Multicloud Operations, Automation, and Lifecycle Management
The operations domain covers keeping clusters current with LCM, automating the platform through APIs and blueprints, and extending it beyond the datacenter with Nutanix Cloud Clusters.
Lifecycle Manager
- LCM performs inventory, then plans and executes software and firmware updates for AOS, AHV, Prism Central, NCC and BMC/disk firmware.
- Prerequisites: NCC passes, no critical alerts, enough free capacity for rolling upgrades, and a supported compatibility path. Dark-site mode handles air-gapped clusters using local bundles.
- Upgrade Prism Central before Prism Elements when the compatibility matrix requires it, and never skip major versions the matrix forbids.
Automation
- Prism Central v4 APIs are intent-based: PUT a spec, receive a task, poll it until it succeeds. v3 APIs remain for older objects.
- Calm blueprints (now NCM Self-Service) deploy multi-tier applications with runbooks; Cost Governance handles budgets and showback.
- Terraform and Ansible wrap the same APIs, so anything doable in Prism can be codified.
Multicloud
- Nutanix Cloud Clusters (NC2) runs AOS/AHV in AWS or Azure, governed from Prism Central, for burst capacity and cloud DR.
- Nutanix Move migrates VMs from ESXi, Hyper-V or cloud platforms with minimal downtime.
Worked example
You must add a nightly snapshot policy to 40 VMs by code. List the VMs with a v4 GET filtered by category, build the policy spec with schedule and retention, PUT it with the current ETag, capture the returned task UUID, then poll until the task reports success. Reasoning: skipping the ETag risks overwriting a concurrent change, and skipping polling leaves you blind to a failed task Prism would have surfaced as an alert.
Traps
- Running LCM without a passing NCC or with active cluster tasks.
- Using v3 endpoints and expecting v4-style task semantics.
- Assuming NC2 removes the need for on-premises Prism Central governance and identity.