Nutanix VM Management

Overview

The Nexcess Managed Support team securely creates and provisions all Virtual Machines (VMs) in your Private Cloud. However, you cannot create new VMs directly. Instead, you can use the VM Details view to monitor and troubleshoot servers. Furthermore, you can manage their power states here.

First, navigate to your Project’s Workloads tab. Next, click on a specific VM name. This action opens a dedicated dashboard. From this interface, you can monitor performance metrics and access the remote web console. Additionally, you can perform power operations and audit configurations.

Parameters / Features

The VM Details interface features multiple tabs. Each tab focuses on a specific configuration or health metric:

  • Summary: Provides a high-level VM overview. This includes IP addresses, host placement, and the guest operating system. Most importantly, you can view the power state and execute Power Operations:
    • Power Off: Instantly cuts power to the VM.
    • Power Cycle: Instantly powers off and then powers on the VM.
    • Power Reset: Reboots the VM abruptly.
    • Guest Shutdown: Gracefully shuts down the guest OS.
    • Guest Reboot: Gracefully restarts the guest OS.
  • Console: Opens an HTML5-based remote web console. Specifically, this provides out-of-band keyboard, video, and mouse (KVM) access. Use this if standard SSH or RDP fails.
  • Hardware: Displays the compute resources allocated to the guest. This includes vCPUs, cores per vCPU, and RAM.
  • Disks: Lists all virtual disks and CD-ROM drives attached to the VM. It also shows their capacity and bus type.
  • NICs (Network Interface Cards): Details the virtual network adapters connected to the VM. Furthermore, it displays MAC addresses, IP addresses, and assigned subnets.
  • Metrics: Features detailed performance charts over time. For example, you can analyze CPU usage, memory consumption, storage I/O, and network throughput.

Examples

The VM Details view provides essential tools for daily troubleshooting. For instance, consider these practical examples:

  • Restarting an Unresponsive Application: A web service freezes, and SSH fails. Therefore, you navigate to the Summary tab. Next, you initiate a Guest Reboot to safely restore the service.
  • Troubleshooting Network Lockouts: You accidentally misconfigure the firewall on your Linux VM. As a result, you open the Console tab. Finally, you log in directly to fix the rule.
  • Auditing Storage Capacity: Your database VM runs low on space. First, you click on the Disks tab. Then, you review the exact drive size before submitting a support ticket for expansion.

Common Use Cases

  • Safe System Restarts: Software updates often require a reboot. Consequently, administrators use the Summary screen to perform a graceful Guest Reboot directly from the interface.
  • Capacity Planning: System administrators frequently use the Metrics tab to observe peak utilization. If CPU usage stays maxed out, they use this data to request a resource upgrade.
  • Network Auditing: Developers often need to verify a secure backend connection. Therefore, they check the NICs tab to confirm IP addresses and subnets quickly.