Nutanix has released Acropolis 4.5, formerly known as NOS. Apart from the “name” change, there are several new features and fixes in the latest release.

What’s New in Acropolis base software 4.5

Bandwidth Limit on Schedule

• The bandwidth throttling policy provides you with an option to set the maximum limit of the network bandwidth. You can specify the policy depending on the usage of your network. 

Cloud Connect for Azure

 

• The cloud connect feature for Azure enables you to back up and restore copies of virtual machines and files to and from an on-premise cluster and a Nutanix Controller VM located on the Microsoft Azure cloud. Once configured through the Prism web console, the remote site cluster is managed and monitored through the Data Protection dashboard like any other remote site you have created and configured. This feature is currently supported for ESXi hypervisor environments only.

Common Access Card Authentication

• You can configure two-factor authentication for web console users that have an assigned role and use a Common Access Card (CAC).

Default Container and Storage Pool Upon Cluster Creation

• When you create a cluster, the Acropolis base software automatically creates a container and storage pool for you. [ENG-29707]

Erasure Coding

• Complementary to deduplication and compression, erasure coding increases the effective or usable cluster storage capacity. [FEAT-1096]

Hyper-V Configuration through Prism Web Console

• After creating a Nutanix Hyper-V cluster environment, you can use the Prism web console to join the hosts to the domain, create the Hyper-V failover cluster, and also enable Kerberos. [FEAT-1489, FEAT-636, FEAT-999]

Image Service Now Available in the Prism Web Console

• The Prism web console Image Configuration workflow enables a user to upload ISO or disk images (in ESXi or Hyper-V format) to a Nutanix AHV cluster by specifying a remote repository URL or by uploading a file from a local machine. [FEAT-1085]

MPIO Access to iSCSI Disks (Windows Guest VMs)

• Acropolis base software 4.5 feature to help enforce access control to volume groups and expose volume group disks as dual namespace disks.

Network Mapping

• Network mapping allows you to control network configuration for the VMs when they are started on the remote site. This feature enables you to specify network mapping between the source cluster and the destination cluster. The remote site wizard includes an option to create one or more network mappings and allows you to select source and destination network from the drop-down list. You can also modify or remove network mappings as part of modifying the remote sites. [FEAT-1549]

Nutanix Cluster Check

 

• Acropolis base software 4.5 includes Nutanix Cluster Check (NCC) 2.1, which includes many new checks and functionality

Prism

• The Prism software has also been updated to version 4.5. Prism Central Can Now Be Deployed on the Acropolis Hypervisor (AHV).Nutanix has introduced a Prism Central OVA which can be deployed on an AHV cluster by leveraging Image Service features. See the Web Console Guide for installation details.
• By increasing memory capacity to 16GB and expanding its virtual disk to 260GB, Prism Central can support a maximum of 100 clusters and 10000 VMs (across all the clusters and assuming each VM has an average of two virtual disks). Please contact Nutanix support if you decide to change the configuration of the Prism Central VM.

VM High Availability in Acropolis

Windows Guest VM Failover Clustering

• Acropolis base software 4.5 supports configuring Windows guest VMs as a failover cluster. This clustering type enables applications on a failed VM to fail over to and run on another guest VM on the same or different host. This release supports this feature on Hyper-V hosts with in-guest VM iSCSI and SCSI 3 Persistent Reservation (PR).