guess by now, this makes deployment of your virtual machines go a lot more faster.

Currently ODX on Nutanix is invoked for the following operations:

• In VM or VM to VM file copy on NDFS SMB share
• SMB share file copy
• Deploy template from SCVMM Library (NDFS SMB share)

In the PRISM UI, you will need to have 2 containers. One called “CTR1” in my case, used to store all my running virtual machines and a “nutanix_vmm”, the container that I use to store my ISO’s and ofcourse templates. I enabled compression on this second container and just watched how I got up to 69% compression, enabling me to save 30,15GB.

Don’t forget to edit the filesystem whitelist settings in the PRISM UI, enabling your VMM server to access the nutanix storage:

Add the IP-address of your servers in the following format: x.x.x.x/subnetmask (example: 10.32.1.5/255.255.255.0)

Let’s get started with the configuration in SCVMM, we need to add a library share that is pointing to our “nutanix_vmm” container for the placement of our templates, hence when we deploy a VM based on this template, ODX will kick in and will makes sure that the blocks are transferred to our other container. In my lab I have found that deploying a VM based on this template using ODX gives me a fully patched, domain joined, windows activated VM in less then 7 minutes. If i’m not using ODX this was around 17 minutes.

Go to library, right click your library server and change the properties so your run as account is linked as the management credentials of the library server.

Now select “Add Library Shares”

It’s very important not to add your FQDN to the Nutanix container or ODX will not work, I’m pretty sure this is a Microsoft issue.

After this the new library share can be used.

I created a new Generation 2 virtual machine, this provides the following new functionality on a virtual machine:

• PXE boot by using a standard network adapter
• Boot from a SCSI virtual hard disk
• Boot from a SCSI virtual DVD
• Secure Boot (enabled by default)
• UEFI firmware support
• Faster Boot Time and Faster Installation of Guest Operating System
• IDE drives and legacy network adapter support has been removed

However, you must be running any of these operating systems to run a gen2 Hyper-V VM:

• Windows Server 2012
• Windows Server 2012 R2 Preview
• 64-bit versions of Windows 8
• 64-bit versions of Windows 8.1 Preview

When creating a template, I always follow these guidelines:

• Create your vm and give it a clear name such as 2012r2_STD_gen2
• Download and install all updates
• Customize the settings you prefer such as windows firewall, IE SC, remote desktop, ..
• Shut down the VM and perform a clone operation in SCVMM so we don’t loose this reference image (name this machine for instance 2012r2_STD_gen2_template)
• Create a template in SCVMM on this cloned VM and save it in your newly created library share (nutanix_vmm)

The reason why you need to clone your machine is because your virtual machine will be destroyed in order to turn it into a template. I tend to re-create my template every 3 months, all you need to do is start up your original machine, install your updates and maybe some additional software that you use in your company, clone it again and create the template. Make sure you hold a document where you can track your changes.

When you have done all of this, your template will be shown in the library pane and you can right click on it to create a new virtual machine based on this template.

I configured my hardware settings as followed, nothing really special going on here:

The OS settings are a lot more fun, this is were you can really save some time. I’m using the new AVMA keys to activate my guest VM’s. Have a look at this Technet document  to find out what AVMA is: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dn303421.aspx

Also, I can define here that this vm must join my domain, using the following credentials (the run as account I configured in my previous blog post).

Again, I’m guessing this is a Microsoft issue, you need to remove your FQDN on the destination path (e.g. \\nutanix-1234\CTR1) or your deployment will fall back to BITS over HTTPS.

For some reason there is still a bug in SCVMM when trying to create a virtual machine based on a gen2 template, it just comes up saying there is no boot device..

To resolve this, simply issue these powershell commands so the boot device of the template are changed to the SCSI adapter:

And finally watch how your virtual machine is deployed using fast file copy

 

In a next article I will discuss the setup of a powershell script I wrote to export my running virtual machines to a Synology NAS.

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Integrating a Nutanix Hyper-V cluster with SCVMM 2012 R2

As the title says, I will try to give you the necessary information to succesfully manage your Nutanix Hyper-V cluster with System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2012 R2. This information is provided “as is”, I have found it to work in my environment but I am not an official employee for Nutanix or Microsoft. If you want to learn more about Nutanix I can defintely recommend the following blogs:

• Steven Poitras aka the Nutanix god, creator of the nutanix bible: http://stevenpoitras.com/the-nutanix-bible/
• The Nutanix index: http://myvirtualcloud.net/?page_id=5770

The least I can say about this setup, is that it was a bit challenging to make it work. Let’s get started with the pre-requisites about this setup:

• A server running System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2012 R2
• Your Nutanix Hyper-V cluster is up and running (I will cover this in a later blog)

Log on to you VMM server and execute the following powershell command in an elevated prompt to allow the host to access unsigned storage:

Set-SmbClientConfiguration –RequireSecuritySignature $false -force

Fire up the VMM console and start up the Add Hyper-V Hosts and Clusters wizard

The nutanix nodes are already domain joined, the Hyper-V failover cluster is already created so I can select the “Windows Servers computers in a trusted Active Directory domain”

I manually entered the credentials here (typically a domain admin account). We will cover the run as acount a bit later in this post.
Add the cluster name or if you really want to be precise all individual nodes in the cluster.

 

Since we are adding a cluster, all nodes are automatically added as well. As you can see here I’m using 2 Nutanix blocks, each consisting of 4 nodes.

Specify your host group

The wizard ends here, you can click finish and your cluster will be added to the VMM console. Make sure that after you created your hyper-v failover cluster you rebooted all of your hosts, otherwise VMM will come up and say you need to reboot them before he can complete the adding cluster wizard.

To be able to use the run as account in VMM 2012 R2, we first need to create a new user that has local admin rights on all nutanix nodes. I also used this account to join my virtual machines to the domain when I deploy them from a template. In order to make this work, use the delegate control in Active directory users and computers and grant this account the “add computers to the domain”.

We added the vmm_nutanix account to the local administrators group of every cluster node. We also need to configure this account in VMM and attach it to the cluster as the run as account.

Execute the following powershell script to assign the newly created run as account to your cluster

$cluster = get-scvmhostcluster –name name_of_your_cluster

$runas = get-scrunasaccount –name “vmm_nutanix”

Set-scvmhostcluster –VMHostCluster $cluster –VMHostManagementCredential -$runas

We can now add the file share storage into the nutanix cluster. Note that this nutanix container will be used to host all virtual machines (in our scenario)

Right click on your cluster and navigate to file share storage

add the following path as file share storage: \\nutanix-1234\CTR1 where you need to replace nutanix-1234 to the DNS entry you created during the setup of your cluster.

If you configured everything correctly, the status of the file share should be shown as followed

 

And tadaa, you should be ready to deploy your VM’s from SCVMM. In another blog post I will cover the steps on how Nutanix can leverage ODX to deploy virtual machines based on a template that resides on an NDFS SMB share.

Stay tuned