Nutanix Community Edition in Proxmox, Part 1 Initial Setup


Userlevel 7
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Nutanix has been around for sometime but I have only recently decided to take a peak at it.

I am going to install a single node cluster nested in my Proxmox homelab.

First step is to create your Nutanix account (free) and login. Head to the Nutanix Community Edition page by pressing launch.

Press Launch under Community Edition
ISO and Instructions

Download the ISO and then upload into your Proxmox. 

Now time to setup the VM. 

Create the VM

 

Choose the ISO.

ISO
Default Settings

 

You need at least 3 disks and 2 of them need to have SSD emulation turned on. 

The first disk can be relatively small but the other two mush be at least 200GB

200GB disk

Last disk for data.

3rd disk

In my case I chose 4 sockets 2 cores for 8 vcpus and processor type host

CPU
Memory Allocation
Network
Summary

After creating start the VM.

Start

After the boot screen completes eventually the Nutanix CE Installer will appear.

The Use column should fill out automatically but you can edit if need be. Keep in mind that the Hypervisor boot drive and CVM drive must have SSD emulation enabled in Proxmox.

Fill out with your information

You must scroll down the agreement and agree.

 

Agreement

At this point you need to sit back and wait.

Installation
Time to reboot

After rebooting you can login to the console. The default password is nutanix/4u

AHV Login

The cluster should automatically be created if you chose single node and process will take place in the background and can take upwards of 15 minutes depending on your hardware and resources.

I had an issue where the cluster creation failed so I logged in and removed the .firstboot_fail file and replaced with .firstboot. I then stopped the VM and changed the Network card to E1000.

After booting again the cluster creation worked. 

After rebooting you can login to your prism URL and it will ask you to change the pasword.

 

Prism

 You will also be asked to put your NEXT credentials (these are the credentials that you created when creating your Nutanix account). 

Installation Complete.

Prism

In part 2 I will create a VM and then use the Veeam Nutanix Plugin to backup the vm to VBR.


4 comments

Userlevel 7
Badge +20

Another great blog series I will be watching as I want to test Nutanix sometime soon but need to find resources.  😂

👀

Userlevel 5
Badge +1

very nice :) Now get a 3-node going. I have a 3 node and a 1 node. Only issue I am at now is issue upgrading the 1 node which has a USB boot. Working through trying to fix that.

Userlevel 7
Badge +22

very nice :) Now get a 3-node going. I have a 3 node and a 1 node. Only issue I am at now is issue upgrading the 1 node which has a USB boot. Working through trying to fix that.

My little lab might just jump off the bridge. Nutanix does like resources. Of course I would love to increase but am facing opposition in the family budget dept.. i.e. “you have enough wires lying around everywhere as it is!!!” I am hoping though in investing in IT stealth technology, i.e. I can hide the stuff somewhere so it won’t be seen but unfortunately it will still need to use a power socket and will be discovered eventually.  

Userlevel 7
Badge +17

Cool post Geoff! Liking these. 👍🏻

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