Author: Arun Vijapur

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Product FAQs

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

  • The clusters are not calling back the data home via Nutanix Pulse & Insights
  • The clusters have other non-G5/G6 generation nodes within them
  • The clusters are already running CBL licenses and there is no incentive for sales reps

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.

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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

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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

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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