I'm not doubting they will backport any security issues affecting the 347 packages from CentOS7 installed on XCP-ng 8.3 (out of 536 total), but I don't think this is a sustainable approach for development resources, and most auditors in large organisations will flat out refuse to sign off on software doing this unless jumping through hoops and adding a lot of due diligence that seems like a waste of time (and poses an entry barrier) if the hypervisor could instead be based on an actively maintained upstream distribution.
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I'll agree because it would be nice to have the newer kernel features, but the insurance aspect doesn't seem to be much of an obstacle for a lot of companies switching over. I have a feeling that it is hidden deep enough that no one looks there.
For those that missed it, there is a webcast on November 15, 2024 to tell us what's going on with the VMUG Advantage stuff. I'll dig up the link and drop it in a few places for people with larger audiences to watch and discuss. If we embarrass Broadcom enough, they may reverse their course and offer us something that covers most things (like VCF) and Desktop Virtualization.
For those that missed it, there is a webcast on November 15, 2024 to tell us what's going on with the VMUG Advantage stuff. I'll dig up the link and drop it in a few places for people with larger audiences to watch and discuss. If we embarrass Broadcom enough, they may reverse their course and offer us something that covers most things (like VCF) and Desktop Virtualization.
This seems to be the link needed:
I was not signed in when I copied this and it seems to still get to the page. I may record it if I have time to set it up.
I was not signed in when I copied this and it seems to still get to the page. I may record it if I have time to set it up.
Unless it has changed recently (and I don't believe it has) then to be a VCP requires both the exam and the official classroom training.
Autumn from VMUG told me they relaxed the VCP exam requirements and you can now study this one at home. How long this lasts is up to our Hero, Broadcom. This would be like Cisco halting their train at home programs, it should kill their business when people retire and companies can't hire new VMware admins. Add in the latest news about Comp-TIA and things may be looking gloomy.
But when I reread the announcement, it requires a VCF certificate to get the deal on the lab licenses, so maybe I'm going the wrong direction. I need to look at the exams and see, maybe the VCP is included in the VCF group of exams, the VCF downloads include ESXi and vCenter so those parts are still required, just that VCF deals with cloud and hybrid cloud workflows. I'll move forward and see if I can move my salary up for the last few years of my career and not worry too much, almost all of the local places have onprem VMware systems, maybe a bit of cloud. Most cloud is Microsoft and some AWS bits.
But when I reread the announcement, it requires a VCF certificate to get the deal on the lab licenses, so maybe I'm going the wrong direction. I need to look at the exams and see, maybe the VCP is included in the VCF group of exams, the VCF downloads include ESXi and vCenter so those parts are still required, just that VCF deals with cloud and hybrid cloud workflows. I'll move forward and see if I can move my salary up for the last few years of my career and not worry too much, almost all of the local places have onprem VMware systems, maybe a bit of cloud. Most cloud is Microsoft and some AWS bits.
For what it’s worth: I don’t see much incentive to hurry up and buy/renew VMUG Advantage membership before the end of November…
While one can definitely get a 1-year reprieve on the VCP requirement you’ll be locked into vsphere 8. Whenever Mr Broadcom launches vsphere 9 you won’t be able to upgrade.
I only mention this because the FAQ doesn’t; feels like yet another scam to grab money from folks.
While one can definitely get a 1-year reprieve on the VCP requirement you’ll be locked into vsphere 8. Whenever Mr Broadcom launches vsphere 9 you won’t be able to upgrade.
I only mention this because the FAQ doesn’t; feels like yet another scam to grab money from folks.
OK, officially the ability to get licenses after November, but not starting until March or April of 2025 is that you are going to be required to pay the Advantage fee, and have passed either VCP-VVF or VCP-VCF (Admin and Architect level respectively). The guidelines for the VVF read pretty close to the old VCP-DCV so I'm hoping a course in this is good enough.
Now at one point they said that free licenses for anyone that holds either, so we shall see.
Benefit (kind of) for Advantage is exams are 50% off, but if you didn't pay the $210usd for Advantage the exam would only be another $40usd at full cost, so you could save money if the Foundation products were actually free to you.
And this info is as on the meeting last week, I have confidence that Broadcom will mess this up between now and then.
The bargaining deals they are making are just short of Foundation, but you can see that last step from here. They want to sell the whole package, even if you only need vCenter and ESXi (maybe add vSAN).
Now at one point they said that free licenses for anyone that holds either, so we shall see.
Benefit (kind of) for Advantage is exams are 50% off, but if you didn't pay the $210usd for Advantage the exam would only be another $40usd at full cost, so you could save money if the Foundation products were actually free to you.
And this info is as on the meeting last week, I have confidence that Broadcom will mess this up between now and then.
The bargaining deals they are making are just short of Foundation, but you can see that last step from here. They want to sell the whole package, even if you only need vCenter and ESXi (maybe add vSAN).
Nutanix requires a "business" email to download the CE, none of the free email providers are allowed. And they do not respond to emails, not even the nagging sales emails after you get on their list. I had one trying to sell me on their products nagging me, so I sent back a reply (actually several replies and new emails) and the person won't get back to me. I also tried contacting their support, and nothing. They do not give a good feeling for home lab use, we are too small for them to bother even sending an email reply.
And yes I hope they read this, because it's a problem, and this problem has been mentioned on several videos out there.
There are a couple other issues for home lab use:
#1 requires hyperconverged storage which may or may not be a problem for each user, half my lab would be OK
#2 it requires a lot more processor, I don't think I'd get very far with my little HP T740. Only 4C/8T and max of 64GB
Now all that said, I haven't tried it yet. The hosts that I could use for this are currently in VMware use (the T740) and I think I would need to buy bigger system drives to support Nutanix. It has some fairly large requirements for the OS drive, but I think the T740 could handle that with a big SATA drive, and a big NVME drive (2 slots with the previous connection methods).
And all that said, home lab can make or break a use case. It may just be a matter of time before new admins can no longer be found for things like VMware, and businesses will need to take that training internal and hope they hired well.
And yes I hope they read this, because it's a problem, and this problem has been mentioned on several videos out there.
There are a couple other issues for home lab use:
#1 requires hyperconverged storage which may or may not be a problem for each user, half my lab would be OK
#2 it requires a lot more processor, I don't think I'd get very far with my little HP T740. Only 4C/8T and max of 64GB
Now all that said, I haven't tried it yet. The hosts that I could use for this are currently in VMware use (the T740) and I think I would need to buy bigger system drives to support Nutanix. It has some fairly large requirements for the OS drive, but I think the T740 could handle that with a big SATA drive, and a big NVME drive (2 slots with the previous connection methods).
And all that said, home lab can make or break a use case. It may just be a matter of time before new admins can no longer be found for things like VMware, and businesses will need to take that training internal and hope they hired well.
this isn't a solution as much as it is an observation from my own experience but i highly recommend you post on r/nutanix if you have any uncommon issues that would be important-ish PoC points that need to be resolved before you would even consider them as a vendor, i've posted some pretty minor technical questions and gotten replies from one of the directors of sales or something before and there is a software engineer who commonly posts to both inform and does some troubleshooting to help people out with CE. sounds like the sales people dropped the ball.
also, it's technically possible and even supported to deploy nutanix as a single node, you just dont get any of the obvious advantages of the converged high availability. in other words the hyper converged storage isn't a requirement per se. i think at a minimum you need 3 drives, 1 for boot, 1 for the cvm, and 1+n for data. probably the biggest requirement is a minimum recommendation of 64 GB for the CVM
cluster config
portal.nutanix.com
specs
portal.nutanix.com
the recommended specs for cpu are pretty light, for home use it runs perfectly fine on e5 2680 v4 which are 15 dollar cpus
also, it's technically possible and even supported to deploy nutanix as a single node, you just dont get any of the obvious advantages of the converged high availability. in other words the hyper converged storage isn't a requirement per se. i think at a minimum you need 3 drives, 1 for boot, 1 for the cvm, and 1+n for data. probably the biggest requirement is a minimum recommendation of 64 GB for the CVM
cluster config
Nutanix Support & Insights
specs
Nutanix Support & Insights
the recommended specs for cpu are pretty light, for home use it runs perfectly fine on e5 2680 v4 which are 15 dollar cpus
The part of my lab I can assign to Nutanix is 4c8t and 64GB of ram max. Even with vCenter running, these are doing OK under vmware. I might need to tear down my XCP-NG system for Nutanix where I have more (but far older) cores and more RAM, also need to buy more drive sleds for those servers.
Although the rest of your complaints are certainly valid, this really isn't a big deal. It's pretty easy (and fairly cheap) to purchase a domain name and set up that for e-mail. You don't have to manage it, or even pay attention to it, because there are cheap (less than $25/year) services that allow you to make them the MX record for your domain, and they forward everything to wherever you want.
Yes, I'm working on that now. Namecheap seems to be one of the cheapest for name registration and email hosting, Porkbun is second on the list. Just need to figure out what domain I'm going to pick.
I wouldn't want to try one of the non-OSS packages at this point, they will end up getting you burned just like VMware. The market for hypervisors and management planes is pretty much a dying one; there is no special IP that makes it possible, anyone can do it. Granted, sometimes you are not given a choice, but that stinks in any scenario, because if you got lucky and got given what you wanted, you can also get un-lucky and have it taken away.
The only reason most of this stuff sticks around is because people don't like change and learning new things is apparently not for everyone (and because sometimes regulation requires you do delegate responsibility on paper -- in reality the only thing that matters is if it works and if you can get enough people to keep it running).
As for the Proxmox and OS upgrade thing: Debian has really long support cycles, and upgrading it is not as difficult as people make it out to be (sudo apt update; sudo apt upgrade; sudo apt dist-upgrade; sudo reboot).
Realistically, this is something you'd do in a homelab when you install it manually; technically a real deployment shouldn't be artisanally hand-crafted anyway, configuration in code, migrate VMs to a different node, nuke the old one, re-provision it from code with the newer version, join the other node and move the VMs back again.
I for one am happy Broadcom screwed us all over, means I finally can get customers moving into a slightly more modern default architecture for my deployments.
The only reason most of this stuff sticks around is because people don't like change and learning new things is apparently not for everyone (and because sometimes regulation requires you do delegate responsibility on paper -- in reality the only thing that matters is if it works and if you can get enough people to keep it running).
As for the Proxmox and OS upgrade thing: Debian has really long support cycles, and upgrading it is not as difficult as people make it out to be (sudo apt update; sudo apt upgrade; sudo apt dist-upgrade; sudo reboot).
Realistically, this is something you'd do in a homelab when you install it manually; technically a real deployment shouldn't be artisanally hand-crafted anyway, configuration in code, migrate VMs to a different node, nuke the old one, re-provision it from code with the newer version, join the other node and move the VMs back again.
I for one am happy Broadcom screwed us all over, means I finally can get customers moving into a slightly more modern default architecture for my deployments.
There is a big trend in corporate IT where "Open Source=BAD", I run into that a lot when I talk to my IT people here. They all have this misconception that open source is buggy and full of malware, not even thinking that a good portion of Microsoft runs open source code. And they forget about all those Linux servers they have running in the server room (including large parts of VMware's Photon OS).
As long as that belief exists, there will be a place for VMware, Nutanix, etc., and they will struggle to pay the bills each year.
And while I agree that I should be focused on deeper learning with XCP-NG, the reality is that if you want to move from one place to another, you might need experience with VMware. I recently encountered this and will keep looking because of this. When I talked about open source, they kind of sneered, a reaction I've seen before. Meanwhile that same place is rolling out a bunch of Docker stuff and probably running it via Swarm...
As long as that belief exists, there will be a place for VMware, Nutanix, etc., and they will struggle to pay the bills each year.
And while I agree that I should be focused on deeper learning with XCP-NG, the reality is that if you want to move from one place to another, you might need experience with VMware. I recently encountered this and will keep looking because of this. When I talked about open source, they kind of sneered, a reaction I've seen before. Meanwhile that same place is rolling out a bunch of Docker stuff and probably running it via Swarm...
Fully agreed. I've just downloaded vSphere 8 from my VMUG and have started learning for VCP-VVF administrator with my one server on ESXi 8 with VCSA 8, while my other hypervisors are on XCP 8.3
Will see how fast it goes, but I have a year to get certified.
One thing I noticed is that vCenter is pretty RAM intensive. The default 'Tiny' configuration at 14GB was not happy when I did an update of the VMUG version to the latest patch iso release. Hope it'll be happier at 20GB.
Xen Orchestra on the other hand has a tiny RAM footprint, although it may lack some features (have only just started with XCP-ng/XO so will have some learning to do).
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I haven't been able to get my system to connect and update past the 8.0.2 that we downloaded. I'll figure that out later (or not). Other oddities when vcenter is involved too, but not really for this thread and probably something I'm doing wrong.
Udemy is having a sale for $9.99usd for a lot of courses. The VCTA seems to have a lot of good info in it, I'll start the VCP-DCV course when I'm ready. I talked to one of the course developers and they agreed that the VCP-DCV is probably very close to the VCP-VVF exam. If it's 80% or more, then should be able to pass the VVF based on this "old" course. That's my working theory.
And with the sale, I may add a Nutanix course, need to look at those and see what I think. For $10 it's hard to go wrong.
All that said, yes vCenter is a hog compared to XO for RAM, the processor seems to be fairly low, but my lab has nothing running right now.
Udemy is having a sale for $9.99usd for a lot of courses. The VCTA seems to have a lot of good info in it, I'll start the VCP-DCV course when I'm ready. I talked to one of the course developers and they agreed that the VCP-DCV is probably very close to the VCP-VVF exam. If it's 80% or more, then should be able to pass the VVF based on this "old" course. That's my working theory.
And with the sale, I may add a Nutanix course, need to look at those and see what I think. For $10 it's hard to go wrong.
All that said, yes vCenter is a hog compared to XO for RAM, the processor seems to be fairly low, but my lab has nothing running right now.
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Yes, 100% agree on both points. More than that, the cpu/memory resources for the nutanix controller (CVM) must be dedicated and not shared.
I won't recommend build a Nutanix CE home lab host with less than 128gb memory and 16 cores, you would to dedicate at least 16gb/4c to the CVM. and it would still complain about running undersides
Nutanix Support & Insights
My homelab hypervisors just don't have the resources to justify running Nutanix CE.Yes, 100% agree on both points. More than that, the cpu/memory resources for the nutanix controller (CVM) must be dedicated and not shared.
I won't recommend build a Nutanix CE home lab host with less than 128gb memory and 16 cores, you would to dedicate at least 16gb/4c to the CVM. and it would still complain about running undersides
Nutanix Support & Insights
XCP-ng + XenOrchestra might not see the same adoption rates in big enterprise as Nutanix, but it sure has been a pleasant product to use in my homelab so far, and very easy on resource footprint.
I will need to think about Nutanix when I get closer and maybe shift my XCP lab over to the T740 and put the Nutanix on the DL360p Gen8 where they would have enough resources. Or hope to find some good discounts on some newer mini-PC with 8c16t and maybe more ram than 64GB. I was hoping to see these prices already, but not yet, and most of these are Realtek NIC and only 2.5gbps until you climb into $600+ each and I'm not there with my lab, I'd buy more DL360 into Gen9 for less and just deal with it. (Gen 9 brings UEFI)