Introduction – Please Read First

These questions are here to assist with ensuring that you’re gathering necessary information from a customer/prospect in order to put together an appropriate solution to meet their requirements in addition to capturing specific metrics from tools like Collector or RVTools. 

This list is not exhaustive, but should be used as a guide to make sure you’ve done proper and thorough discovery.  Also, it is imperative that you don’t just ask a question without understanding the reason why it is being asked.  We’ve structured these questions with not only the question that should be asked, but why we are asking the customer to provide an answer to that question and why it matters to provide an optimal solution. 

Questions marked with an asterisk (*) will likely require reaching out to a specialist/Solution Architect resource at Nutanix to go deeper with the customer on that topic/question.  Make sure you use the answers to these questions in the Scenario Objectives in Sizer when you create a new Scenario.  These questions should help guide you as to what the customer requirements, constraints, assumptions, and risks are for your opportunity. 

This is a live document, and questions will be expand and update over time.

Revision History 

April 2025 – First life cycle – Thomas Brown, Shane Lyndsey, John Hanna
November 2020 – First Publication – Lane Leverett 

 

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Automation & Self Service

Discovery Questions

1.  How are you currently automating IT Service Delivery today, do you have any:
     a.  IAAS – Infrastructure as a service
     b.  PaaS – Platform as a service
     c.  SaaS – Software as a service

Why ask?  This question helps us understand the customer’s maturity level when it comes to application deployment and could uncover some of the competitive infrastructure.  It can also uncover some of the products that we may need to integrate with.   

2.  Are standardizing and compliance important to you in your IT Automation Delivery Strategy? If so, do you currently use a business intake or self-service request process via a solution such as ServiceNow, Cherwell, Remedy, etc. to automate IT service delivery?

Why ask? This question will give you the opportunity to discuss our SERVICE NOW plugin. Also helps understand which front end they will use for the Self Service implementation. If they do not use ServiceNow, be aware that it is possible to integrate with other ITSM solutions using the Self Service API.

3. Do you have any contracts with the cloud providers (AWS, Azure or GCP)?
a.  What are the specific use cases or workload profiles consumed from the cloud providers?

Why ask? This question helps you understand which providers they use which may consume Self Service. Helps us understand which services are still on-prem and available as a target for NCI. May help position Cost Governance. Also helps us understand if they have a Microsoft EA which may force the spend to go to Azure.

4.  Can you describe the process, do you have any documentation  for VM, OS or Database Deployment and Management?

Why ask? This question helps to uncover their current pain points and possibly the competitive landscape. This would typically be asked when talking to the Infrastructure Team.  If the process is already well documented/defined, the hardest part of the implementation is already done.

5.  What tools do you leverage to automate your Windows or Linux Server builds beyond the imaging / template / cloning process?
      a.  vRA
      b.  Terraform
      c.  Puppet
      d.  Chef
      e.  Ansible
      f.  Salt
      g.  SCCM

Why ask? This question helps you to understand the competitive landscape as well as integration points that will need to be solved 

6.  How many VMs are under management today?

Why ask? This question will help you to estimate the size of the deal for licensing

7.  What does your infrastructure footprint for managing/running containers look like?
      a.  What tools are you using?
      b.  How many containers?
      c.  If Kubernetes, how many pods and containers?
      d.  Which distribution of Kubernetes? (NKP/ AKS/EKS/Anthos/Openshift/Tanzu/etc)

Why ask? This question will help you to understand their current location on the journey to cloud native apps.  If they are still investigating, we have an option to position NKP. If they are using another product already, we may be able to provide the infrastructure for that environment. 

8. In your application development organization, is Continuous Integration/Continuous Delivery (CI/CD) an operating principle?
      a.  What tools do you leverage in your current/targeted pipeline?
            i.    Jenkins
            ii.   Atlassian Bamboo
            iii.  CircleCI
            iv.  GitLab CI/CD
            v.   Azure DevOps

Why ask? This question will help you to understand the integrations needed for a successful implementation.

Resources:

Glossary of Terms: https://github.com/nutanixworkshops/Self Servicebootcamp/blob/master/appendix/glossary.rst  

LinkedIn Learning – DevOps Foundations Learning Plan: https://www.nutanixuniversity.com//lms/index.php?r=coursepath/deeplink&id_path=79&hash=2ce3cb1f946cc3770bd466853e68ee36ddbcf5e1&generated_by=19794 

Udacity+Nutanix: Hybrid Cloud Engineer Nanodegree 

Self Service IaaS Hands On Lab (Partners – Reach out to your channel SE to participate in a hands on lab) 

Test Drive – Build a Self Service Platform  

Test Drive – Fast Track Your Cloud Native Journey