Author: Walt O'Maley

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January 2019 Sprint

January Sprint 1

Key enhancements

  • We heard from field and partners that getting either budgetary quotes or getting real quotes created is well hard (I can’t repeat what we heard in interviews as I want to keep the channel G rated ).  Partners were saying it can take a week to get either budgetary quote or real quote going.  Distributors were saying we retype what is in the Sizer BOM to create a quote.  Nutanix SE’s saying this is really hard with CBL.

We knew we can help and so we took it on big time in last three months and now in summary we can say a partner or NTNX field  person can create either a budgetary or real quote for any business model be it appliance, disagregated Nutanix, XC Core, CBL SW sale .   Attached is the matrix with details.  I believe this is about improving sales velocity.

  • We now have the  new File licenses going with Standalone cluster.  So here for Files Pro you can create the Files cluster with IONLY the Files skus attached (no AOS licenses).  More changes coming but big step
  • Data Center and ROBO Solutions. These are addons for your HCI recommendation where we add right amount of things like Prism Pro or Flow.

Product Updates

  • We always pull the latest from SFDC for Nutanix products
  • Implemented several Nutanix product rules like allowed CPUs for 3070 if GPU is desired.
  • We always pull the latest from HCL for SW only vendors

January Sprint 2

Key enhancements

  • Include ECX in auto sizing. We always took in the savings after the recommendation was determined and so the HDD utilization was accurate.  We hadn’t taken that into account though in determining the recommendation.  Now that we have really large workloads for Files and soon Buckets this became an issue.  So now Sizer recommendation is accurate
  • Clone Workload Feature. This is cool.  Define a workload and can clone it and then just modify what you want.  For example, you want five different Server Virtualization workloads that are all similar but different.  Define one and clone/edit the rest.
  • Thick VMs sizing logic improved when uploading Collector or RVTools outputs. Now no compression is taken.  A subtle but important Sizing improvement

UX improvements

  • Budgetary Quote – Added Hardware Support quote line
  • Making List view as default dashboard view instead of grid.
  • Implement Open/Closed Opportunity Filter – UX

Product Updates

  • New model – Fujitsu XF8050 HY/AF
  • HPE are DL380/360 again instead of DX . There was a problem with HCL but addressed it
  • We always pull the latest from SFDC for Nutanix products
  • Implemented several Nutanix product rules like allowed CPUs for 3070 if GPU is desired.
  • We always pull the latest from HCL for SW only vendors

 

Coming soon

  • Buckets !! Should come out this week.  I’ll announce it later but you can start thinking about Buckets by sizing different opportunities
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Introduction

Sizer Users can can size for different type of business requirements which may require sizing for:

  • NX Appliances
  • NX Core
  • Software Only Vendors

Sizer Users, both Nutanix Employees and Partners (resellers and distributors), can generate following documents with the help of Sizer for any of the above mentioned scenarios:

  • BOM
  • Budgetary Quote
  • Salesforce Quotes

Contents of these documents (BOM, Budgetary quote and Salesforce Quote) change significantly based on whether one is sizing for NX-Appliance, NX-Core or CBL (Software Only vendors, Dell XC, HX Certified). Most of these changes are related to license and support products. Sizer uses information present in Salesforce Account and Opportunity to determine the correct license and support options. Following flowchart diagram explains how we make such decisions:

 

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Partners: BOM and Salesforce Quotes

Requirements

  • In order to generate correct BOM, Budgetary quote and Salesforce Quote, user must enter the Opportunity ID or Deal Registration Approval ID.
  • In case of Nutanix models, Opportunity value helps Sizer determine if the sizing needs to be done for appliance or hardware disaggregated. Based on the opportunity value,  user will be presented with support and license selection page which is applicable to software choice or appliance sizing.
  • Opportunity value plays a significant role when sizing with Non Nutanix Software only Vendors. If Opportunity is marked for Software only, then then user will be presented with support and license selection page which is applicable to CBL, otherwise user won’t see any support and license selection page.
  • Opportunity is a required field when creating a Salesforce Quote. It also ensure that Sizer isn’t sending quotes creating for velocity program to non-velocity opportunities.
  • If user doesn’t have the opportunity information but would still like to size for CBL/Software choice, one can do so my selecting “Software Choice Only” option from the create scenario page.

Steps to push BOM & Quote to Salesforce

  • Linking scenario to an opportunity or deal reg. Two features are enabled for the distributors
    • Upload BoM to Salesforce from Sizer
    • Generate Salesforce Quote from Sizer
  • In Salesforce, BoM and Quote are dependent on an opportunity, so to upload a BoM or to generate a Salesforce Quote, Sizer needs to know which opportunity to use. A user can provide opportunity information on the scenario creation page. Any of the following IDs/numbers is acceptable:
    • 15- or 18-character Opportunity ID
    • Deal registration approval ID
  • Opportunity & Deal registration approval ID can be found from DQT opportunity

  • Once the sizing is completed by adding the workloads, selecting & modifying financial assumptions, proceed with the actions to generate BoM, Generate Budgetary Quote, Push BoM to Sales force, Generate Salesforce Quote
  • On the left panel/sidebar of Scenario detail page, there are actions (generate BoM, Generate Budgetary Quote, Push BoM to Sales force, Generate Salesforce Quote) can be found

  • Clicking on “Push BoM to Salesforce” will launch a modal/pop-up. User can confirm the opportunity and push the BoM to Salesforce. Successful upload will close the modal and display a message on the page

  • Clicking on the “Generate Salesforce Quote” will launch a modal/pop-up. User can confirm the opportunity a license/support options before generating the Salesforce Quote. Successful upload will close the modal and display a message on the page

  • The opportunity information can be modified (removed, updated) only by clicking on the “Edit Scenario” action
  • Email notifications, containing link to opportunity in case of BoM upload and link to quote in case of Quote, will be sent to Users (Distributor, Opportunity Owner, Primary SE)
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Advice for Large File workloads

Please contact  vikram.gupta@nutanix.com for assistance

Here is the Nutanix Files Sizing Guide

Nutanix Files Sizing Guide

 

Adjusting nodes manually

In case you are doing a manual sizing you want to make sure it meets N+1 resiliency.

This is easy to check and adjust if needed.

Go to manual sizing and decrement the node count.

 

Two things to keep in mind

  1.  The minimum number of nodes for Files is 4 as there is a FSVM on three nodes and 4th node is needed for N+1  (one node can be taken offline and still 3 nodes to run the 3 FSVMs).  So 4 nodes are needed independent of capacity.
  2. Second, like any Nutanix cluster you want to make sure you still are at N+1.  Here is table that shows you max HDD utilization (Files is a HDD heavy workload) you want to assure N+1.   For example, if you have 6 nodes and the HDD utilization is UNDER 75% you can be assured that you are at N+1.  Here the N+0 target (utilization after lose a node) is 90%, meaning with a node offline the utilization is 90% or less.
Node N+0  Utilization Target Max Threshold  for N+1
4 90% 67.50%
5 90% 72.00%
6 90% 75.00%
7 90% 77.14%
8 90% 78.75%
9 90% 80.00%
10 90% 81.00%
11 90% 81.82%
12 90% 82.50%
13 90% 83.08%
14 90% 83.57%
15 90% 84.00%
16 90% 84.38%
17 90% 84.71%
18 90% 85.00%
19 0.9 85.26%
20 0.9 85.50%
21 0.9 85.71%
22 0.9 85.91%
23 0.9 86.09%
24 0.9 86.25%
25 0.9 86.40%
26 0.9 86.54%
27 0.9 86.67%
28 0.9 86.79%
29 0.9 86.90%
30 0.9 87.00%

 

 

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Adjusting Nutanix File node count in Manual

Right now Sizer’s automatic sizing does not take into account Erasure Coding savings when it figures out the recommendation.  Fortunately the savings is taken into account in terms of HDD utilization.

So the usable capacity and the utilization is accurate, but the recommended node count could be high depending on the settings for compression among other things

This is easy to check and adjust if needed.

Go to manual sizing and decrement the node count.

 

Two things to keep in mind

  1.  The minimum number of nodes for Files is 4 as there is a FSVM on three nodes and 4th node is needed for N+1  (one node can be taken offline and still 3 nodes to run the 3 FSVMs).  So 4 nodes are needed independent of capacity.
  2. Second, like any Nutanix cluster you want to make sure you still are at N+1.  Here is table that shows you max HDD utilization (Files is a HDD heavy workload) you want to assure N+1.   For example, if you have 6 nodes and the HDD utilization is UNDER 75% you can be assured that you are at N+1.  Here the N+0 target (utilization after lose a node) is 90%, meaning with a node offline the utilization is 90% or less.
Node N+0  Utilization Target Max Threshold  for N+1
4 90% 67.50%
5 90% 72.00%
6 90% 75.00%
7 90% 77.14%
8 90% 78.75%
9 90% 80.00%
10 90% 81.00%
11 90% 81.82%
12 90% 82.50%
13 90% 83.08%
14 90% 83.57%
15 90% 84.00%
16 90% 84.38%
17 90% 84.71%
18 90% 85.00%
19 0.9 85.26%
20 0.9 85.50%
21 0.9 85.71%
22 0.9 85.91%
23 0.9 86.09%
24 0.9 86.25%
25 0.9 86.40%
26 0.9 86.54%
27 0.9 86.67%
28 0.9 86.79%
29 0.9 86.90%
30 0.9 87.00%
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December 2018 Sprint

In month of December we made following enhancements

  • Partners can now generate Salesforce Quote for Nutanix Appliance. This is first time they can create the quote and then their distributor applies discounts and request approvals in the Distributor Quote Tool. We will enable quoting for Nutanix Disaggregated, XC Core, HX Core, CBL in January.
  • Sizer now integrate with Hardware Compatability List for all SW vendors including HP, Cisco and Dell PE. The benefit is we can keep Sizer in sync with the changes more consistently.
  • Nutanix Files enhancements

 Increased maximum capacity to 10 PB (Petabytes)

Support for Nutanix File licenses. The budgetary quote, quote and BOM includes the new licenses

  • HX Core support
  • Intel server support (new vendor)
  • NX-5155-G6 in Sizer
  • ECX and Block Awareness together supported
  • Sizer Wiki Search – find information faster
  • Budgetary Quote changes for CBL
  • Oracle AWR tool support
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Sizer BOT

SizerBot is here to assist the Sizer team is answering questions that are of repetitive nature. This guide breaks down our approach for Phase 1 and our plan to continuously build on feedback generated.

 

Types of questions on the Sizer Channel

We classify questions on Sizer into two specific buckets:

  1. The first set of questions typically hold answers based on unique configurations and combinations of sizing
  2. The second set of questions are more generic such that its answers can be found through the wiki

 

What questions does the bot address?

Extensive research within the fields of ‘conversational AI’ are underway to mine through the first set of questions. This requires larger sets of data as well as the ability to interpret the context of questions, which we are currently exploring for the next few phases of the bot.

 

For the first phase we are targeting a small subset of repetitive questions that we are building on using content from this channel as well as from the Sizer product managers.

 

How does the bot work?

Based on a list of questions stored, we use a matching algorithm to identify if a similar question, as asked on the slack channel, exists in the database. While we can get the bot to provide a response to every question asked on the slack channel, we are avoiding this by increasing the threshold to 90%. This means, unless the probability of the match is greater than 90%, no answer will be provided. This is often referred to as the trade-off between precision and recall which helps address the question of do we want the bot to provide more answers, or do we want the bot to provide more answers accurately?

 

Improving the bots performance

We currently have two ways of improving the bots performance:

  1. When a question is answered by the bot – The feedback provided is used to upvote or downvote the bots response
  2. When a question is not answered by the bot – We first identify if the question is repetitive in nature, if so the questions are automatically logged back to a database through a separate slack channel

 

Suggestions

 

We are always open to more suggestions and recommendations on how to improve this process. You can reach out to revathi.anilkumar@nutanix.com with your feedback.

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November 2018 Sprint

November Sprint

  • Collector 1.1 Support  – Sizer to include median values from Collector.  We mine the VCenter data and get actual core usage.  THIS VERY COOL AS CAN SAVE CBL CORES WHICH COSTS LOTS OF $$.
  • Velocity models for partners and Nutanix users –  Velocity models are the NX-1065-G6 and can be up to 8 nodes but offer better discounts.
  • XC Core support.  Quotes and BOM show CBL and XC Core. Budgetary quote coming soon
  • Applied spectre adjustment for VDI and Xenapp – Windows 7 – 20% hit, Windows 10 version 1709 – 7% hit, Windows 10 version 1803 – 11% hit
  • Performance Improvements.  Homogeneous sizing typically reduced by 50%, while heterogeneous sizing reduced by 30%
  • File Services updates like setting Erasure Coding to ON by default
  • Budgetary quote improvements – can now apply discounts for SW Only quotes or NX Disaggregated quotes
  • New product updates for various vendors
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October 2018 Sprint

Hi everyone

We released the October sprint

• The BIG thing is Hardware Disaggregated quoting is now in Sizer. As a SFDC user you can start a scenario and tie it to a account and opportunity as you do today. If that account is a Software Choice account (where disaggregated is used) then Sizer will create the proper quote where it includes the Software licenses (Capacity based licenses), Hardware and the Hardware support. In addition, you will see that quote reflected in the BOM. Soon the budgetary quote will be provided too. If the customer is not enabled for Software Choice then the regular appliance quote can be created as it is today.

• Collector and RVTools summary (excel you receive from Sizer after uploading the tool output) now gives explanation when certain VMs are not sized. For example, if the VM was powered off.

• SFDC syncing on daily basis. Now we pull SFDC changes once a day automatically. So any price changes or product changes are updated in Sizer. This is key for sizing but also when we show budgetary numbers

• Nutanix G5 models except the NX-1175S-G5, 8150-G5 and 3155G-G5 are in manual only since only these G5 models can still be quoted.  In manual sizing you can still do a sizing with the G5 models.