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Nutanix Acropolis acli vs ncli Command Explained

Nutanix acli vs ncli command explained
Nutanix Cluster June 6, 2019

Nutanix is the number #1 hyper converged HCI solution in the world and growing as market leader in Hyper converged technology and Xi-cloud as well. Nutanix HCI management has multi-interface like HTML5, acli, ncli and REST API for troubleshooting, manage and execute daily or one time configuration task(s).

Nutanix native build many management interfaces to manage Nutanix Hyper HCI infrastructure.

Nutanix Command Line Interfaces

Nutanix acropolis supports two commands frameworks acli and ncli

What is Nutanix acli Command

Nutanix acli stands for Acropolis Command Line Interface (acli) to manage nutanix cluster daily task(s) related to host, network, VM’s snapshots and VMs.

  • Nutanix acli give extra core commands access to manage Nutanix AHV host, networking, manual snapshots and VMs related commands
  • Nuanix acli framework doesn’t have access to call ncli commands
  • Through acli commands can’t manage Nutanix cluster functions
  • Nutanix acli has only 20-30% commands of Nutanix cluster for management.
  • Nutanix acli doesn’t contains hidden commands

Nutanix acli sub-command example:

  • ads
  • core
  • ha
  • host
  • image
  • iscsi_client
  • microseg
  • net
  • nf
  • parcel
  • snapshot
  • task
  • vg
  • vm
  • vm_group

Warning : Before run any Nutanix acli command in Nutanix CVM make sure you must have good understanding of that command otherwise wrong command(s) may impact on running VMs production.

What is Nutanix ncli Command

Nutanix ncli stands for Nutanix Command Line Interface (ncli) to manage Nutanix cluster complex task(s) and get detailed cluster information.
Nutanix administrator can run 70-80% commands through ncli to mange Nutanix cluster.

  • Nutanix ncli container advance entities command to manage nutanix cluster
  • Nutanix ncli contains hidden commands and appear to run ncli -h true command
  • Through Nutanix ncli command administrator can manage almost entire Nutanix AHV cluster
  • Nutanix ncli command is more powerful and complex to run in comparison of acli
  • Nutanix ncli command(s) must be run if you have good understanding of ncli entities and commands
  • Nutanix ncli is the alternate option to mange cluster without accessing Nutanix Prism

Nutanix ncli sub-commands /entities example

  • alerts: An Alert
  • authconfig: Configuration information used to authenticate user
  • cloud: Manage AWS or AZURE Cloud
  • cluster: A Nutanix Complete Cluster
  • container: A Storage Container is a container for virtual disks
  • data-at-rest-encryption: Manage data-at-rest-encryption related operations
  • data-at-rest-encryption-certificate: Manage data-at-rest-encryption related digital certificates
  • datastore: An NFS Datastore
  • disk: A Physical Disk
  • events: An Event
  • failover-cluster: Hyper-V failover cluster
  • file-server: Minerva file server
  • health-check: A health check
  • host: A Physical Host hosts Virtual Machines
  • http-proxy: An HTTP Proxy
  • key-management-server: Manage key management servers
  • license: License for a Nutanix cluster
  • managementserver: An infrastructure management server such as VCenter
  • multicluster: A Nutanix Management Console to manage multiple clusters
  • network: Network specific commands
  • nutanix-guest-tools: Admin commands for Nutanix Guest Tools
  • progress-monitor: Monitor progress of long running tasks
  • protection-domain: A protection domain to be used for Data Protection
  • pulse-config: Configuration information used for Pulse setup
  • rackable-unit: A rackable unit
  • remote-site: A remote cluster to be used for replicating data
  • rsyslog-config: Configuration information to send logs to remote servers
  • share: Share
  • smb-server: The Nutanix SMB file server
  • snapshot: Snapshot of a Virtual Disk
  • snmp: An SNMP agent
  • software: NOS Software Release
  • ssl-certificate: Manage SSL certificates
  • storagepool: A Pool of Physical Disks
  • storagetier: A Tier of physical storage
  • tag: A tag that groups entities
  • task: A Task
  • user: A User
  • vdisk: A Virtual Disk
  • virtual-disk: Commands for performing different actions on Virtual Disks.
  • virtualmachine: A Virtual Machine
  • volume-group: A Volume Group
  • vstore: A file namespace in a Storage Container
  • vzone: A vZone

How to clean ncli Command History

Nutanix ncli history is stored locally on each node in the file

/home/nutanix/.nutanix_history

You can edit this file and remove the lines you don’t want to appear, or delete it to clear the whole history.

To clear ncli history on all the nodes, run:

allssh 'rm ~/.nutanix_history'

Warning : Before run any Nutanix ncli command in Nutanix CVM make sure you must have good understanding of that command otherwise wrong command may impact on Nutanix cluster and running VMS production.

Read more : Top 10 Nutanix administrator useful commands

Conclusion

Nutanix provide command line interface for troubleshooting and execute commands to accomplish the task if having good understanding of Nutanix framework acli and nclil commands.

It is advised by Nutanix to run Nutanix command framework by Nutanix support engineer (SRE) and Nutanix administrators only.

I hope this blog will give you better understanding about Nutanix command line framework and difference between Nutanix acli and ncli.

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