Active-Active is a bond mode that allows all uplinks in the bond to be used simultaneously for traffic transmission and reception. This bond mode provides load balancing and increased bandwidth for the AHV host and its VMs. Active-Active bond mode uses a hashing algorithm based on source MAC addresses to distribute traffic across different uplinks in the bond. Each individual VM NIC uses only a single bond member interface at a time, but multiple VM NICs are spread across different bond member interfaces.As a result, it is possible for a Nutanix AHV node with two 10 Gb interfaces to use up to 20 Gbps of network throughput, while individual VMs have a maximum throughput of 10 Gbps6.

Therefore, if an administrator needs to optimize for maximum single VM throughput, they should select Active-Active bond mode for their AHV cluster.This bond mode can be configured using Prism Element UI or manage-ovs commands on each AHV host7.No additional configuration is required on the upstream switch side, as long as the switches are interconnected physically or virtually and both uplinks trunk the same VLANs8.

VirtIO drivers are device drivers that are specifically designed for virtualized environments. They allow the guest operating system to communicate directly with the underlying hardware, bypassing the emulation layer. This improves the performance and efficiency of the virtual machines.VirtIO drivers are supported by various hypervisors, including Nutanix AHV1.

Nutanix AHV uses SCSI disks for VMs by default. However, Windows does not have native support for SCSI disks and requires VirtIO drivers to recognize them. Therefore, if an administrator is installing Windows 2019 on a new VM on an AHV cluster, they need to install the VirtIO drivers before selecting the destination disk for the installation.Otherwise, they will not see any drives listed for the install2.

To install the VirtIO drivers during Windows installation, the administrator can use one of the following methods3:

Use a VirtIO ISO image that contains the driver files. The administrator can download the VirtIO ISO image from the Nutanix support portal and upload it to the AHV image service. Then, they can attach the VirtIO ISO image to the VM as a CD-ROM device and load the driver from it during Windows installation.

Use a Nutanix Guest Tools (NGT) ISO image that contains the driver files and other tools. The administrator can download the NGT ISO image from Prism Element or Prism Central and attach it to the VM as a CD-ROM device. Then, they can load the driver from it during Windows installation.

Use a floppy disk image that contains only the driver files. The administrator can create a floppy disk image using tools such as WinImage or WinRAR and upload it to the AHV image service. Then, they can attach the floppy disk image to the VM as a floppy device and load the driver from it during Windows installation.

Terminology

Availability Zone--it is represented by all resources (Nutanix Clusters) connected to Prism Central or Xi Leap Availability zone. Depends on the architecture, Availability zone can represent geographic territory, datacenter or server room in thedatacenter.Protection policies--in protection policies you set up (RPO, Retention), rules to auto-apply policies to virtual machines

https://vmwaremine.com/2019/02/08/nutanix-leap-runbooks-part-1/#sthash.VwrzSzhQ.dpbs

According to the How to use the cvm_shutdown script web search result3, the cvm_shutdown script signals HA when shutting down the CVM (Controller VM) to forward the storage traffic to another healthy CVM. Instead of using sudo shutdown or sudo reboot commands, this script should be used to minimize I/O hits in user VMs running on the present hypervisor host. The cvm_shutdown -P now command will initiate the shutdown process on the CVM immediately. Therefore, if the administrator needs to perform an orderly shutdown of the CVM, they should execute this command from the CVM.

According to theNutanix Prism Central Guide, Prism Central allows you to apply storage policies on a per VM basis using Category, so that the VM uses the storage configuration defined in the storage policy. Using a storage policy, you can manage parameters of VMs, such as encryption, type of or lack of data compression, and IOPS or Throughput throttling values to be applied to the entities.