Cisco Compute Hyperconverged with Nutanix ISM Field Guide

[beveritt]

To ensure the correct installation process is being followed for Cisco Compute Hyperconverged with Nutanix, please refer to the following flowchart to choose the correct documentation for the system being installed: 

This document covers the ISM deployment method.

To access the UMM deployment field guide, click here.

To access the IMM deployment filed guide click here.

A Field Guide covering the installation and initial configuration of Cisco Compute Hyperconverged with Nutanix systems using Intersight Standalone Mode for Cisco UCS C-Series servers. Intersight Standalone Mode (ISM) is the term for C-series rackmount servers that are not connected to Cisco UCS Fabric Interconnects, and are fully managed by Cisco Intersight. This guide is intended for technical training and educational purposes, for all who wish to install Nutanix on Cisco UCS based hardware following our supported hardware and software integrations and compatibility lists.

As a reference guide, the document presents our best practices and recommendations as of the time of publishing, and will be updated periodically. Please refer to the document history at the beginning to ensure you are using the most current version available.

The most recent revision, v2.2 adds information regarding role-based access control (RBAC) in Cisco Intersight and a few other minor improvements. Additionally, our guides are being renamed to help provide consistent naming related to the management modes used in each document.

Version v2.1 added information regarding migrating the Cisco Intersight Appliance from ESXi to AHV when it is used during greenfield deployments. Also added is information regarding the Cisco Intersight Device Connector for Prism Central, enabling inventory, monitoring and alerting of Nutanix clusters within Cisco Intersight. There are numerous other improvements to the document flow, updated screenshots, additional information for troubleshooting and network connectivity requirements, and dozens of edits for additional clarity. 

Version v2.0 added information regarding cluster expansions using Foundation Central, additional information when using a Cisco Intersight Private Virtual Appliance during installations, updated information for installing Prism Central on a non-Nutanix ESXi cluster, plus several minor edits.

Version v1.2 added information regarding using Nutanix Lifecycle Manager (LCM) to perform software upgrades and firmware upgrades on the Cisco rackmount servers.

The first revision v1.1 added information regarding the deployment of Witness VMs for 2-node clusters, additional information regarding deployment of Prism Central on ESXi clusters, and several other minor updates.

[beveritt]

Prism Central is not used for the LCM jobs, you should use LCM via Prism Element. In there, it will ask you to connect to Intersight using your API key when you run an inventory job.

[z-tech]

Hi, great guide,

So we have a pre imaged Cisco Compute Hyperconverged M7 with Nutanix MLB, how shall we proceed to we need an external Prism Central to and Foundation central?

thanks

[beveritt]

Yes, the factory imaging allows you to skip imaging during the cluster creation job, but you still need to use Foundation Central (via Prism Central) to create the cluster after you receive your servers.

[z-tech]

Hi Beveritt,

So we can create the cluster from CVM using the create cluster command, so why it is a must to have prism and foundation center?

Moreover, our server have three VICs , 2 of them is 2x100G and 1 4x10G, we can see that the AHV and CVM have has default ips but we cannot reach from the network regardless to the interface we connect to, can you please advise from which interface to reach the AHV and CVM default ips.

Excuse the question, as have deployed Nutanix cluster Before but it is the first time use this Pre imaged hardware and it is a little bit frustrating as there is no guide for it.

Thanks,
Ziad Nasr

[beveritt]

Ziad, the servers will have no configuration out of the box as is normal for all Cisco UCS servers. You must use Foundation Central (which is part of Prism Central) to set the configuration of the servers vis Cisco Intersight. That same cluster configuration wizard will do the work in Cisco Intersight, set the IP addresses of the servers, and create the cluster all in one job. You cannot build the system without using Foundation Central. The pre-imaging from the factory allows you to skip the imaging step in the cluster creation wizard as I explained earlier, which saves you significant time and some extra steps.

Regarding which interfaces to use, the default configuration will use all the available interfaces as uplinks for the default OVS virtual switch named vs0, so any of them should work. You can create additional OVS virtual switches with their own uplinks and reorganize the networking to suit your requirements after the initial cluster build.

If you have additional questions please feel free to contact me at beveritt@cisco.com