What is Nutanix AHV ?

Nutanix AHV is a Nutanix own developed native bare metal Type-1 hypervisor, Nutanix AHV stand for / full form is Nutanix Acropolis Hypervisor ( AHV ). Nutanix AHV is best KVM based Type-1 bare metal hypervisor can directly install on Nutanix HCI certified any OEM hardware server / node i.e SuperMicro HX, IBM CS , Lenovo HX , HPE ProLiant, HPE Apollo, Intel Data Center Blocks, Cisco UCS, Dell XC etc.

Nutanix AHV hypervisor well know today for Nutanix Hyper-converged Infrastructure HCI with cloud enabled features and functionality.

Nutanix AHV History

Once upon a time, Nutanix was in new born child initial state and trying to evolve itself as new technology inventor known as Hyper-converged infrastructure HCI to combine the Compute , Storage and Networking in a single stack.

That time Nutanix uses the very popular hypervisor known as VMware vSphere ESX hypervisor as bare metal hypervisor to build up the Nutanix HCI infra. Along with it Nutanix was paying a big amount to VMware to using VMware vSphere ESX hypervisor.

That time Nutanix 100% was depended on VMware vSphere ESX hypervisor to deploy the Nutanix HCI infra.

Finally, Nutanix CEO ( Dheeraj Pandey ) and engineers re-thinked about to take initiative to develop the Nutanix its own bare metal Type-1 hypervisor to remove the VMware vsphere ESX hypervisor dependency and make the Nutanix HCI platform hypervisor independent and hypervisor agnostic to support the more than one hypervisor / multiple hypervisor on single hardware.

After 2010 Nutanix developed is own native bare metal Type-1 hypervisor with name Nutanix AHV ( Nutanix Acropolis Hypervisor ) to using the open source hypervisor known as KVM ( Kernel-based Virtual Machine ).

Nutanix AHV Ecosystem

Nutanix engineers has developed the Nutanix AHV hypervisor ( Nutanix Acropolis Hypervisor ) best suited Type-1 bare metal hypervisor with larger supported ecosystem with most known Guest operating systems, software, application, technology and hardware OEM brands.

Nutanix AHV Hypervisor supported Ecosystem included Guest operating system, Applications and Technology and OEM hardwares as given below:

Nutanix Supported Ecosystem – Guest Operating System

1. Microsoft Windows client and Server operating System
2. SUSE linux based operating systems
3. Redhat Linux based operating sysetms
4. Ubuntu Debian Linux based operating system
5. CentOS Linux based operating system

Read more : Nutanix AHV Supported Guest OS List

Nutanix Supported Ecosystem – Applications & Technology

1. Microsoft SQL Database Server
2. Oracle Database Server
3. SAP Server System
4. Cirtix VDI System
5. Microsoft Exchange Mail System
6. Microsoft SharePoint
7. Hadoop Database
8. Windows Azure cloud
9. Splunk
10. SAS
11. MongoDB Database
12. Avaya Telecom & Wireless system
13. Openstack platform
14. Docker Container
15. VMware Vrtualization

Nutanix Supported Ecosystem – OEM Hardware

1. SuperMicro – Nutanix HX Appliance
2. Dell EMC XC Appliance
3. Lenovo HX Appliance
4. IBM CS Appliance
5. CISCO UCS appliance
6. Intel Data Center Blocks
7. HPE ProLiant Appliance
8. HPE Apollo Appliance
9. Tactical Appliance
10. Rugged Applianc

Reas also: How To Open Case With Nutanix, Lenovo, IBM & Dell EMC ?

Nutanix AHV Core Architecture

Nutanix AHV hypervisor ( Nutanix Acropolis Hypervisor ) is the bare metal Type-1 hypervisor based on open source KVM. Nutanix AHV hypervisor has its own Linux based architecture included CentOS kernel and KVM complex code to virtualize the Compute and storage.

Nutanix AHV hypervisor architecture has three components to function the KVM code as AHV hypervisor.

Nutanix AHV Hypervisor Architecture components are

1. KVM kmod
2. Libvirtd
3. Qemu KVM

Rea more Nutanix AHV Hypervisor Core Architecture Explained

Nutanix AHV – Virtual Network

Nutanix AHV Hypervisor ( Nutanix Acropolis Hypervisor ) uses the Open Virtual Switch ( OVS ) virtual networking stack to flow the AHV hypervisor, virtual machines, Nutanix CVM, Storage, Management network traffic.

Usually Nutanix AHV hypervisor embedded the Open Virtual Switch OVS virtual networking stack to provide the flexibility to use following network feature:

1. Three Types of Teaming Modes :- Active-Backup, Balance-TCP and Balance-SLB teaming mode.
2. QOS ( Quality of Service ) :- Traffic Monitoring and shaping
3. Trunk Mode :- Enable Trunk mode to allow multiple VLANs to Nutanix HCI Platform and/or Guest VMs
4. Access Mode : Allow only single VLAN to Nutanix AHV and/or Guest VMs
5. VLAN Tagging :- Tag the VLAN traffic on Guest VM hosted on Nutanix AHV for more data security.

Nutanix AHV hypervisor virtual network configuration is very simple and easy. even Nutanix AHV hypervisor default vitual networking configuration is best suitable in normal use cases in small Nutanix HCI infrastructure.

Download Nutanix AHV Hypervisor

Nutanix AHV ( Acropolis Hypervisor ) is free to use and avaialable to download from Nutanix portal. You can download the Nutanix AHV hypervisor to click here – Download Nutanix AHV hypervisor.

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