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We have a Walk Me – Product Tour for users who are first time login or log in after long gaps to get them acquainted with the product or new features.. mostly customers or prospects..
Here is how the walk me navigates through different sections of the UI across the product pages:
Nutanix Expansion Explorer is a new sales enablement product to help our sales team explore expansion opportunities for our existing accounts. As a partner, access is controlled by the Account Owner.
The description of each column is documented below:
| Column Name | Description |
| Lead ID | Unique lead ID for the cluster that needs to undergo a full hardware refresh |
| Account Name | Name of the Account that owns this cluster. |
| Account Owner | The Account Owner who is associated with the lead ID. |
| Cluster Name | Name of the cluster for which the lead is generated. |
| Cluster Details | Provides the node quantities and the hardware model that is part of this cluster. |
| Recommended Sizing | A link to autogenerated Sizer solution based on the cluster workload information gathered via Nutanix Insights. The hyperlink redirects the user to the scenario in Sizer post-authentication. |
| Create Date | The date on which this lead was generated by Expansion Explorer. |
| Potential Deal Size | The total list price of the recommended solution including both the hardware and software is recommended by Sizer. |
| Channel SE | Nutanix channel SE to reach out if you need any help with sizing activities. |
| Assigned Date | The date on which this lead was assigned to the user. |
If you need any additional information or resources refer here.
Nutanix delivers the Unified Storage Design, as a bundled solution for storage consolidation with the SMB, NFS and S3 protocols, that includes hardware, software, and services to accelerate and simplify the deployment and implementation process. This Validated Design features a full-stack solution for unified storage deployments that integrates multiple products including AOS, AHV, Prism Pro, Files, Objects, Flow, F5, Mine, and HYCU.The Unified storage validated design sizer reference scenarios have the following features:
The overall Unified Storage Design can optionally include the management and backup cluster as defined in the Hybrid Cloud NVD (On prem (Large)) reference scenario with the following features:
A dedicated management cluster in each Availability Zone provides increased availability, security, operations, and performance. The Files or Objects clusters have a defined maximum size of 8 nodes each, which provides a reasonable maintenance window for rolling firmware and software upgrades and rebuild operations during failure scenarios given the node density and drive sizes. Smaller workload clusters can be deployed, but the maximum size should not exceed 8 nodes.
It is extremely important to review the entire Hybrid Cloud: Unified Storage Design on the Solutions Support portal to understand the complete Hybrid Cloud validated solution.
For questions or additional information:
Nutanix delivers the Disaster Recovery to Nutanix Cloud Clusters on AWS Design, as a bundled solution for general server virtualization that includes hardware, software, and services to accelerate and simplify the deployment and implementation process. This Validated Design features a full-stack solution for hybrid cloud deployments that integrates multiple products including AOS, AHV, Prism Pro, Calm, Flow, Leap, Mine, and HYCU.The Validated Design – Disaster Recovery to Nutanix Cloud Clusters on AWS Design sizer reference scenarios have the following features:
A dedicated management cluster in each Availability Zone provides increased availability, security, operations, and performance. The workload cluster has a defined maximum size of 16 nodes, which provides a reasonable maintenance window for rolling firmware and software upgrades. Smaller workload clusters can be deployed, but the maximum size should not exceed 16 nodes.
| Small | Medium | Large |
| 1 vCPU | 2 vCPU | 4 vCPU |
| 8 GB RAM | 16 GB RAM | 32GB RAM |
| 50GB SSD | 100GB SSD | 200GB SSD |
| Small VMs | Medium VMs | Large VMs | |
| Maximum running VMs per on-premises workload cluster building block | 1,860 | 1,380 | 690 |
| Maximum running VMs per node on-premises | 124 | 92 | 46 |
| Maximum deployed VMs per workload cluster on AWS | 1,350 | 675 | 330 |
| Maximum running VMs per node on AWS Workload Cluster | 90 | 45 | 22 |
It is extremely important to review the entire Hybrid Cloud: Disaster Recovery to Nutanix Cloud Clusters on AWS Design on the Solutions Support portal to understand the complete Hybrid Cloud validated solution.
For questions or additional information:
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
RESOLVED ISSUES
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
In the early days, Nutanix was dealing with both hardware and software sales. Nutanix sold hardware nodes along with the Life Of Device (LOD) software license before transitioning into software and subscription billing. Nutanix started the transition to the software journey back in 2017. Before the journey began, Nutanix had already sold more than 100K nodes. All these nodes we sold along with the LOD software license. The majority of the hardware sold pre-2018 were NX-G5/G6 boxes, roughly 120K+, and most of the NX-G5 & G6 nodes are already past the End of Maintenance (EOM) dates. These nodes will be reaching the End of Support Life in the next few months and all support for the product will cease unless entitled to an active extended support contract, which can be quite expensive.
This means there is a great opportunity to refresh a vast number of nodes with aging hardware without support. At the same time, the customers have to migrate from LOD to subscription-based licensing, Capacity Based License (CBL). While this is a great opportunity to refresh the hardware and migrate the software license, it is a herculean task for the sales teams to identify these opportunities at the right time. Expansion Explorer 1.0 aims to solve this problem and guide our Nutanix Sales team & Partners to go after these opportunities.
There is more than one persona for Expansion Explorer, the initial launch is limited to Nutanix users & select Partners. Within Nutanix, we have multiple personas – Account Owner, Customer Success Representative, and Systems Engineer. The Systems SEs within Nutanix can be an SE working on the solution or a channel SE guiding the Partner SE.
For the Account Owner, Expansion Explorer gives access to high-quality sales leads and the associated potential ACV for existing accounts so that the Account Owners can quickly retire their quota.
For the Systems Engineer, Expansion Explorer automatically gathers precise workload requirements for Pulse-enabled clusters and provides a prebuilt Sizer-recommended solution as starting point to simplify the sizing exercise.
Expansion Explorer Discovery Engine periodically scans for all the clusters that are calling back home via Pulse. In version 1.0, Expansion Explorer identifies all clusters containing NX nodes that are EOM and need tech refresh. These clusters are then mapped to the respective account owners, CSR, and SE by looking up the data in SFDC. For each cluster that needs a hardware refresh, we gather the workloads being run on them and feed the workload information to Sizer. Sizer comes up with a recommended hardware solution to run these workloads on the latest NX hardware along with the subscription-based Portfolio 2.0 licenses.
Expansion Explorer identifies leads on behalf of the Account Owner and comes up with a Sizer-recommended solution for the Systems Engineer. All the leads that belong to the given Account Owner are then pushed to the respective Account Owner, CSR, and SE’s Dashboard. The Account Owner would also be notified via email digest about all the leads at the end of the periodic scan.
The Account Owner is the gatekeeper of the leads generated by the Expansion Explorer. The Account Owner can look at the following details of each lead:
| Column Name | Description |
| Lead ID | Unique lead ID for the cluster that needs to undergo a full hardware refresh |
| Account Name | Name of the Account that owns this cluster, the hyperlink redirects the user to the SDFC Account post-authentication. |
| Cluster Name | Name of the cluster for which the lead is generated, the hyperlink redirects the user to the cluster within Nutanix Insights post-authentication. |
| Cluster Details | Provides the node quantities and the hardware model that is part of this cluster. |
| Recommended Sizing | A link to autogenerated Sizer solution based on the cluster workload information gathered via Nutanix Insights. The hyperlink redirects the user to the scenario in Sizer post-authentication. |
| Create Date | The date on which this lead was generated by Expansion Explorer. |
| Potential Deal Size | The total list price of the recommended solution including both the hardware and software is recommended by Sizer. |
The Account Owner’s dashboard contains two tabs – Open and Accepted.
Any new lead generated by the Expansion Explorer lands in the “Open” tab.
The Account Owner can either “Accept” or “Discard” the lead.
The Account Owner can accept a lead by clicking “Accept”. The below dialog is presented to the Account Owner on clicking “Accept”. The Account Owner can then go ahead and assign the recommendation to either Nutanix Systems Engineer and hand it over to a Partner to take it forward.
The above screenshot demonstrates assigning the lead to a Nutanix SE. The Account Owner just has to type in the first few characters of the SE name to search, select the SE and then click Accept button.
Upon accepting and assigning, the lead moves from the “Open” tab to the “Accepted” tab. At the same time, the assignee of the lead would receive an email. Below is a sample email on assigning the lead to Nutanix SE.
The recipient can then click on “View in Expansion Explorer” or login into Expansion Explorer to view the assigned leads.
The Account Owner can accept a lead by clicking “Accept”. The Account Owner can then go ahead and assign the lead to either Nutanix Systems Engineer and hand it over to a Partner to take it forward. The below screenshot demonstrates assigning the lead to a Partner.
The Account Owner just has to choose the partner from the select list of Partners. Expansion Explorer uses customer Insights data to generate leads, which is considered confidential information of the customer. Sharing customer confidential information with our partners requires consent from the customer. The Account Owner must upload email documentation of customer consent in order to proceed. We have provided a sample email template to get consent from the customer.
Once the customer consent email is uploaded, the Partner SE & associated Channel SE from the Nutanix side is automatically populated as seen in the screenshot below.
The Account Owner can update the Partner SE or Channel SE if needed before proceeding to accept the lead. Upon accepting, both the Partner SE & Channel SE are notified via email. The lead will show up in their dashboard as well.
In case the Account Owner finds the lead irrelevant, there is an option to discard the lead by clicking on the “Discard” action. The following dialog shall appear and ask for the reason for discarding, the reason provided shall be used to improve the product in the future.
The user can select one of the predefined reasons or select “Others” and optionally provide additional information before submitting.
At any time, if the Account Owner wants to view the accepted leads, they can switch to the “Accepted” tab. The “Accepted” tab displays all the information that could be seen in the “Open” tab along with the assignee of the lead. Below is a sample screenshot displaying the “Accepted” tab:
The Account Owner can reassign an existing lead if required by clicking on the ellipsis points and selecting “Reassign”. The below dialog shall appear allowing the user to reassign the lead.
The Account Owner can update the new assignee and the lead is reassigned along with an email notification to the new assignee.
Optionally, the Account Owner can also decide to discard the lead that is already assigned to the SE. Discarding an assigned lead too can be achieved via ellipsis points and selecting “Discard”. The user will be prompted to provide a reason for discarding the lead.
The Nutanix Systems Engineer would find leads populated in the Expansion Explorer dashboard when the Account Owner assigns the lead. Similar to the Account Owner, the Nutanix System Engineer can view the below information for each lead:
| Column Name | Description |
| Lead ID | Unique lead ID for the cluster that needs to undergo a full hardware refresh |
| Account Name | Name of the Account that owns this cluster, the hyperlink redirects the user to the SDFC Account post-authentication. |
| Account Owner | The Account Owner who is associated with the lead ID. |
| Cluster Name | Name of the cluster for which the lead is generated, the hyperlink redirects the user to the cluster within Nutanix Insights post-authentication. |
| Cluster Details | Provides the node quantities and the hardware model that is part of this cluster. |
| Recommended Sizing | A link to autogenerated Sizer solution based on the cluster workload information gathered via Nutanix Insights. The hyperlink redirects the user to the scenario in Sizer post-authentication. |
| Create Date | The date on which this lead was generated by Expansion Explorer. |
| Potential Deal Size | The total list price of the recommended solution including both the hardware and software is recommended by Sizer. |
| Assigned Date | The date on which this lead was assigned to the user. |
Below is a sample screenshot of Nutanix Systems Engineer’s Dashboard
Nutanix Systems Engineer can then refer to the recommended sizing and analyze the workload information and validate if the information is accurate – Refer to “Details about Recommended Sizing”. It is also recommended that the Systems Engineer checks with the customer on any plans to expand or decommission existing workloads. Based on the analysis and discussion with the customer, the SE can tweak the sizing to arrive at a solution that meets the customer’s requirements.
In case, the SE is held with other work, the SE can decide to reassign the lead to a peer SE via ellipsis points and selecting “Reassign”. The below dialog shall allow the SE to reassign the lead.
Upon reassignment, the lead will be moved out of the SE’s dashboard and appear in the new assignee’s dashboard. Email notification shall also be sent out to the new assignee about the lead assignment.
Q. How are the leads being generated?
A: Nutanix Expansion Explorer periodically scans for clusters that are calling back home via Pulse & Insights, and checks if any of the existing customer clusters need a tech refresh. Version 1.0 looks for clusters that need a full tech refresh, subsequent versions of the product will also identify clusters that need a partial node refresh.
Q. How is the “Potential ACV” calculated for the lead?
A: The Potential ACV for a lead is calculated by applying a standard discount on NCI Pro licenses needed for the recommended hardware with Production level support.
Q. How is the “Recommended Sizing” generated?
A: Nutanix Expansion Explorer gathers the workloads that are being run on the clusters that need full tech refresh. Once the workload requirements are gathered, those are then fed to Nutanix Sizer. Sizer then comes up with an optimal solution to run those workloads on the latest NX generation hardware.
Q. Can I see how the solution looks for other hardware vendors?
A: Yes, you can change the hardware vendor of your preferred choice. You can change the hardware vendor on the Sizer scenario to any of the 18+ vendors possible in Sizer including NC2 on AWS and NC2 on Azure.
Q. Why can’t I edit the Sizer Scenario associated with the lead generated by Expansion Explorer?
A: The Sizer Scenario associated with the lead is generated by the system user, “Expansion Explorer” and used for reference. You would need to “Clone” the scenario to edit the workloads and/or solution.
Q. Why can’t I find a few G5/G6 clusters that belong to my account?
A: There are a couple of reasons why you may be missing G5/G6 clusters
Subsequent releases of the product are going to identify clusters that contain a mix of NX-G5/G6 and other generation nodes. For now, you can email us at expansion-explorer-help@nutanix.com or Slack us via #expansion-explorer to generate the leads for you.
Q. How can the Account Owner view the leads already accepted?
A: All accepted leads are moved to the “Accepted” tab, the “Accepted” tab also shows the SEs who are working on the leads. The “Open” tab shows the leads that are new and yet to be acted upon by the Account Owner.
Q. Can I discard an already accepted lead?
A: Yes, if you are the Account Owner you can discard an already accepted lead using the action “Discard”.
Q. How can I view the lead that I discarded by mistake?
A: Unfortunately, you can’t view discarded leads. We do plan to have the option to restore discarded leads in the future. For now, you can reach out to us via Slack or email and we can bring back your discarded lead under the “Open” tab.
Q. How can I update the SE associated with the lead?
A: Both the Account Owner & SE can update the Systems Engineer associated with the lead via the “Reassign” option.
Q. Does Nutanix Expansion Explorer autogenerate SFDC opportunities for discovered leads?
A: No, we do not autogenerate SFDC opportunities. You will have to create an opportunity on your own.
Q. Can I link an existing SFDC opportunity to my leads?
A: Currently, we don’t have the option to create or link an existing SFDC opportunity to the lead in Nutanix Expansion Explorer.
Q. How can I assign the lead to a Partner?
A: The leads generated via Expansion Explorer contain customer confidential data gathered via Nutanix Insights. At this moment, we are not authorized to pass this information to any 3rd party outside Nutanix. We are working with the Legal team to have a process in place to open up passing recommendations to Partners.
Q. When are we going to open up the product for Partners?
A: We are currently working with the Legal team to have a process in place to open the product to Partners. We are going to pilot with a limited set of Partners at GA subject to Legal approval.
Q. When will Nutanix Expansion Explorer GA?
A: Nutanix Expansion Explorer will during SKO, 22-25 Aug. On the Monday following SKO, all Account Owners should be able to view leads if any of their existing accounts’ G5/G6 clusters need a full hardware refresh.
Q. Why is the “Potential Deal Size” of the lead showing as 0?
A: The supply chain situation is pretty volatile and sometimes the hardware parts recommended by Sizer aren’t quotable. This can lead to failure when trying to fetch the deal size. We recommend you clone the scenario and try generating the Frontline or budgetary quote. Failure in the generation of the quote should guide you to the next step and help determine the potential deal size. Feel free to reach out to us via Slack or email in case this does not resolve the issue.
Q. Is there any enablement content for Expansion Explorer?
A: Yes, we have a course on Nutanix University – Nutanix Expansion Explorer
Q. Where can I report issues in the product?
A: You can email us at expansion-explorer-help@nutanix.com or Slack us via #expansion-explorer
Q. How can I give feedback and suggestion?
A: You can slack us at #expansion-explorer or email us at expansion-explorer-help@nutanix.com. You can also feel free to reach the Product Manager via email or Slack.