Nutanix is synonymous with Web Scale Converged Infrastructure, which brings a simpler, easier and much faster model for deploying virtual infrastructure from small scale, to any scale. Web Scale is really about standardized hardware, simplified systems and operations that are designed to be always on, resilient to failure, non-disruptively upgraded and maintained.  This article will give you a real world example from one of Nutanix larger customers that recently deployed a fairly large number of new Nutanix systems and all the VM’s they needed in a very short space of time. In this case the customer deployed 240 Nutanix nodes (in groups of up to 32 hosts per cluster) on VMware vSphere, and 5000 VM’s in just over 2 days. So what does this look like? Take a look at this tweet that was sent out, including photo’s of the customers datacenter.

240 nodes 5000 sever vm's. 2PB data. Broken into 32 node Clusters all Deployed just over 2 days. #NUTANIX pic.twitter.com/kO43IqAICo

— Adam Provost (@ampnh603) September 10, 2014

By the looks of those racks I’d say the Nutanix systems must have replaced some HP kit, but I don’t know that for sure. It’s just a guess based on the badge that is seen on the racks. One of the interesting observations you can make from these photos is how the network is deployed. Each rack has 10GbE middle of rack switches. This is so the cable distances and cable management is much easier from all of the Nutanix systems to the switch. Usually we would recommend a leaf-spine network architecture, which is much more scalable for east-west traffic.

With Automation and Orchestration, such as demonstrated in the video below using VMware vCAC to completely automate the deployment of the Nutanix platform, you can easily deploy any scale of infrastructure in a very short time period, including the VM’s.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HAsZtMi8w4s

Final Word

This is just another demonstration of what you can do with Nutanix Web Scale Converged Infrastructure and the speed with which you can do it. We haven’t really even started to scratch the surface of what is possible in the new Software Defined-Datacenter world when you apply Nutanix Web Scale Converged Infrastructure. There is so much more to come. But you can start to imagine all the possibilities.

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This post first appeared on the Long White Virtual Clouds blog at longwhiteclouds.com. By Michael Webster +. Copyright © 2012 – 2014 – IT Solutions 2000 Ltd and Michael Webster +. All rights reserved. Not to be reproduced for commercial purposes without written permission.