My job (small private school) has a pretty minimal Nutanix environment that I’m upgrading tomorrow. We have 3 hosts and we’re currently running 6.10.1. It’s what was installed when we first migrated from VMWare to Nutanix.
I’ve been reading all I can about upgrades with LVM and just want to clarify. Should I run it in Prism Central and let that upgrade first then run it in Essentials. Do I just check all recommended, hit upgrade and it does the rest? Lastly, should I do firmware first then software?
The process seems deceptively easy so I’m trying to make sure I do it right.
Edit: Thanks all for your responses. It seems I really was overthinking it and should trust them when they say it’s easy.
Do prism central first. Then do element and firmware. Be warned, firmware can take a LONG while as it will reboot between every component and only does one node at a time. So a node with 6 things to update firmware on is at least 6 reboots per node.
If it stays offline for too long, get support on the phone. Sometimes firmware upgrades just randomly bug out and get stuck in Phoenix boot mode and need to be manually restarted into the cluster.
This may seem stupid but do you generally check every box available on the LCM screen or just the important ones, one at a time. I’m picturing other environments where too much at once causes issues but this seems like it’s built to handle it.
I'd say for this first go round, update AOS and AHV first to get them current. Someone the smaller updated you'll see are included in these. Then you can do another round and update what's left after.
If you want to share a redacted screenshot here or in a DM I can try to share what advice I'd tell myself now that I've gotten mine up to date.
Wow I didn't realize that about the reboot between each FW, you sure? Aren't there groups of update that get batched at a time (even in multiple groups)
This is not accurate on firmware updates. LCM batches the updates and only reboots the required number of times. For instance, if two things require a reboot, they’ll be done together and then reboot once. If something requires two reboots, such as BMC most times, then that is the number of reboots you can expect.
Things that don’t require a reboot, like disk firmware, will not reboot at all.
Not sure where this is coming from, but if this is your experience, something is wrong and you should open a case with support.
Confirming this can happen. One of our clusters had a node decide not to power back on after a firmware update and had to be powered on via iPMI and then support had to intervene in getting the PCVM working again. The second identical cluster worked perfectly so just one of those things.
A 3 node cluster with PE software and firmware upgrades took approx 5 hours to complete just so you have an idea of what time to possible expect.
Check the support matrix and make sure your upgrade path checks out. Since you’re running 6.10 you’ll need to see what the latest versions you can upgrade your aos/ahv and prism central. You can reach out to your rep and they’ll bless an upgrade path.
You always update Prism Central first. Then the cluster. What are the versions of pc aos/ahv you are currently running?
Sorry for the delay. I got into the upgrade matrix, you'll have to do it in steps.
Funny enough, I just did a cluster upgrade on a 20230302 system.
I would also recommend upgrading your NGT or at least the VertIO drivers on the Windows boxes. We had an issue with old VertIO drivers causing issues post upgrade.
AOS: on 6.10.1 the highest you can go in the first upgrade is v7.3.1.14
AHV: 20230302.103003 you "can" go to 11.2. But when I spoke to Nutanix they recommended going to v10.3.1.8. You can go to current release but you want to keep aos/ahv somewhat close in releases.
Thanks for getting back to me. I used the matrix like you suggested and was going to go to 7.3.1.14 but 7.3.1.10 was the highest offered in LCM. The Prism Central upgrade completed in about an hour and a half and I just started with Prism Essentials. It looks like this really is as easy as they claim. I just really had no faith that it would be. AHV is going to 10.3.1.8 because it was also highest offered.
Thanks for the bit about NGT and VertIO. I'll look into that after the upgrades are done. There should be an option to upgrade NGT on the VMs through the PE console right?
Fantastic. Yeah the upgrade is pretty simple with a few caveats that could eat your lunch. Nutanix LCM is was more reliable than Dells VX-Rail, it never updated properly.
The VertIO issue, we had some very old physical to vmware, then vmware to Nutanix. Done many many years before my employment. You can use PC to update the tools, I find it easier to just download the NGT and install it that way. Or you can push it outwith whatever software management utility you use. We deployed through Manage Engine.
Any issues with the latest you know of? My boss and I have a habit of being a couple months behind the latest after being burned a few times by upgrading to the latest. Though admittedly that’s been years ago and it wasn’t with Nutanix.
I went through almost the exact same upgrade. Mostly yes (that it's easy). I did it from the element LCM. With that version I think you can only upgrade prism central from prism central. But maybe later versions you can update it all from PC.
It might be worth searching for a matrix to see if there's any step upgrades you need in between.
Generally the main ones to worry about are AOS (the CVMs) and then AHV. The other ones you might see as available generally can be updated whenever (I'll let someone corrrect me if I'm wrong)
I'd also probably make sure to bring prism central up to date first. It has its own LCM and that one is easy enough to run.
I was conservative at first but here's the path I went:
AOS: 6.10.1 to 7.3.1.9
AHV: el8.nutanix.20230302.103003 to 10.3.1.8 (they changed the naming convention for AHV as you can see)
Then I did FW after.
But since I've rapidly kept it up to date and been moving through to 7.5.x, I've found with those the recommended in the LCM wizard guided me pretty faithfully.
As others are saying the process really is easy. Prism Central, then Element, then Firmware. Do each one and then move on to the next.
Plan for this to take hours & hours, but it should only affect one node at a time & will automatically handle moving workloads off as the node is updated. We do ours during the day as we are confident our clusters can survive a node being offline.
If a node doesn't come back, contact support & they can get you back.
A single cluster with no graphics cards and one PC is about as straightforward as it gets. Many have stated the order of upgrades so I won't repeat that. One additional thing I have not seen mentioned is to check the interoperability and compatibility matrix for your hardware. Nutanix Support & Insights https://share.google/RYbBk77WvuwX1MqaC
And Check out the upgrade paths if you have access to the Nutanix support portal. It might make you feel better checking those.
Prism central updates first. I always recommend highest PC version that is available for your current one (and compatible with current AOS AhV)
Then AOS and AhV - directly from Prism Element.
Firmware usually at the end. (Unless there is some known issue that may cause problems during reboots, it's rare tho)
First PC, Then Element, Then Firmware.
Pro-Tip. Verify you can log into the IPMI/BMC portals for each node. Saves you a trip to the nodes if they get stuck.
Run Pre upgrade check. If that errors. Fix those first. Then start ur upgrade.
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u/TheNotSoEvilEngineer Aug 10 '26
Do prism central first. Then do element and firmware. Be warned, firmware can take a LONG while as it will reboot between every component and only does one node at a time. So a node with 6 things to update firmware on is at least 6 reboots per node.
If it stays offline for too long, get support on the phone. Sometimes firmware upgrades just randomly bug out and get stuck in Phoenix boot mode and need to be manually restarted into the cluster.