Part 2: Nutanix Storage & Cluster Nodes

Nutanix Storage & Cluster Nodes

As we discuss that SAN storage systems have become a standard for power-critical databases since the 90s in data center infrastructures. However, traditional SAN-based storage can no longer keep up with the growing IT needs of organizations due to their growing dependency on technology, such as cloud computing.

Nutanix had different types of the storage based upon the requirement and the customer demands and these are as follows: 

• A hybrid node that combines flash SSDs for performance and HDDs for storage capacity
• Nodes with traditional flash SSDs are all flash nodes
• NVMe using NVMe SSDs

To ensure data resilience, Nutanix uses replication factor (RF) with 2-3 copies of the data. Block awareness is enabled through RF, and data copies are distributed across blocks to protect against block failures. This information can be compressed, deduplicated, and erased (EC-X).A data tiering system ensures that data is stored on the local machines of the VMs. Faster access to active data is ensured by storing it on the fastest media.

Fig 1.1- Nutanix Nodes & Storage

Nutanix Clusters

Workload cluster and management cluster are both parts of the Nutanix cluster. VM-running management clusters that support data center management as below

• Nutanix Prism Central
• VMware vCenter
• Active Directory Domain Controllers
• Other management workloads, such as DNS, DHCP, NTP, Syslog 

Tenant virtual machines are run by workload clusters, which are part of the workload domain of the virtual infrastructure. Depending on the SLA requirements for availability and performance, we can mix different types of compute clusters and offer separate compute pools.

Tenants can access dedicated data services from storage clusters. primarily used for use cases with object, file, and block level storage

By virtue of their size and constrained external bandwidth, edge/ROBO clusters can be distinguished from typical workload clusters.

Microsoft Hyper V is supported by the virtualization layer, which sits above the physical layer.

Features of Nutanix Clusters

• Elimination of infrastructure silos in data centers through the ability to combine different types of nodes into a single cluster
• Multi-hypervisor support
• Utilizing multi-topology architecture, implement and oversee VM-centric disaster recovery procedures across various sites and data centers.
• Regulation-compliant encryption is provided by Nutanix Data-at-Rest.
• Encrypt all or a subset of the persistent storage partitions using a powerful encryption algorithm.