Hypervisor Lab

After going through all the work to setup the AHV cluster, Nutanix Move, and Prism Central now is a good time to go through the process to shut down everything cleanly, snapshot it in Proxmox, and then power it all back up so if you break anything while learning you have clean point in time to revert to.

This is also how I shut the lab down when I am not using it to save on energy costs.

You can also add more memory if needed to the AHV hosts when they are shut down you are running low.

Shutdown Process

Here is the shutdown procedure I use:

• Stop Prism Central services
• Shutdown Prism Central VM
• Shut down remaining VMs
• Stop cluster services
• Shut down CVMs
• Shut down AHV hosts

By doing everything in this order you will have a clean state you can snapshot and roll back to at any time.

Shut Down Prism Central

SSH into the Prism Central VM using the default username nutanix and password nutanix/4u. once logged in run the cluster stop command to gracefully stop the Prism Central services:

cluster stop

With the cluster services stopped you can now use the shutdown command to turn off the GuestOS:

sudo shutdown -P now

Shut Down Remaining VMs

From Prism shut down the Windows VM, Linux VM, and Nutanix Move VM that you V2V’ed over. Since they have the Nutanix Guest Tools installed you can just right click on them and shut them down:

Wait for all the non-CVM VMs to be shut down before continuing:

Stop Cluster Services

With all the VMs powered down we now need to stop the Nutanix cluster services. SSH into one of the CVM VM’s and run the same cluster stop command that we used for Prism Central:

cluster stop

Shut Down CVM’s

Once the cluster has stopped SSH into all three CVMs and run the shutdown command:

sudo shutdown -P now

Shut Down AHV Hosts

Now log into each AHV host and check/wait for the CVM VM to shut down by using the virsh list command:

virsh list --all

Once all three AHV hosts show all VMs as powered off we can use the same shutdown command to turn off the AHV hosts:

sudo shutdown -P now

Snapshot AHV Hosts in Proxmox

Log into your Proxmox host and you should now see that all three AHV hosts are powered down:

Click on each VM, go to its Snapshot section, and create a new snapshot:

Repeat for the other two AHV VMs so the entire cluster is at the same point in time.

At this point you now have a safe rollback spot if something breaks when you are exploring Nutanix. You can also now fully shut down your lab if you wont be using it for a while.

Power On Process

Here is the power on procedure I use:

• Power on all three AHV hosts
• Wait about 15 minutes for AHV and the CVM VMs to boot all the way up
• SSH into a CVM and start the cluster
• Wait about 10 minutes for the cluster to come all the way online
• Power on the Prism Central VM
• SSH into the Prism Central VM and start its services
• Wait about 10 minutes for Prism Central to come all the way online

In Proxmox boot up all three AHV VMs:

After about 15 minutes ssh into one of the CVMs and start up the cluster:

cluster start

Wait for the cluster to come all the way online:

If you log into Prism Element you should see the cluster online and healthy other then being disconnected from Prism Central:

While we are in a CVM CLI we can start the Prism VM:

acli vm.list
acli vm.on NTNX-192-168-105-38-PCVM-XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

After giving the Prism Central VM some time to boot all the way up SSH into it and use the cluster start command to bring its services online:

cluster start

Once Prism Central is done coming online the AHV cluster will automatically re-connect:

And in Prism Central you should be able to see everything like before the shutdown:

This concludes the shutdown/snapshot/startup!