Creating Full clones on Nutanix via NFS VAAI

Aim: to create 320 VMs on Nutanix NFS datastore  and  power on 320 VMs .
Guest VM size - Windows 7, 20G HDD on NFS, 2G mem with VmwareTools.
Number of ESX hosts - 4 ESX hosts ( 80 VMs per node)
Storage - Same ESX servers ( no additional hardware, other than Arista switch interconnecting these
ESX servers)  - Compute and Storage convergence.

Script help and source: http://www.vmdev.info/?p=202, Tabrez and Steve Poitras

Vcenter before running the script:( except for the clone in local datastore, there are no VMs other than Nutanix controller VMs)

 On Nutanix: - Create storage pool, container and NFS datastore - from a clean cluster.
 a. Create Storage Pool

b. Create container

c. Create NFS datastore

ESXi  :now sees the datastore


esxcfg-nas -l
NTNX-ctr1 is /ctr1 from 192.168.5.2 mounted available


Script to create the full clone of thick vdisk from 1Win7-Clone on NFS datastore :(1Win7-clone - has vmware tools and power budget disabled in Windows 7 so that it does not go into standby mode)


Connect-VIServer 10.2.8.59 -User administrator -Password ntnx
1. $vm = Get-VM 1Win7-clone |Get-View 
2. $cloneFolder = $vm.parent 
$cloneSpec = new-object Vmware.Vim.VirtualMachineCloneSpec
$cloneSpec.Location = new-object Vmware.Vim.VirtualMachineRelocateSpec
3. $cloneSpec.Location.DiskMoveType = [Vmware.Vim.VirtualMachineRelocateDiskMoveOptions]::moveAllDiskBackingsAndAllowSharing
4. $cloneSpec.Location.Transform = [Vmware.Vim.VirtualMachineRelocateTransformation]::flat

5.$global:testIterations = 320
for($i=1; $i -le $global:testIterations; $i++){
$cloneName = "Windows7-$i"
$vm.CloneVM( $cloneFolder, $cloneName, $cloneSpec ) }

Explanation:

1.  Get-View of our clone master

2.  use same datastore as clone

3. allow sharing -  To create full clone by copying all disks (but not snapshot metadata), from the root to the child-most disk, except for non-child-most disks previously copied to the target

4.flat -causes it to be created as a thick disk

5. from 1 to 320 creates Windows7-$num with clone spec defined.

The following Vcenter snapshot shows that  clone creation  with NFS VAAI in progress and  320 VMs being created

 

Maintenance:
#To Remove VM
Remove-VM Windows7-*

# To Power on
Start-VM Windows7-*

#To start VMs on specific ESX server:

Get VM-Host ip| Get-VM Windows7-*| where {$_.'PowerState' -eq "PoweredOff"}  | Start-VM  -RunAsync -Confirm:$false

Get VM-Host ip| Get-VM Windows7-*| where {$_.'PowerState' -eq "Suspended"}  | Start-VM


#Migrate VM: (DRS should do it when powering on)

$global:testIterations = 80

for($i=1; $i -le $global:testIterations; $i++){

Get-VM -Name Windows7-$i | Move-VM -Destination (Get-VMHost 10.2.8.51)  -RunAsync
  }$global:testIterations = 240

for($i=161; $i -le $global:testIterations; $i++){Get-VM -Name Windows7-$i | Move-VM -Destination (Get-VMHost 10.2.8.53)  -RunAsync

  }

 $global:testIterations = 320

for($i=241; $i -le $global:testIterations; $i++){Get-VM -Name Windows7-$i | Move-VM -Destination (Get-VMHost 10.2.8.54)  -RunAsync

  }

# Get IP from VM to see if it is booted (vmware tools need to be installed ) -
Get-VM NTNX* |where {$_.'PowerState' -eq "PoweredOn"}| %{
write-host $_.Guest.IPAddress[0]}
10.2.8.59
10.2.8.60
10.2.8.55
10.2.8.56
10.2.8.57
10.2.8.58

to get count:

$global:count = 0
Get-VM Windows7-* |where {$_.'PowerState' -eq "PoweredOn"}| %{
$ip = $_.Guest.IPAddress[0]
if ($ip -ne " ") { write-host $ip
$global:count +=1
}}
write-host  "Count of IPs is " $global:count

<snippet>

 169.254.127.112

169.254.165.80
169.254.104.109
169.254.11.254
169.254.248.101
169.254.239.204
169.254.186.164
169.254.127.112
169.254.24.136
169.254.123.158
169.254.129.15
169.254.212.87
169.254.47.86
Count of VMs with ip is 320 ( monitor upto 320 is up)