What is Upgrade sales option in Sizer?
So far Sizer has been focussing on getting a new cluster sized for deploying a new workload or migrating an existing workload from a 3 tier architecture to Nutanix private cloud. However, it did not address the upgrade or expansion use case scenario for an existing Nutanix cluster.
With this option available in Sizer, SEs can recreate an existing Nutanix cluster.
How does Upgrade sales option work in Sizer?
Pretty much similar to how it works for standard scenario/use case. The SE selects the scenario as Upgrade sale by clicking the checkbox below in the scenario page:
Sizer acknowledges that it is a Upgrade use case and will show options accordingly. For workloads, it is not different – meaning, SEs can still go ahead and add details about the workload running on the existing Nutanix cluster, however, they need to know the details of the workload in order to recreate the cluster.
Additionally, they can run Collector to kow all about the workload and import Collector output to recreate the existing cluster.
So how is it different from standard scenario in Sizer?
The key difference in Upgrade vs standard scenario is the availability of the HW. The upgrade scenario will list all older models as well, for ex: for NX, will list G5 & G4 platforms.
While the auto sizing recommends the current HW platforms [like G7 for NX], in both cases, the manual option will have older G4/G5 NX platforms for SEs to recreate the existing cluster with the original NX model which can be (and most likely) be the older platforms which is currently end of sale.
Please see the image below for reference:
What other ways is this feature helpful apart from upgrade ?
This feature is also helpful for expansion purpose. Users can recreate the existing cluster with G4/G5 models and add another node for expansion, that node could be G7. And this cluster with mixed nodes of existing G4s and new G7s can be created in Sizer with this option.
Creating a Frontline Quote (including budgetary quote) for Upgrade scenarios in Sizer?
Sizer also allows you to generate a Frontline quote or Budgetary quote for an upgrade scenario. Since Upgrade Scenario deals with an existing Nutanix cluster deployed at the customer site, users have an option to mark the already existing nodes that are already part of the solution as “Existing”. Sizer won’t be generating the hardware quote and the licenses for those existing nodes as they are already purchased by the customer. If the existing license is a Life of Device license and if the customer plans to move to a CBL license model, an additional software license needs to be added manually.
The BOM generated by Sizer would contain the overall solution with both the existing and new nodes and the license quantities required for the overall solution.