Overview
Virtual platforms offer a variety of configuration options to improve the performance and behavior of your Nasuni Edge Appliance. This chapter presents procedures for performing these configurations. Because these configurations depend on third-party virtual platforms, you should follow the procedures for your specific virtual platform.
Tip: In the Nasuni model, customers provide their own cloud accounts for the storage of their data. Customers should leverage their cloud provider's role-based access and identity access management features as part of their overall security strategy. Such features can be used to limit or prohibit administrative access to the cloud account, based on customer policies.
Disabling virtual machine snapshots
Nasuni strongly recommends disabling snapshots on the virtual machine, because attempting to restore from a virtual machine snapshot can ruin the installation.
Warning: Virtual machine snapshots are not supported. Nutanix snapshots cannot be disabled.
DO NOT attempt to restore from a virtual machine snapshot or backup. Attempting to restore from a virtual machine snapshot or backup puts the Edge Appliance in an unknown state in relation to the Nasuni Orchestration Center (NOC), and requires a disaster recovery process to be recovered. This might result in data loss.
Changing the size of the cache disk
On the virtual platform, you can change the size of the disk that the Nasuni Edge Appliance uses for its cache.
Warning: Never delete the cache disk.
Warning: You must shut down the virtual machine to change the size of the cache disk.
Caution: Always shut down the NEA or NMC before shutting down the VM.
Caution: Do not reboot or power off the appliance during the first boot. After the first boot completes, you may reboot or power off the appliance as needed.
Warning: Virtual machine snapshots are not supported.
DO NOT attempt to restore from a virtual machine snapshot or backup. Attempting to restore from a virtual machine snapshot or backup puts the Edge Appliance in an unknown state in relation to the Nasuni Orchestration Center (NOC), and requires a disaster recovery process to be recovered. This might result in data loss.
To change the size of the cache disk on the Nutanix platform using the Prism Web Console, follow these steps:
Power off the Edge Appliance. See “Shutting down the Nasuni Edge Appliance or NMC” on page 47.
On the Main Menu, click Explore at the top left. The Entities list appears on the left.
In the Entities list on the left, click VMs. A list of VMs appears.
From the list of VMs, select the Nasuni Edge Appliance virtual machine.
From the Actions drop-down menu, select Update. The Update VM dialog box appears.
From the list of Disks, select the cache disk. The cache disk is usually the largest disk.
Click Edit
. The Update Disk dialog box appears.Change the size of the cache disk. The new size must be greater than the previous size.
When all the fields are correct, click Update.
The Update Disk window closes.
On the Update VM dialog box, the list of disks shows the new size of the cache disk.
On the Update VM dialog box, click Save.
The Update VM dialog box closes.
Power on the Edge Appliance.
Changing the size of the copy-on-write (COW) disk
The copy-on-write (COW) disk is used during the snapshot process. If any writes to the Nasuni Edge Appliance occur during a snapshot, the previous data from the cache disk is copied to the COW disk, and the new data is written to the cache disk. Hence, the term “copy-on-write”. This allows new writes to take place at any time, even during the snapshot process.
On the virtual platform, you can change the size of the disk that the Nasuni Edge Appliance uses for copy-on-write (COW).
Note: The copy-on-write (COW) disk is the second-largest disk, and the cache disk is the largest disk, by default. However, if you change the relative sizes of the disks, the COW disk might not be the second-largest disk.
Important: The size of the COW disk should be at least 1/4 of the size of the cache disk. The COW disk need not be larger than 250 GiB, except in special situations where ingestion might exceed the size of the cache disk, such as during initial ingestion or when ingesting extremely large files. In such cases, you can increase the size of the COW disk. For details, see Resizing the Cache and Snapshot Disks.
Warning: Never delete the cache disk.
Warning: You must shut down the virtual machine to change the size of the copy-on- write (COW) disk.
Caution: Always shut down the NEA or NMC before shutting down the VM.
Caution: Do not reboot or power off the appliance during the first boot. After the first boot completes, you may reboot or power off the appliance as needed.
Warning: Virtual machine snapshots are not supported.
DO NOT attempt to restore from a virtual machine snapshot or backup. Attempting to restore from a virtual machine snapshot or backup puts the Edge Appliance in an unknown state in relation to the Nasuni Orchestration Center (NOC), and requires a disaster recovery process to be recovered. This might result in data loss.
To change the size of the copy-on-write (COW) disk on the Nutanix platform using the Prism Web Console, follow these steps:
On the Main Menu, click Explore at the top left. The Entities list appears on the left.
In the Entities list on the left, click VMs. A list of VMs appears.
From the list of VMs, select the Nasuni Edge Appliance virtual machine.
From the Actions drop-down menu, select Update. The Update VM dialog box appears.
From the list of Disks, select the COW disk. There are three disks; the copy-on-write (COW) disk is the second-largest disk, and the cache disk is the largest disk, by default. However, if you change the relative sizes of the disks, the COW disk might not be the second-largest disk.
Click Edit
. The Update Disk dialog box appears.Change the size of the COW disk. The new size must be greater than the previous size.
Important: The size of the COW disk should be at least 1/4 of the size of the cache disk. The COW disk need not be larger than 250 GiB, except in special situations where ingestion might exceed the size of the cache disk, such as during initial ingestion or when ingesting extremely large files. In such cases, you can increase the size of the COW disk. For details, see Resizing the Cache and Snapshot Disks.
Tip: If necessary, it is possible to reduce the size of the copy-on-write disk. To do this, shut down the Nasuni Edge Appliance (see the Nasuni Edge Appliance Administration Guide for instructions), delete the existing copy-on-write disk, create a new copy-on-write disk with the desired size, and then restart the Nasuni Edge Appliance.
When all the fields are correct, click Update.
The Update Disk window closes.
On the Update VM dialog box, the list of disks shows the new size of the COW disk.
On the Update VM dialog box, click Save.
The Update VM dialog box closes.
Changing memory size
On the virtual platform, you can change the amount of memory that the Nasuni Edge Appliance can use.
Warning: You must shut down the virtual machine to change the memory size.
Caution: Always shut down the NEA or NMC before shutting down the VM.
Caution: Do not reboot or power off the appliance during the first boot. After the first boot completes, you may reboot or power off the appliance as needed.
To change the memory size on the Nutanix platform using the Prism Web Console, follow these steps:
On the Main Menu, click Explore at the top left. The Entities list appears on the left.
In the Entities list on the left, click VMs. A list of VMs appears.
From the list of VMs, select the Nasuni Edge Appliance virtual machine.
From the Actions drop-down menu, select Update. The Update VM dialog box appears.
Edit the amount of Memory.
Click Save.
The Update VM dialog box closes.
Changing the number of CPU processors
On the virtual platform, you can change the number of CPU processors that the Nasuni Edge Appliance uses.
Warning: You must shut down the virtual machine to change the number of CPU PROCESSORS.
Caution: Always shut down the NEA or NMC before shutting down the VM.
Caution: Do not reboot or power off the appliance during the first boot. After the first boot completes, you may reboot or power off the appliance as needed.
To change the number of CPU processors on the Nutanix platform using the Prism Web Console, follow these steps:
On the Main Menu, click Explore at the top left. The Entities list appears on the left.
In the Entities list on the left, click VMs. A list of VMs appears.
From the list of VMs, select the Nasuni Edge Appliance virtual machine.
From the Actions drop-down menu, select Update. The Update VM dialog box appears.
Edit the number of VCPU(S).
Click Save.
The Update VM dialog box closes.
Using pass-through disks
A pass-through disk is a physical disk that, while not a member of a pool, can be used as a storage source for a virtual platform. A physical disk that has an existing file system (such as Windows, UNIX, and Linux) can be used without modifying the existing data.
A pass-through disk enables simpler data migration from the existing storage architecture to the virtual platform, with minimal disruption to operations. Also, larger cache sizes are possible by using pass- through disks.
On the virtual platform, you can configure a pass-through disk for use by the Nasuni Edge Appliance.
Note: You must shut down the virtual machine to configure a pass-through disk.
Caution: Always shut down the NEA or NMC before shutting down the VM.
Caution: Do not reboot or power off the appliance during the first boot. After the first boot completes, you may reboot or power off the appliance as needed.