Category: Collector Releases

Posted on

Collector 5.0

The latest release of Nutanix Collector 5.0 is now available for download.  

WHAT’S NEW

Nutanix Collector 5.0 adds support to gather data from AWS environments using Windows command line interface (CLI) mode. You can gather the configuration and performance data of the AWS resources that help understand the cloud infrastructure requirements accurately and can be exported to Sizer to size the workloads either on NC2 on AWS or on-prem datacenter.

  • Gather details about the Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) instances, Elastic Block Storage (EBS) volumes, Snapshots, and Elastic File System (EFS)
  • Gather data across multiple Organization Units and/or Accounts in one go
  • Instantaneously gather utilization or performance patterns up to 180 days
  • Gather utilization data of EC2 instances – Average, Peak & 95th Percentile CPU utilization
  • Gather performance data of EBS Volumes – IOPS, IO Size & Throughput
  • Option to export the data from Collector Portal to Sizer

Demo videos

Nutanix Collector 5.0 – Prerequisites for AWS Data Collection
Nutanix Collector 5.0 – Support for AWS Data Collection

For detailed information, see the Collector User Guide.

UPDATED FEATURES

The following features are updated as part of this release

  • AHV Collections
    • Support for “Storage Containers” information
    • CVM resource utilization information – helps in simulating the existing customer environment for expansion use cases
  • Hyper-V Collections
    • Provisioned & Consumed Capacity reporting at the host level
  • Updates to the metadata sheet
    • Collection Date & Time
    • Performance Data Duration

RESOLVED ISSUES

The following issues are resolved in this release

  • Resolved an issue where Nutanix Collector failed to collect performance data for the Hyper-V host.
  • The tooltip information was showing an incorrect time of collection while gathering the performance data from Hyper-V clusters.

RESOURCES

CALL TO ACTION

Simplify your requirement gathering by downloading Collector

Public URL: Collector Download Link for Prospects (no login required)

MyNutanix URL: Collector Download Link for MyNutanix Users 

Report issues in Collector via this Google form

Thank you,
Team Nutanix Collector

Posted on

Collector 4.4

The latest release of Nutanix Collector 4.4 is now available for download.  

WHAT’S NEW

Nutanix Collector provides you an option to gather data for virtual Microsoft (MS) SQL servers (version 2016 or higher) using Windows Command Line Interface (CLI) mode. You can gather the configuration data of the SQL servers that are helpful in sizing the Nutanix Database Service requirements accurately. Nutanix Collector gathers the below information.

  • DB Servers: Cluster role, Witness, Operating System, Sockets, Processors, CPU & Memory information.
  • SQL Instances: Name of the instance and DB server, SQL version, DB count, collation, authentication mode, concurrent, and active connections.
  • Databases: Name, ID, and size of the database, DB server, active connections, availability group, recovery model, and backup details.
  • Database Files: Name and ID of the database, type & size of the file, filegroup, used and free space, and file growth.
  • Availability Group: Name and status of the availability group, databases, replica, role, availability mode, failover mode, seeding mode, and listener details.

For detailed information, see the Collector User Guide.

RESOLVED ISSUES

  • When gathering the data through vCenter, the NX model names gathered through Direct Media Interface (DMI) are translated to the actual NX model names.
  • For Hyper-V (Remote) mode, Nutanix Collector can gather data via encrypted or unencrypted requests depending on the customer setup.
  • Resolved the security issues around the Mac version of Collector, the Mac version of Collector is back in 4.4 

RESOURCES

Here is a demo of support for MS SQL Servers.

CALL TO ACTION

Simplify your requirement gathering by downloading Collector

Public URL: Collector Download Link for Prospects (no login required)

MyNutanix URL: Collector Download Link for MyNutanix Users 

Report issues in Collector via this Google form

Thank you,

Team Nutanix Collector

Posted on

Collector 4.3

Nutanix Collector 4.3 is now available for download.  

WHAT’S NEW

  • Support CLI for Collector Windows – You can run Nutanix Collector in the CLI mode on the Windows operating system to initialize data collection from Prism, vCenter, Hyper-V (remote and local), and ONTAP CIFS shares.
  • For v-Center – Collection output includes a new sheet named Datastore that allows you to look at the individual datastore, associated hosts, VMs, and their properties.

RESOLVED ISSUES

  • For vCenter environments, the data collection fails when Collector encounters nested datacenters hierarchy while scanning a list of available clusters.
  • Removed the domain administrator check for single node Hyper-V local cluster collection. Note:  For Hyper-V (remote) cluster with multiple hosts, you must be the domain administrator and for Hyper-V (remote) cluster with a single node, you must be the local administrator.
  • In certain scenarios, collection fails when gathering the VM performance data of a Hyper-V cluster.
  • Collector identifies a Hyper-V cluster as a single node when running on 64-bit Windows operating systems.
  • For ONTAP CIFS share cluster, collection fails when the search path for the CIFS home directory is not configured.

KNOWN ISSUES

  • When you run Collector in the CLI mode on Windows, the CIFS Shares count equal to or greater than 20 is displayed as 21 CIFS Shares.
  • Collector fails to gather the information when there is only one Prism Element cluster under the Prism Central. For the workaround, see the Troubleshooting section of the Collector User Guide.

RESOURCES

CALL TO ACTION

Simplify your requirement gathering by downloading Collector

Public URL: Collector Download Link for Prospects (no login required)

MyNutanix URL: Collector Download Link for MyNutanix Users 

Report issues in Collector via this Google form

Thank you,

Team Nutanix Collector

Posted on

Collector 4.2

Nutanix Collector 4.2 is now available for download. The release is focused on a major re-architecture of the existing code base that shall enable us to add support for new workloads in the future. Below is a summary of the changes. 

WHAT’S NEW

  • 2x to 3x performance improvement in data collection
  • Improved accuracy of storage metrics when gathering data via Prism
    • Gather storage from all Volume Groups irrespective of VG to VM mapping. For example, VGs associated with Nutanix Files are not mapped to VMs. 
  • Improved user experience for troubleshooting customer issues
    • Support to change log level on the fly to gather additional log files
    • Supported log levels – critical, warning, info, debug

RESOLVED ISSUES

  • Resolved issues around major anti-virus vendors flagged us as Malicious
  • VM level storage metrics handle duplicate vPartition data entries
  • Resolved data collection failures in Hyper-V caused due to unsupported delimiters
  • Populated values for the 95th percentile value of the IOPS, the number of read & write operations under vHosts sheet.

Note: With the new architecture, the size of the Collector bundle has been reduced to half.  

RESOURCES

CALL TO ACTION

Simplify your requirement gathering by downloading Collector

Public URL: Collector Download Link for Prospects (no login required)

MyNutanix URL: Collector Download Link for MyNutanix Users 

Report issues in Collector via this Google form

Thank you,

Team Nutanix Collector

Posted on

Collector 4.1

Nutanix Collector 4.1 release is focused on the stability of the data collection, enhancements & bug fixes. Below is a summary of the changes. 

ENHANCEMENTS

Following are the feature enhancements made in this release:

  • ONTAP CIFS Shares

Collector can now identify the storage associated with CIFS Share Home Directories

“Search Path” column is added for CIFS shares configured as home directories, this helps in mapping Volume associated with Home Directories

  • Added Support to report Storage associated via Volume Groups

VolumeGroups sheet now reports all the volume groups that are associated with the discovered VMs – 

vDisk sheet now reports the vDisks that are part of Volume Group. Additional columns under vDisk are – Volume Group Name, Volume Group Disk, Volume Group Shared, Disk UUID, Volume Group UUID

vmList sheet now reports if the VM has Volume Groups attached. Additional columns under vmList are – Volume Group Attached, Volume Group Capacity (MiB) & Volume Group Consumed (MiB)

  • Added support to gather multiple NICs associated with a VM via Prism Element

If a VM supports multiple Network Interface Cards (NICs), the Collector output exported as an XLSX shows all the supported NICs in the vNetwork tab.

COLLECTOR PORTAL ENHANCEMENTS

The below enhancements are available in Collector Portal as part of his release

  • Collector Portal now supports a simple 1-click option to export NetApp ONTAP projects to Size Nutanix Files

Export to Sizer is supported for Collections gathered via Collector 4.1 and later versions

Export to XLSX is supported for Collections irrespective of Collector version

  • When exporting data to Sizer, the “Provisioned Capacity” is the default storage selection

Users are free to switch to “Consumed Capacity”

Defaulting to “Provisioned Capacity” is applied for both compute based workloads and Netapp ONTAP capacity workloads

  • Optimized the process of fetching VM information when dealing with a large number (1K+) of VMs
  • Improved the histogram chart under the VMs Summary tab by ignoring the powered OFF VMs when showing the distribution of VMs by CPU utilization. 
  • Collector provides a specific error message and suggests actions when the user is not registered on the Sizer portal and tries to export Collector Project to Sizer. 

RESOLVED ISSUES

The following issues are resolved in this release:

  • Resolved an issue where the Collector Portal was unable to generate an XLSX file when NetApp ONTAP Volume did not report Consumed Capacity & Snapshot Reserved Capacity.
  • Significantly improved the time taken to gather information via Prism when Collector is unable to gather Guest OS information.
  • Resolved an issue with Data Collection when gathering data via Prism due to the failure of Prism APIs. 
  • Resolved the cluster connection issue when trying to gather data via the Prism version AOS 5.15.4
  • Data collection completes successfully when clusters intermittently fail to report performance data.  
  • Resolved an issue in collecting the vNetwork data for AOS 5.20.2.1 (AHV – 20201105.2244) and higher versions.
  • Resolved the data center name identified by the Collector for the Prism Element clusters.

RESOURCES

Short Demo link: Collector ONTAP Export to Sizer

CALL TO ACTION

Simplify your requirement gathering by downloading Collector

Download Collector via Collector Login Page

Public URL: Collector Download Link for Prospects

MyNutanix URL: Collector Download Link for MyNutanix Users 

Report issues in Collector via this Google form

Thank you,

Team Nutanix Collector

Posted on

Collector 4.0

Nutanix Collector 4.0 fully supports NetApp Clustered Data ONTAP CIFS Shares and a lot of other benefits. Here is a short summary:

WHAT’S NEW

Support for NetApp Clustered Data ONTAP CIFS Shares

Support for NetApp Clustered Data ONTAP is no longer beta, it is now GA and full support would be provided to gather CIFS Shares details from Clustered Data ONTAP version 8.3 or above. You can gather a valuable set of information directly from storage native boxes that can be extremely helpful in sizing your File Share requirements accurately. 

Cluster details – Capacity, Storage Efficiency, # of CIFS Shares & # of Volumes

Node details – Node Health, Model, Vendor, ONTAP version, CPU & Memory info

Share details – Type of Share, Share Path, Access Control Levels, and Max Connections

Volume details – Capacity, Storage Efficiency, QoS Level, Snapshot & Backup Details

QoS details – Policy Group, Max Throughput & Workload Count

Short Demo link: Nutanix Collector support for ONTAP

Masking Sensitive Information

Collector 4.0 also provides the option to mask sensitive information when exporting the output to excel. This would be beneficial in the case of Government and Financial accounts or RFPs demanding the same. The following fields are masked across the various sheets – Cluster Name, Host IP, Host Name, VM Name, Disk Name, Snapshot Name, Snapshot File, Switch Name, Port Group, vSwitch, Network, Adapter, Disk, License Name & License Key.

Mapping of Collector Project & Sizer Scenarios

Collector Portal now allows you to not only view the Collector Projects but also allows you to view the associated Sizer Scenarios. To make it even better, we have ensured that you can also see the associated Sizer Scenarios for all your existing Collector Projects as well. This would be extremely beneficial in case of any customer satisfaction issues where the workload has changed pre and post-deployment.  

Bulk edits on VM List Page

This has been a long-pending request, Collector Portal allows you to edit multiple VMs in one go via “Bulk Change”. Use cases where bulk edits would be of great value

Sizing a set of VMs in one cluster and the rest in another cluster. For example, all DB VMs “Target Cluster” values can be changed to a new cluster, say DB Cluster instead of default Cluster 1.   The rest of the VMs can be left to default, Cluster 1, or further targeted towards specific clusters before exporting to Sizer.

Edit the resources allocated to the set of VMs. For example, all knowledge workers are not allocated enough vCPUs, increase all of them at once via bulk edit.

Additional Checks for Potential Undersizing when exporting to Sizer

In the case of virtual desktop environments, not all the VMs are utilized at the same time, especially when users are working across shifts. The VMs might be actively utilizing the resources but the VM might be switched off when Collector is run to gather the data. Considering the VM as OFF might result in a potentially undersized solution. We have added warnings in place to avoid these kinds of issues both when exporting Collector data to Sizer or Importing Collector data in Sizer.

ENHANCEMENTS

Identification of Home Directory & Application Shares

Collector 4.0 can identify if the shares configured on ONTAP CIFS are Home Directory shares or Applications shares. Sizer shall support exporting home directory shares only or all discovered shares.

Ease of Download

No need to remember any URLs to download Collector Desktop Application. Just ask the partner, prospect or customer to visit https://collector.nutanix.com/ or Google “Nutanix Collector”. Find the “Download Collector Desktop Application” right on the login page. 

Retrieving back the Collection File (.zip)

We have also made minor adjustments in the placement of buttons to drive our users towards sharing the Collection (.zip) file over the .xlsx file.  The updated button also indicates to the users that the Collection file is a zip file and not xlsx file. Use of the Collection file helps to extract all the value-added in the Collector portal and now you can also map the Collector data to Sizer Scenarios. 

RESOLVED ISSUES

Resolved Out of Memory issues when trying to gather data from large Prism environments.

In the case of Hyper-V, Collector can now generate the output in the Excel (.xlsx) format, even when a few attributes for VMs, Cluster Name, and Disk Name are missing.

RESOURCES

Release Notes, User Guide & Security Guide

Collector Help Pages

Collector FAQs 

Product Videos

Report issues in Collector via this Google form

Download Collector via Collector Login Page

Posted on

Collector 3.5.1

Nutanix Collector 3.5.1 goes beyond compute-focused workloads, Collector has now added support for the first of the many upcoming capacity-focused workloads. Here is a short summary:

WHAT’S NEW

Collector now provides you an option to collect data for NetApp Clustered DATA ONTAP (8.3 or above) File Shares, CIFS. Collector allows you to collect data directly from the native storage boxes. You can gather a valuable set of information that can be extremely helpful in sizing your File Share requirements accurately. 

Cluster details – Capacity, Storage Efficiency, # of CIFS Shares & # of Volumes

Node details – Node Health, Model, Vendor, ONTAP version, CPU & Memory info

Share details – Share Path, Access Control Levels, and Max Connections

Volume details – Capacity, Storage Efficiency, QoS Level, Snapshot & Backup Details

QoS details – Policy Group, Max Throughput & Workload Count

Short Demo link: Nutanix Collector support for ONTAP

ENHANCEMENTS

Guest OS details are now available in the case of AHV if NGT is installed and enabled. The Guest OS details can be seen within the “VM Summary” page and the same can be viewed under the “vInfo” tab of the XLSX file. 

Collector Portal – Invite & Share option allows you to share your Collector projects with users who are not registered on Collector Portal. This allows you to share your project with your peers or subject matter experts for collaboration and discussion.

RESOLVED ISSUES

Resolved inconsistencies around CPU & Memory dials seen in AHV collections.

Resolved issues in vCenter collections – CPU & Memory charts displaying more than 100%

RESOURCES

Release Notes, User Guide & Security Guide

Collector Help Pages

Collector FAQs 

Product Videos

Public URL: Collector Download Link for Prospects

MyNutanix URL: Collector Download Link for MyNutanix Users 

Posted on

Collector 3.4.1

Nutanix Collector 3.4.1 is the version of Collector which fixes a few critical issues. Along with Collector 3.4.1, there have been continuous updates to Collector Portal as well. The details of the resolved issues are captured below:

RESOLVED ISSUES

Resolved an issue where the collection fails in Hyper-V due to hosts with missing fields.

Resolved an issue with the vCenter collection where the IOPS data is missing.

Resolved an issue in the computation of Median, Average, and the 95th percentile values of the VM Summary Performance Chart.

WHAT’S NEW

vCPU:pCore ratio now available in the VM Summary tab

PORTAL ENHANCEMENTS

Enabled sorting and filtering for all the fields in the VM list tab – both in config view & performance view.

Ability to customize the criteria of VM Provisioning Status

vCPU:pCore ratio now available in the VM Summary tab

Other Resources

For more information please refer to Nutanix Collector 3.4.1 User Guide, Security Guide, Release Notes & Nutanix Collector Portal User Guide

For any other queries related to Nutanix Collector, please refer to Collector FAQs

Download URLs

Public URL: Collector Download Link for Prospects
MyNutanix URL: Collector Download Link for MyNutanix Users 

Posted on

Collector 3.4

Nutanix Collector 3.4 is an updated version that provides the VM provisioning status of the VMs, contains multiple bug fixes as well security enhancements. Along with Collector 3.4, there have been continuous updates to Collector Portal as well. The details of the new functionalities and benefits are captured below:

WHAT’S NEW

VM Provisioning Status in VM Summary & VM List

A new donut providing breakup of VMs by Provisioning Status is now available VMs Summary tab.

VM Provisioning Status column is also added to the VM List tab. The column lists the provisioning status of all the VMs.

Sorting of VM List

VM list tab can now be sorted based on the column values along with the filtering capability

Collector output exported as XLSX now includes the VM List sheet

Exported XLSX includes an additional sheet for VM List that allows you to look at individual VMs and their attributes.

VM level IOPS value available for vCenter Server

In the case of vCenter environments, the VM level IOPS values are available.

Updated column headers in XLSX export

Improved the column headers in exported XLSX by adding relevant units and renaming a few column names.

Collector output exported as XLSX now includes a Metadata sheet

Exported XLSX includes a Metadata sheet that captures information relating to the version of the Collector used to capture the data.

SECURITY ENHANCEMENTS

Windows Bits are now signed

The Collector bundle for Windows is now digitally signed to confirm the software author and guarantee that the code has not been altered or corrupted.

AES asymmetric encryption for enhanced security

AES asymmetric encryption is used for enhanced security while uploading the Collector data to the Collector Portal.

Collector download bundle now includes the Collector Security Guide

The Collector Security Guide is now included in the Collector download bundle.

RESOLVED ISSUES

Resolved an issue that caused login issues when non-ASCII characters are used in the password.

Resolved the drive capacity and quantity issues in the “Host Summary” screen in the case of Prism environments.

The column header units in the XLSX export are updated from MB to MiB for accuracy.

Other Resources

For more information please refer to Nutanix Collector 3.4 User Guide, Security Guide, Release Notes & Nutanix Collector Portal User Guide.

For any other queries related to Nutanix Collector, please refer to Collector FAQs.

Download URLs

Public URL: Collector Download Link for Prospects
MyNutanix URL: Collector Download Link for MyNutanix Users