Introducing X-Small Prism Central: A Low Footprint Option for Smaller Environments

Introduction

The Nutanix Prism Central multi-cluster management console is continuously evolving to ensure it aligns appropriately with the workloads you need to run, and it is our constant endeavor to maintain an optimal size and fit for specific environments.  

Previously, if you had less than five clusters, less than 500 VMs, and did not run the Nutanix Cloud Manager, Nutanix Unified Storage or Nutanix Database Service solutions, you may have provisioned a larger Prism Central footprint than necessary. This led to wasted memory and vCPU resources on your clusters that could have been allocated to other workloads.

To address this inefficiency, we are introducing a new X-Small (XS) Prism Central option with a smaller footprint. XS Prism Central conserves cluster resources while still providing essential management capabilities for smaller environments.

At general availability, all new Prism Central deployments will have the option of an XS Prism Central along with the currently available Small, Large and X-Large PC. The XS sizing can be expanded, by contacting Nutanix Support, as and when the workload scale increases or when there is a need to enable additional products and capabilities.

Resources Footprint

X-Small Prism Central requires the following resources for deployment:

With the addition of X-Small, four Prism Central sizes can be deployed:

X-Small Prism Central Use Cases

X-Small Prism Central is primarily intended to support Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure capabilities at low scale.

The number of entities supported in XS Prism Central are:

The capabilities supported on X-Small Prism Central are:

1. Multicluster management (up to five clusters) with Prism Central
2. VM management
3. Host Management
4. Infrastructure management, monitoring and health
5. Enterprise authentication and RBAC
6. REST APIs
7. Comprehensive search
8. Pulse and Nutanix Insights
9. LCM Full-stack Update Manager
10. PC Backup Restore
11. Categories
12. Projects
13. IAMv2
14. Connectivity to Nutanix Central
15. App switcher, Admin center.

Capabilities that are not supported on X-Small Prism Central are:

1. NCI -  PC Scaleout to three nodes
2. NCI - Nutanix Disaster Recovery
3. NCI - Nutanix Kubernetes Engine
4. NCI - Flow Virtual Networking
5. NCI - Flow Network Security
6. NCI - Foundation(FVM) and Foundation Central
7. NCM - Self Service
8. NCM - Intelligent Operations
9. NCM - Marketplace
10. NCM - Quotas
11. NCM - Security Dashboard
12. NCM - Reporting
13. NUS - Nutanix Objects Storage
14. NUS - Nutanix Files Storage

The services of these capabilities will be turned off in X-Small Prism Central. If you wish to enable a product not available in XS Prism Central, you will have to scale-up the Prism Central to Small, Large or X-Large.

Lifecycle Management of X-Small Prism Central

Deploying X-Small Prism Central

X-Small Prism is a new option available in your environment.

Upgrading X-Small Prism Central

X-Small Prism Central can be upgraded using the one-click upgrade or via Lifecycle Manager (LCM).

Upsizing and downsizing X-Small Prism Central

If the number of workloads exceeds the prescribed limits of XS Prism Central or you wish to enable products that are not allowed in XS Prism Central, moving up to a Small, Large or X-Large will be required. This can be done by reaching out to Nutanix support. A self-serve option will be made available in forthcoming releases.

Expanding the size of X-Small Prism Central or adding more resources 

It is not recommended to directly add or remove resources to or from XS Prism Central..

Exceeding the limits of X-Small Prism Central

It is strongly advised to stay within the prescribed scale limits of XS Prism Central for it to operate optimally. Exceeding the limits results in an unsupported configuration and may result in unexpected Prism Central behavior.

Availability of X-Small Prism Central

XS Prism Central is generally available from PC 2024.1.

Conclusion

The new X-Small Prism Central option provides a low footprint management solution for smaller Nutanix environments, allowing efficient resource utilization while still offering essential NCI capabilities. With the 2024.1 release, customers now have more sizing choices to align Prism Central with their specific needs. For details on other updates in 2024.1, refer to Nutanix Tech Center.

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