Nutanix AHV on UCS

This week, I was able to deploy Nutanix on UCS, and while that opportunity has come for some of my coworkers, I had the distinct pleasure of installing AHV as the hypervisor.  This was my

This particular install was on 3 UCS C220-M5SX models running AHV 5.6, and is meant to house part of a SQL load for a healthcare provider.  The AHV version decision was based on the compatibility matrix, but did come with some hurdles.  First, AHV 5.6 does hard lock features to the license, so if you don’t have the license installed, you will be missing features. Gone are the days of simply the read warning screen wagging its finger at you while you deployed anything you wanted. Second, the field install guides and KB articles are focused on earlier versions of AHV at the moment.

Also ran into an issue where it did not recognize the second port on the 10g Intel ethernet card that was in the UCS, so it needed to be added manually and then added to the bridge and bond.

Overall, the experience was great, and Nutanix support remains one of the most responsive and helpful that I ever dealt with.  If you aren’t running AHV, you should be asking yourself, “Why?”.