Nutanix AOS 4.7 Immediately Available

What’s New in AOS 4.7? Some of these enhancements were announced at .Next last week. Here’s a full list of what’s new in AOS 4.7. It is available for immediate download on the Nutanix support portal.

Acropolis Block Services

Acropolis Block Services (ABS) provides highly available and high performance block storage as iSCSI LUNs to clients. Clients can be non-Nutanix servers external to the cluster or guest VMs internal or external to the cluster, with the cluster block storage configured as one or more volume groups. This block storage acts as the iSCSI target for client Windows or Linux operating systems running on a bare metal server or as guest VMs using iSCSI initiators from within the client operating systems.

Cluster Resiliency (Degraded Node Detection)

Nutanix Engineering has introduced capabilities in AOS to identify partially available nodes and prevent them from affecting cluster availability. It can detect if a node is experiencing  network latency issues, disk or memory errors, or other issue that would affect cluster performance. AOS marks the node as degraded, places it in maintenance mode, and raises an alert to indicate its status. The node will be prevented from participating in cluster operations and cluster operations will continue. The node can rejoin the cluster once the issue is fixed. This feature is disabled by default and customers are advised to contact Nutanix Support to enable and use it. Reference internal Knowledge Base Article 3361.

Docker Container Support

The Nutanix volume plug-in for Docker enables Docker deployments to be integrated with external storage systems, in this case the Nutanix distributed file system (NDFS), and enable data volumes to persist beyond the lifetime of a single container machine host.

1-click HBA Disk Controller Firmware

The LSI host bus adapter/controller (HBA) 1-click firmware upgrade feature is available for Acropolis hypervisor (AHV) and ESXi hypervisor host environments running on NXxxxx G4 (Haswell) or NX-xxxx-G5 (Broadwell) platforms only.

In-Place Hypervisor Conversion

Previously tech preview, this 1-click feature available through the Prism web console allows you to convert your cluster from using ESXi hosts to using AHV hosts. Guest VMs are converted to the hypervisor target format, and cluster network configurations are stored and then restored as part of the conversion process. Note: This feature converts your existing ESXi cluster to an AHV cluster. You cannot start the conversion process on the AHV cluster.

Intel Broadwell Architecture

Support for platforms using the Intel Broadwell CPU and architecture.

Internationalization (i18n)

Non-ASCII user defined values (for example, entity names, descriptions, and so on) are supported in UTF-8. For the list of supported and unsupported entities and to change language settings to Simplified Chinese, see the Prism Web Console Guide.

Newly-supported platforms

Support for Nutanix Xpress platforms such as the SX-1065-G5. See the Xpress Series Compatibility Matrix in Release Notes | NX-series Hardware on page 22. Support for Lenovo Converged HX Series

Prism Central

Enhanced Prism Central Explore tab usability with custom page sizing, custom Focus views, and easier select options.

Security

Nutanix Security Engineering and Research Team (nSERT) has identified existing vulnerabilities associated with certain security concerns and this release addresses these vulnerabilities. See Resolved Issues | AOS 4.7 on page 6 of Release Notes for details.

Simplified SSD breakfix procedures for Hyper-V

Support for single SSD replacement procedures for Hyper-V clusters.

Support for the Microsoft Cloud Platform System (CPS)

Support for the Microsoft Cloud Platform System (CPS), which bundles Windows Server 2012 R2, System Center 2012 R2 and Windows Azure Pack for easier hybrid cloud configuration. Nutanix offers the CPS Standard version preinstalled on nodes from the factory.

TRIM Support for Acropolis File Services

For Acropolis File Services, the Prism Web Console previously could not show accurate storage consumption as it did not show deleted data. Now, Acropolis File Services introduces TRIM and thin provisioning with 4.7 for better storage. TRIM is enabled by default and communicates free block information to the Prism Web Console from TRIM. AOS then performs storage distribution for better storage consumption.

Whitelist Prism Central and Prism Element to bypass proxy servers

Prism Central and AOS 4.6.2 introduce new nCLI options ncli http-proxy add-to-whitelist / ncli http-proxy delete-from-whitelist. Use the ncli http-proxy add-to-whitelist command to bypass a proxy server used by a Prism Central-managed cluster and allow network traffic between Prism Central and the cluster. Previously, if you attempted to register a cluster that implemented a proxy server, the registration failed. The Prism Central Guide describes how to configure this use case with these new commands.

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