Setting the failure tolerance level to ‘Block’ (also known as Block Awareness) is the correct Nutanix configuration to survive a full block/power domain failure. RF2 alone only protects against a single node or disk failure within the same block. Combining RF2 with Block Awareness ensures data replicas are placed on nodes in different physical blocks, meeting the requirement for resilience against a complete block failure while maintaining good performance with an all-flash pool.

The most efficient first step is to use the built-in per-VM storage analytics in Prism Element. The ‘Storage’ tab for the specific VM will show key metrics like read/write IOPS, latency, and crucially, the ‘Cache Hit %’. A consistently low cache hit percentage indicates that a majority of the VM’s I/O is being served from the HDD tier, which would confirm the suspected cause. This targeted approach isolates the issue before undertaking broader cluster checks or remediation actions.

The ‘Update Host Network’ workflow in Prism Element is the designed, non-disruptive method for changing the network configuration of CVMs and hypervisor hosts. It automates the process across the entire cluster, handling the reconfiguration of the CVM interfaces, hypervisor management vSwitches, and IP address changes in a coordinated manner, minimizing risk and avoiding the need for error-prone manual steps on each component.

In Nutanix AOS, snapshots are space-efficient but are not thin-provisioned. When a snapshot is created, the system reserves space to ensure that if all unique data in the snapshot needs to be maintained, there is physical capacity to hold it. A large number of old or large snapshots can therefore consume a substantial portion of the ‘Reserved Capacity’. Prudent snapshot lifecycle management (deleting those no longer needed) is the direct way to reduce this reservation and increase usable free space.

The RPO defines the maximum acceptable amount of data loss measured in time. In Nutanix Leap (Metro Availability & Async DR), this is directly controlled by the frequency of the snapshot schedule on the protection domain. A snapshot schedule set to run every 4 hours creates a new recovery point at that interval, defining your potential data loss window. The retention policy governs how many of these points are saved, and network compression aids efficiency, but the schedule frequency is the primary determinant of the RPO.

In Nutanix, VM templates (images) are stored within specific storage containers. For a cluster or a host within a cluster to deploy a VM from a template, that container must be mapped to (accessible by) that cluster. This is a common configuration oversight. The solution is to either deploy the VM to a cluster where the container is mapped, or to clone/copy the template to a container that is mapped to the desired cluster.

Placing a node into Maintenance Mode via Prism Element is the Nutanix-recommended procedure. This orchestrated process safely migrates VMs off the node (via live migration in AHV), relocates any RF data the CVM was responsible for, and gracefully prepares the CVM and host for shutdown. It ensures data integrity, avoids unnecessary alerts, and is far safer and more controlled than manually intervening or treating a planned shutdown as an unplanned failure.

When adding nodes to an existing Nutanix cluster, the new storage capacity is not automatically added to the current storage pool. An administrator must manually initiate the ‘Expand Storage Pool’ action from Prism Element. This process adds the new nodes’ disks to the pool, allowing Curator (the distributed storage fabric) to rebalance data across the now larger set of resources, which will alleviate the overload condition.

Nutanix Calm’s blueprint and marketplace model is designed for this exact use case. You create a blueprint that defines the VM specifications (including the software stack via pre/post-install scripts or image). This blueprint is then published as a Marketplace item to a specific project. Developers in that project can then use the self-service portal (Calm or Prism Central) to launch this approved, governed ‘catalog item’ on-demand, without needing direct infrastructure permissions.

Setting the failure tolerance level to ‘Block’ (also known as Block Awareness) is the correct Nutanix configuration to survive a full block/power domain failure. RF2 alone only protects against a single node or disk failure within the same block. Combining RF2 with Block Awareness ensures data replicas are placed on nodes in different physical blocks, meeting the requirement for resilience against a complete block failure while maintaining good performance with an all-flash pool.0