Introduction – Please Read First
The questions here are to assist with ensuring that you’re gathering the necessary information from a customer/prospect to provide an appropriate solution to meet their requirements. This is in addition to capturing specific metrics from tools such as Nutanix Collector or RVTools.
The list is not exhaustive and will need to be adapted to the appropriate audience. It should be used as a guide to make sure you’ve conducted a thorough discovery. It is important that you don’t just ask a question without understanding the reason why and why it matters – this leads to providing an optimal solution.
Always ask open questions (“Tell me more…”) and where possible avoid talking about Nutanix products and capabilities so as not to derail the gathering information. If asked, suggest this will form part of a follow-up workshop.
Questions marked with an asterisk (*) may require the assistance of a Portfolio Specialist or Solution Architect 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. The questions will help guide you to completing the customer’s requirements, constraints, assumptions, and risks for your opportunity.
This is a live document, and questions will be expanded and updated periodically.
Revision History
Revision 2025.1 Darren Woollard March 19, 2025
Initial Publication Lane Leverett November 2020
Server Virtualization
Generic & State of The Union Questions
Generic & State of The Union Questions
1. What does your server virtualization environment look like today?
a. Hardware – single or multiple vendors? By choice, risk mitigation or from mergers?
b. Software – the hypervisor and the eco-system that surrounds it (not just the hypervisor components, think of self-service, build automation, micro-segmentation, ticketing workflow, backup, etc…)
2. What do you find most challenging about your current virtualization environment (examples below)?
a. Management?
b. Business/people process is manual (causing slow turnaround, bad perception of I.T.)
c. Upgrading/patching across multiple sites
4. Needing 3rd party software to complete certain tasks
3. In your virtualized environment, what keeps you up at night?
4. What is working well in your current virtualization environment that you want to ensure is continued?
5. What does your cloud strategy currently look like?
a. Private Cloud, Hybrid Cloud, Public Cloud, Multi-Cloud, “We’re Cloud First”
i. Why has this strategy been chosen?
ii. Who is directing/championing this strategy?
6. What is the desired position when it comes to utilizing Public Cloud provider services? In the next, say 1-3 years
a. Is a distributed multi-cloud operating model perceived to be the best way to deliver the services of the business?
b. Is there a preference of a specific Public Cloud provider?
c. Will some services remain on-premises and some within the Public Cloud?
d. Will some services transform to SaaS offerings during a digital transformation project removing the need for the on-prem application?
e. What are the top 3 concerns about operating in a distributed ‘Cloud’ model?
Architecture/Solution Specific Questions
1. Do you have a preferred x86 server vendor standard?
a. Are you happy with this vendor?
b. If so, what do you enjoy/appreciate the most?
c. If not, what do you find the most challenging?
2. What is your preferred storage vendor for virtualization?
a. Are you leveraging RDM (Raw Device Mappings) for your workloads?
b. If so, can you please provide some workload examples?
i. Oracle, MS CSV’s, SCSI-3 Shared Devices
3. What is your preferred storage vendor for physical workloads?
a. How do the physical servers connect to the storage presentation?
b. What is the storage presentation protocol to these devices (iSCSI, NFS, etc…)
4. How do you currently connect your storage to your x86 servers?
a. NFS, FC, FCOE, iSCSI
5. What SAN/Storage hardware is in place today?
a. HDD/Hybrid/All Flash/etc…?
b. How many spindles of each?
c. How many Controllers/Storage Processors?
6. What does the logical disk layout look like?
a. RAID Level?
b. Number of disks per RAID Group?
7. Who is your preferred hypervisor vendor and what version(s) are deployed?
a. If multiple vendors are used, is this due to architectural reasons?
8. How open would you be to considering other hypervisors?
9. Who is your preferred networking vendor?
10. Are you using traditional 3-Tier networking or Leaf-Spine networking?
11. What does your networking architecture/rack design look like?
12. Are you integrating hypervisor networking and what are your current networking standards?
a. Cisco ACI / VMware NSX / Arista / Cumulus
13. A collection of data from your current environment is preferred in order that a point in time capture can be reviewed. Can we use Nutanix Collector, RVTools (VMware estates), Dell LiveOptics, Microsoft MAP, Oracle AWR, or any other inventory collection you may have used to gather at a minimum, the following information?:
a. # of Virtual Machines
b. # of vCPUs
c. Current vCPU to Physical Core oversubscription
d. Current Physical CPU Model In hosts (for SpecInt Sizing/Comparison- http://ewams.net/?view=How_to_Size_the_CPUs_of_New_Systems_Using_my_Specint_Rated_Tool )
e. Allocated memory
f. Provisioned storage
g. Consumed storage
h. Largest vCPU allocation (for NUMA design)
i. Largest Memory allocation (for NUMA design)
j. Working set size (what will sit in SSD for Hybrid)-can be determined from daily incremental backups (https://www.joshodgers.com/2014/09/25/rule-of-thumb-sizing-for-storage-performance-in-the-new-world/ )
Backup & Data Protection Questions
See BCDR Discovery Guidance Doc