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Nutanix Disaster Recovery Guide

Disaster Recovery (Formerly Leap) pc.2022.6

Product Release Date: 2022-07-25

Last updated: 2022-11-22

Nutanix Disaster Recovery Overview

Legacy disaster recovery (DR) configurations use protection domains (PDs) and third-party integrations to protect your applications. These DR configurations replicate data between on-prem Nutanix clusters. Protection domains provide limited flexibility in terms of supporting complex operations (for example, VM boot order, network mapping). With protection domains, you have to perform manual tasks to protect new guest VMs as and when your application scales up.

Nutanix Disaster Recovery offers an entity-centric automated approach to protect and recover applications. It uses categories to group the guest VMs and automate the protection of the guest VMs as the application scales. Application recovery is more flexible with network mappings, an enforceable VM start sequence, and inter-stage delays. Application recovery can also be validated and tested without affecting your production workloads. Asynchronous, NearSync, and Synchronous replication schedules ensure that an application and its configuration details synchronize to one or more recovery locations for a smoother recovery.

Note: You can protect a guest VM either with legacy DR solution (protection domain-based) or with new Nutanix Disaster Recovery . To see various Nutanix DR solutions, refer Nutanix Disaster Recovery Solutions.

Nutanix Disaster Recovery works with sets of physically isolated locations called availability zones. An instance of Prism Central represents an availability zone. One availability zone serves as the primary AZ for an application while one or more paired availability zones serve as the recovery AZs.

Note: Nutanix Disaster Recovery supports the use of Flow Virtual Networking enabled Virtual Private Clouds.

A primary on-prem AZ and one recovery on-prem AZ

A primary on-prem AZ and two recovery on-prem AZs

Disaster recovery to an on-prem AZ and Xi Cloud

Disaster recovery to clusters at the same on-prem AZ

When paired, the primary AZ replicates the entities (protection policies, recovery plans, and recovery points) to the recovery AZs in the specified time intervals (RPO). The approach helps application recovery at any of the recovery AZs when there is a service disruption at the primary AZ (For example, natural disasters or scheduled maintenance). The entities start replicating back to the primary AZ when the primary AZ is up and running to ensure High Availability of applications. The entities you create or update synchronize continuously between the primary and recovery AZs. The reverse synchronization enables you to create or update entities (protection policies, recovery plans, or guest VMs) at either the primary or the recovery AZs.

This guide is primarily divided into the following two parts.

Protection and DR between On-Prem AZs (Nutanix Disaster Recovery)
The section walks you through the procedure of application protection and DR to other Nutanix clusters at the same or different on-prem AZs. The procedure also applies to protection and DR to other Nutanix clusters in supported public cloud.
Protection and DR between On-Prem AZ and Xi Cloud Service (Xi Leap)
Xi Leap is essentially an extension of Leap to Xi Cloud Services. You can protect applications and perform DR to Xi Cloud Services or from Xi Cloud Services to an on-prem availability zone. The section describes application protection and DR from Xi Cloud Services to an on-prem Nutanix cluster. For application protection and DR to Xi Cloud Services, refer the supported capabilities in Protection and DR between On-Prem AZs (Nutanix Disaster Recovery) because the protection procedure remains the same when the primary AZ is an on-prem availability zone.

Configuration tasks and DR workflows are largely the same regardless of the type of recovery AZ. For more information about the protection and DR workflow, see Nutanix Disaster Recovery Deployment Workflow.

Nutanix Disaster Recovery Terminology

The following section describes the terms and concepts used throughout the guide. Nutanix recommends gaining familiarity with these terms before you begin configuring protection with Nutanix Disaster Recovery or Xi Leap disaster recovery.

Availability Zone (AZ)

A zone that can have one or more independent datacenters inter-connected by low latency links. An AZ can either be in your office premises (on-prem) or in Xi Cloud Services. AZs are physically isolated from each other to ensure that a disaster at one AZ does not affect another AZ. An instance of Prism Central represents an on-prem AZ.

On-Prem Availability Zone

An AZ in your premises.

Xi Cloud Services

An AZ in the Nutanix Enterprise Cloud Platform (Xi Cloud Services).

Primary Availability Zone

An AZ that initially hosts guest VMs you want to protect.

Recovery Availability Zone

An AZ where you can recover the protected guest VMs when a planned or an unplanned event occurs at the primary AZ causing its downtime. You can configure at most two recovery AZs for a guest VM.

Nutanix Cluster

A cluster running AHV or ESXi nodes on an on-prem AZ, Xi Cloud Services, or any supported public cloud. Leap does not support guest VMs from Hyper-V clusters.

Prism Element

The GUI that provides you the ability to configure, manage, and monitor a single Nutanix cluster. It is a service built into the platform for every Nutanix cluster deployed.

Prism Central

The GUI that allows you to monitor and manage many Nutanix clusters (Prism Element running on those clusters). Prism Starter, Prism Pro, and Prism Ultimate are the three flavors of Prism Central. For more information about the features available with these licenses, see Software Options.

Prism Central essentially is a VM that you deploy (host) in a Nutanix cluster (Prism Element). For more information about Prism Central, see Prism Central Guide. You can set up the following configurations of Prism Central VM.

Small Prism Central: A Prism Central VM with configuration equal to or less than 8 vCPU and 32 GB memory. The VM hot adds extra 4 GB and 1 GB memory when you enable Leap and Flow respectively in small Prism Central.
Small Prism Central (Single node): A small Prism Central deployed in a single VM.
Small Prism Central (Scaleout): Three small Prism Centrals deployed in three VMs in the same availability zone (AZ).
Large Prism Central: A Prism Central VM with configuration more than 8 vCPU and 32 GB memory. The VM hot adds extra 8 GB and 1 GB memory when you enable Leap and Flow respectively in large Prism Central.
Large Prism Central (Single node): A large Prism Central deployed in a single VM.
Large Prism Central (Scaleout): Three large Prism Centrals deployed in three VMs in the same availability zone (AZ).

Note: A scaleout Prism Central works like a single node Prism Central in the availability zone (AZ). You can upgrade a single node Prism Central to scaleout Prism Central to increase the capacity, resiliency, and redundancy of Prism Central VM. For detailed information about the available configurations of Prism Central, see Prism Central Scalability in Prism Central Release Notes.

Virtual Private Cloud (VPC)

A logically isolated network service in Xi Cloud Services. A VPC provides the complete IP address space for hosting user-configured VPNs. A VPC allows creating workloads manually or by failover from a paired primary AZ.

The following VPCs are available in each Xi Cloud Services account. You cannot create more VPCs in Xi Cloud Services.

Production VPC: Used to host production workloads.
Test VPC: Used to test failover from a paired AZ.

Source Virtual Network

The virtual network from which guest VMs migrate during a failover or failback.

Recovery Virtual Network

The virtual network to which guest VMs migrate during a failover or failback operation.

Network Mapping

A mapping between two virtual networks in paired AZs. A network mapping specifies a recovery network for all guest VMs of the source network. When you perform a failover or failback, the guest VMs in the source network recover in the corresponding (mapped) recovery network.

Recovery Point

A copy of the state of a system at a particular point in time.

Crash-consistent Snapshots: A snapshot is crash-consistent if it captures all of the data components (write order consistent) at the instant of the crash. VM snapshots are crash-consistent (by default), which means that the vDisks that the snapshot captures are consistent with a single point in time. Crash-consistent snapshots are more suited for non-database operating systems and applications which may not support quiescence (freezing) and un-quiescence (thawing) and such as file servers, DHCP servers, print servers.
Application-consistent Snapshots: A snapshot is application-consistent if, in addition to capturing all of the data components (write order consistent) at the instant of the crash, the running applications have completed all their operations and flushed their buffers to disk (in other words, the application is quiesced). Application-consistent snapshots capture the same data as crash-consistent snapshots, with the addition of all data in memory and all transactions in process. Therefore, application-consistent snapshots may take longer to complete.
Application-consistent snapshots are more suited for systems and applications that can be quiesced and un-quiesced or thawed, such as database operating systems and applications such as SQL, Oracle, and Exchange.

Recoverable Entity

A guest VM that you can recover from a recovery point.

Protection Policy

A configurable policy that takes recovery points of the protected guest VMs in equal time intervals, and replicates those recovery points to the recovery AZs.

Recovery Plan

A configurable policy that orchestrates the recovery of protected guest VMs at the recovery AZ.

Recovery Point Objective (RPO)

The time interval that refers to the acceptable data loss if there is a failure. For example, if the RPO is 1 hour, the system creates a recovery point every 1 hour. On recovery, you can recover the guest VMs with data as of up to 1 hour ago. Take Snapshot Every in the Create Protection Policy GUI represents RPO.

Recovery Time Objective (RTO)

The time period from failure event to the restored service. For example, an RTO of 30 minutes enables you to back up and run the protected guest VMs in 30 minutes after the failure event.

Nutanix Disaster Recovery Solutions

The following flowchart provides you with the detailed representation of the disaster recovery (DR) solutions of Nutanix. This decision tree covers both the DR solutions—protection domain-based DR and Nutanix Disaster Recovery helping you to make quick decisions on which DR strategy will best suit your environment.

For information about protection domain-based (legacy) DR, see Data Protection and Recovery with Prism Element guide. With Leap, you can protect your guest VMs and perform DR to on-prem availability zones (AZs) or to Xi Cloud Services. A Leap deployment for DR from Xi Cloud Services to an on-prem Nutanix cluster is Xi Leap. The detailed information about Leap and Xi Leap DR configuration is available in the following sections of this guide.

Protection and DR between On-Prem AZs (Nutanix Disaster Recovery)

For information about protection with Asynchronous replication schedule and DR, see Protection with Asynchronous Replication Schedule and DR (Nutanix Disaster Recovery).
For information about protection with NearSync replication schedule and DR, see Protection with NearSync Replication Schedule and DR (Nutanix Disaster Recovery).
For information about protection with Synchronous replication schedule and DR, see Protection with Synchronous Replication Schedule (0 RPO) and DR.

Protection and DR between On-Prem AZ and Xi Cloud Service (Xi Leap)

For information about protection with Asynchronous replication schedule and DR, see Protection with Asynchronous Replication and DR (Xi Leap).
For information about protection with NearSync replication schedule and DR, see Protection with NearSync Replication and DR (Xi Leap).

Nutanix Disaster Recovery Deployment Workflow

The workflow for entity-centric protection and disaster recovery (DR) configuration is as follows. The workflow is largely the same for both Nutanix Disaster Recovery and Xi Leap configurations except a few extra steps you must perform while configuring Xi Leap.

Procedure

Enable Leap at the primary and recovery on-prem AZs (Prism Central).
Enable Leap at the on-prem AZ only. For more information about enabling Leap, see Enabling Nutanix Disaster Recovery for On-Prem AZ.
Pair the primary and recovery AZs with each other.
Only when you pair an AZ, the AZ lists while configuring recovery AZ in protection policies and recovery plans (see step 6 and step 7). For more information about pairing the AZs, see Pairing AZs (Nutanix Disaster Recovery).
(only for Xi Leap configuration) Set up your environment to proceed with replicating to Xi Cloud Services.
For more information about environment setup, see Xi Leap Environment Setup.
(only for Xi Leap configuration) Reserve floating IP addresses.
For more information about floating IP addresses, see Floating IP Address Management in Xi Infrastructure Service Management Guide .
Create production and test virtual networks at the primary and recovery AZs.
Create production and test virtual networks only at the on-prem AZs. Xi Cloud Services create production and test virtual networks dynamically for you. However, Xi Cloud Services provides floating IP addresses (step 4), a feature that is not available for on-prem AZs. For more information about production and test virtual networks, see Nutanix Virtual Networks.
Create a protection policy with replication schedules at the primary AZ.
A protection policy can replicate recovery points to at most two other Nutanix clusters at the same or different AZs. To replicate the recovery points, add a replication schedule between the primary AZ and each recovery AZ.
- To create a protection policy with an Asynchronous replication schedule, see:
  - Creating a Protection Policy with an Asynchronous Replication Schedule (Nutanix Disaster Recovery)
  - Creating a Protection Policy with Asynchronous Replication Schedule (Xi Leap)
- To create a protection policy with a NearSync replication schedule, see:
  - Creating a Protection Policy with a NearSync Replication Schedule (Nutanix Disaster Recovery)
  - Creating a Protection Policy with NearSync Replication Schedule (Xi Leap)
  Note: To maintain the efficiency of minutely replication, protection policies allow you to add NearSync replication schedule between the primary AZ and only one recovery AZ.
- To create a protection policy with the Synchronous replication schedule, see Creating a Protection Policy with the Synchronous Replication Schedule.
  Note: To maintain the efficiency of synchronous replication, protection policies allow you to add only one recovery AZ when you add Synchronous replication schedule. If you already have an Asynchronous or a NearSync replication schedule in the protection policy, you cannot add another recovery AZ to protect the guest VMs with Synchronous replication schedule.
You can also create a protection policy at a recovery AZ. Protection policies you create or update at a recovery AZ synchronize back to the primary AZ. The reverse synchronization helps when you protect more guest VMs in the same protection policy at the recovery AZ.
Create a recovery plan at the primary AZ.
A recovery plan orchestrates the failover of the protected guest VMs (step 6) to a recovery AZ. For two recovery AZs, create two discrete recovery plans at the primary AZ—one for DR to each recovery AZ.
- To create a recovery plan for DR to another Nutanix cluster at the same or different on-prem AZs, see Creating a Recovery Plan (Nutanix Disaster Recovery).
- To create a recovery plan for DR to Xi Cloud Services, see Creating a Recovery Plan (Xi Leap).
You can also create a recovery plan at a recovery AZ. The recovery plan you create or update at a recovery AZ synchronizes back to the primary AZ. The reverse synchronization helps in scenarios where you add more guest VMs to the same recovery plan at the recovery AZ.
Validate or test the recovery plan you create in step 7.
To test a recovery plan, perform a test failover to a recovery AZ.
- To perform test failover to another Nutanix cluster at the same or different on-prem AZs, see Performing a Test Failover (Leap).
- To perform test failover to Xi Cloud Services, see Failover and Failback Operations (Xi Leap).
(only for Xi Leap configuration) After the failover to recovery AZ, enable external connectivity. To enable external connectivity, perform the following.
- 1. After a planned failover, shut down the VLAN interface on the on-prem Top-of-Rack (TOR) switch.
  2. To access the Internet from Xi Cloud Services, create both inbound and outbound policy-based routing (PBR) policies on the virtual private cloud (VPC). For more information, see Policy Configuration in Xi Infrastructure Service Administration Guide .
(only for Xi Leap configuration) Perform the following procedure to access the recovered guest VMs through the Internet.
- 1. Assign a floating IP address to the guest VMs failed over to Xi Cloud Services. For more information, see Floating IP Address Management in Xi Infrastructure Service Administration Guide
  2. Create PBR policies and specify the internal or private IP address of the guest VMs. For more information, see Policy Configuration in Xi Infrastructure Service Administration Guide .
Note: If a guest VM (that hosts a publicly accessible webAZ) fails over, update the authoritative DNS server (for example, Amazon Route 53, GoDaddy, DNSmadeEasy) with the primary failover record (on-prem public IP address) and the secondary failover record (Xi floating IP address). For example, if your authoritative DNS server is Amazon Route53, configure the primary and the secondary failover records. Amazon Route53 performs the health checks on the primary failover record and returns the secondary failover record when the primary is down.

On-Prem Hardware Resource Requirements

For DR solutions with Asynchronous, NearSync, and Synchronous replication schedules to succeed, the nodes in the on-prem AZs (AZs or AZs) must have certain resources. This section provides information about the node, disk and Foundation configurations necessary to support the RPO-based recovery point frequencies.

The conditions and configurations provided in this section apply to Local and Remote recovery points.
Any node configuration with two or more SSDs, each SSD being 1.2 TB or greater capacity, supports recovery point frequency for NearSync.
Any node configuration that supports recovery point frequency of six (6) hours also supports AHV-based Synchronous replication schedules because a protection policy with Synchronous replication schedule takes recovery points of the protected VMs every 6 hours. See Protection with Synchronous Replication Schedule (0 RPO) and DR for more details about Synchronous replication.
Both the primary cluster and replication target cluster must fulfill the same minimum resource requirements.
Ensure that any new node or disk additions made to the on-prem AZs (Availability Zones) meet the minimum requirements.
Features such as Deduplication and RF3 may require additional memory depending on the DR schedules and other workloads run on the cluster.

Note: In case of on-prem deployments, the default minimum recovery point frequency using the default Foundation configuration is 6 hours. To increase the recovery point frequency, you must also modify the Foundation configuration (SSD and CVM) accordingly. For example, an all-flash setup with a capacity between 48 TB to 92 TB has the default recovery point frequency is 6 hours. If you want to decrease the recovery point interval to one (1) hour, you must modify the default Foundation configuration to:

14 vCPUs for CVM
40 GB for CVM

The table lists the supported frequency for the recovery points across various hardware configurations.

Table 1. Recovery Point Frequency
Type of disk	Capacity per node	Minimum recovery point frequency	Foundation Configuration - SSD and CVM requirements
Hybrid	Total HDD tier capacity of 32 TB or lower. Total capacity (HDD + SSD) of 40 TB or lower.	NearSync Async (Hourly)	No change required—Default Foundation configuration. 2 x SSDs Each SSD must be minimum 1.2 TB or more for NearSync.
	Total HDD tier capacity between 32-64 TB. Total capacity (HDD + SSD) of 92 TB or lower. Up to 64 TB HDD Up to 32 TB SSD (4 x 7.68 TB SSDs)	NearSync Async (Hourly)	Modify Foundation configurations to minimum: 4 x SSDs Each SSD must be minimum 1.2 TB or more for NearSync. 14 vCPU for CVM 40 GB for CVM
	Total HDD tier capacity between 32-64 TB. Total capacity (HDD + SSD) of 92 TB or lower. Up to 64 TB HDD Up to 32 TB SSD	Async (Every 6 hours)	No change required—Default Foundation configuration.
	Total HDD tier capacity between 64-80 TB. Total capacity (HDD + SSD) of 96 TB or lower.	Async (Every 6 hours)	No change required—Default Foundation configuration.
	Total HDD tier capacity greater than 80 TB. Total capacity (HDD + SSD) of 136 TB or lower.	Async (Every 6 hours)	Modify Foundation configurations to minimum: 12 vCPU for CVM 36 GB for CVM
All Flash	Total capacity of 48 TB or lower	NearSync Async (Hourly)	No change required—Default Foundation configuration.
	Total capacity between 48-92 TB	NearSync Async (Hourly)	Modify Foundation configurations to minimum: 14 vCPU for CVM 40 GB for CVM
	Total capacity between 48-92 TB	Async (Every 6 hours)	No change required—Default Foundation configuration.
	Total capacity greater than 92 TB	Async (Every 6 hours)	Modify Foundation configurations to minimum: 12 vCPU for CVM 36 GB for CVM

Native Encryption of Replication Traffic

You can enable or disable encryption of the replication traffic that is generated between the primary cluster and the replication (remote) cluster or AZ by replication schedules. This encryption feature does not include or consider encryption of the traffic flowing between Prism Element and Prism Central.

Note: This feature only supports the use of native keys and certificates and does not support custom, user-provided keys and certificates to encrypt the replication traffic.

For details about the ports and protocols used by encrypted replication traffic, see Ports and Protocols.

Enabling Encryption of Replication Traffic

Before you begin

For encryption of Leap-based DR replication traffic, ensure that Leap-based DR is set up and the two AZs (AZs) are paired. This requirement is not applicable to protection domain based DR.

About this task

For details about the ports and protocols used by encrypted replication traffic, see Ports and Protocols.

To enable encryption of replication traffic, perform the following steps on the primary and replication (remote) clusters.

Important: For encryption of Leap based DR replication traffic also, you must perform these steps of the clusters in primary and replication AZs. Also, ensure that the Prism Centrals of the two AZs are paired.

Procedure

SSH to the cluster Controller VM.
Change the folder to bin .
```
nutanix@CVM:$ cd bin
```
```
nutanix@CVM:~/bin$ 
```

Run the script with enable option.

nutanix@CVM:~/bin$ python onwire_encryption_tool.py --leap --enable <remote_cluster_vip>

For example: If the IP address of the replication (remote) cluster is 10.xxx.xxx.xxx.

nutanix@CVM:~/bin$ python onwire_encryption_tool.py --leap --enable 10.xxx.xxx.xxx

Important: Enter the password for the


          nutanix

access for the remote cluster CVM when prompted.

nutanix@CVM:~/bin$ python onwire_encryption_tool.py --leap --enable 10.xxx.xxx.xxx
Checking Source Cluster Compatibility
Check Complete. Source is compatible
Checking Remote cluster Compatibility
nutanix@10.xxx.xxx.xxx's password:
Check Complete. Remote cluster is compatible
Importing root.crt from Remote Cluster: 10.xxx.xxx.xxx

nutanix@10.xxx.xxx.xxx's password:
Checking if Remote Cluster's root.crt file already exists
nutanix@10.xxx.xxx.xxx's password:
Encryption enabled Successfully. Please perform rolling restart of Cerebro and Stargate services for changes to take effect

What to do next

Ensure that the changes take effect by performing a rolling restart of Cerebro and Stargate services on the primary and replication clusters using the following command.

nutanix@CVM:$ allssh "source /etc/profile; genesis stop cerebro stargate && cluster start; sleep 180"

Verifying the Status of Encryption of Replication Traffic

You can check the enabled or disabled status of the encryption of replication traffic.

About this task

For details about the ports and protocols used by encrypted replication traffic, see Ports and Protocols.

To verify the status of encryption of replication traffic, perform the following step on the cluster.

Procedure

Run the following command to identify the CVM that contains trusted_certs.crt certificate:

nutanix@CVM:~/bin$ allssh "ls -la /home/nutanix/tmp/ | grep -i trusted"

A sample output is as follows:

nutanix@CVM:~/$ allssh "ls -la /home/nutanix/tmp/ | grep -i trusted"
================== xx:xx:xx:2 =================
================== xx:xx:xx:3 =================
================== xx:xx:xx:4 =================
-rw-------.  1 nutanix nutanix  1790 Dec xx 06:27 trusted_certs.crt.xx:xx:xx:xx

SSH to the CVM identified (for exmple, xx.xx.xx.2) in the previous step.

Run the script with verify option.

nutanix@CVM:~/bin$ python onwire_encryption_tool.py --leap --verify <remote_cluster_vip>

For example: If the IP address of the replication (remote) cluster is 10.xxx.xxx.xxx.

nutanix@CVM:~/bin$ python onwire_encryption_tool.py --leap --verify 10.xxx.xxx.xxx

Important: Enter the password for the


          nutanix

access for the remote cluster CVM when prompted.

nutanix@CVM:~/bin$ python onwire_encryption_tool.py --leap --verify 10.xxx.xxx.xxx
Checking Source Cluster Compatibility
Check Complete. Source is compatible
Checking Remote cluster Compatibility
nutanix@10.xxx.xxx.xxx's password:
Check Complete. Remote cluster is compatible
Verifying Encryption: Checking if Remote Cluster's root.crt file already exists
nutanix@10.xxx.xxx.xxx's password:
Encryption Verification Successful. Encryption is already enabled for this remote

Disabling Encryption of Replication Traffic

You can disable encryption of replication traffic

About this task

To disable encryption of replication traffic, perform the following step on the cluster.

Procedure

SSH to the cluster Controller VM.
Change the folder to bin .
```
nutanix@CVM:$ cd bin
```
```
nutanix@CVM:~/bin$ 
```

Run the script with disable option.

nutanix@CVM:~/bin$ python onwire_encryption_tool.py --leap --disable <remote_cluster_vip>

For example: If the IP address of the replication (remote) cluster is 10.xxx.xxx.xxx.

nutanix@CVM:~/bin$ python onwire_encryption_tool.py --leap --disable 10.xxx.xxx.xxx

Important: Enter the password for the


          nutanix

access for the remote cluster CVM when prompted.

nutanix@CVM:~/bin$ python onwire_encryption_tool.py --leap --disable 10.xxx.xxx.xxx
Checking Source Cluster Compatibility
Stopping Cerebro on all nodes of the cluster

Encryption disabled Successfully. Please perform rolling restart of Cerebro and Stargate services for changes to take effect.

What to do next

Ensure that the changes take effect by performing a rolling restart of Cerebro and Stargate services on the primary and replication clusters using the following command.

nutanix@CVM:$ allssh "source /etc/profile; genesis stop cerebro stargate && cluster start; sleep 180"

Protection and DR between On-Prem AZs (Nutanix Disaster Recovery)

Leap protects your guest VMs and orchestrates their disaster recovery (DR) to other Nutanix clusters when events causing service disruption occur at the primary AZ. For protection of your guest VMs, protection policies with Asynchronous, NearSync, or Synchronous replication schedules generate and replicate recovery points to other on-prem AZs (AZs). Recovery plans orchestrate DR from the replicated recovery points to other Nutanix clusters at the same or different on-prem AZs.

Protection policies create a recovery point—and set its expiry time—in every iteration of the specified time period (RPO). For example, the policy creates a recovery point every 1 hour for an RPO schedule of 1 hour. The recovery point expires at its designated expiry time based on the retention policy—see step 3 in Creating a Protection Policy with an Asynchronous Replication Schedule (Nutanix Disaster Recovery). If there is a prolonged outage at an AZ, the Nutanix cluster retains the last recovery point to ensure you do not lose all the recovery points. For NearSync replication (lightweight snapshot), the Nutanix cluster retains the last full hourly snapshot. During the outage, the Nutanix cluster does not clean up the recovery points due to expiry. When the Nutanix cluster comes online, it cleans up the recovery points that are past expiry immediately.

For High Availability of a guest VM, Nutanix Disaster Recovery enables replication of its recovery points to one or more on-prem AZs. A protection policy can replicate recovery points to maximum two on-prem AZs. For replication, you must add a replication schedule between AZs. You can set up the on-prem AZs for protection and DR in the following arrangements.

The Primary and recovery Nutanix clusters at the different AZs

The Primary and recovery Nutanix clusters at the same on-prem AZ

The replication to multiple AZs enables DR to Nutanix clusters at all the AZs where the recovery points replicate or exist. To enable performing DR to a Nutanix cluster at the same or different AZ (recovery AZ), you must create a recovery plan. To enable performing DR to two different Nutanix clusters at the same or different recovery AZs, you must create two discrete recovery plans—one for each recovery AZ. In addition to performing DR to Nutanix clusters running the same hypervisor type, you can also perform cross-hypervisor disaster recovery (CHDR)—DR from AHV clusters to ESXi clusters, or from ESXi clusters to AHV clusters.

The protection policies and recovery plans you create or update synchronize continuously between the primary and recovery on-prem AZs. The reverse synchronization enables you to create or update entities (protection policies, recovery plans, and guest VMs) at either the primary or the recovery AZs.

The following section describes protection of your guest VMs and DR to a Nutanix cluster at the same or different on-prem AZs. The workflow is the same for protection and DR to a Nutanix cluster in supported public cloud platforms. For information about protection of your guest VMs and DR from Xi Cloud Services to an on-prem Nutanix cluster (Xi Leap), see Protection and DR between On-Prem AZ and Xi Cloud Service (Xi Leap).

Nutanix Disaster Recovery Requirements

The following are the general requirements of Nutanix Disaster Recovery . Along with the general requirements, there are specific requirements for protection with the following supported replication schedules.

For information about the on-prem node, disk and Foundation configurations required to support Asynchronous, NearSync, and Synchronous replication schedules, see On-Prem Hardware Resource Requirements.
For specific requirements of protection with Asynchronous replication schedule (1 hour or greater RPO), see Asynchronous Replication Requirements (Nutanix Disaster Recovery).
For specific requirements of protection with NearSync replication schedule (1–15 minutes RPO), see NearSync Replication Requirements (Nutanix Disaster Recovery).
For specific requirements of protection with Synchronous replication schedule (0 RPO), see Synchronous Replication Requirements.

License Requirements

The AOS license required depends on the features that you want to use. For information about the features that are available with an AOS license, see Software Options.

Hypervisor Requirements

The underlying hypervisors required differ in all the supported replication schedules. For more information about underlying hypervisor requirements for the supported replication schedules, see:

Asynchronous Replication Requirements (Nutanix Disaster Recovery)
NearSync Replication Requirements (Nutanix Disaster Recovery)
Synchronous Replication Requirements

Nutanix Software Requirements

Each on-prem AZ (AZ) must have a Leap enabled Prism Central instance. To enable Leap in Prism Central, see Enabling Nutanix Disaster Recovery for On-Prem AZ.
Note: If you are using ESXi, register at least one vCenter Server to Prism Central. You can also register two vCenter Servers, each to a Prism Central at different AZs. If you register both the Prism Central to the single vCenter Server, ensure that each ESXi cluster is part of different datacenter object in vCenter.
The primary and recovery Prism Central and Prism Element on the Nutanix clusters must be running on the supported AOS versions. For more information about the required versions for the supported replication schedules, see:
- Asynchronous Replication Requirements (Nutanix Disaster Recovery)
- NearSync Replication Requirements (Nutanix Disaster Recovery)
- Synchronous Replication Requirements
Tip:
Nutanix supports replications between the all the latest supported LTS and STS released AOS versions. To check the list of the latest supported AOS versions, see KB-5505. To determine if the AOS versions currently running on your clusters are EOL, see the EOL document .

Upgrade the AOS version to the next available supported LTS/STS release. To determine if an upgrade path is supported, check the Upgrade Paths page before you upgrade the AOS.

Note: If both clusters have different AOS versions that are EOL, upgrade the cluster with lower AOS version to match the cluster with higher AOS version and then perform the upgrade to the next supported LTS version.

For example, the clusters are running AOS versions 5.5.x and 5.10.x respectively. Upgrade the cluster on 5.5.x to 5.10.x. After both the clusters are on 5.10.x, proceed to upgrade each cluster to 5.15.x (supported LTS). Once both clusters are on 5.15.x you can upgrade the clusters to 5.20.x or newer.

Nutanix recommends that both the primary and the replication clusters or AZs run the same AOS version.

User Requirements

You must have one of the following roles in Prism Central.

User admin
Prism Central admin
Prism Self Service admin
Xi admin

To view the available roles or create a role, click the hamburger icon at the top-left corner of the window and go to Administration > Roles in the left pane.

Firewall Port Requirements

To allow two-way replication between Nutanix clusters at the same or different AZs, you must enable certain ports in your external firewall. To know about the required ports, see Disaster Recovery - Leap in Port Reference.

Networking Requirements

Requirements for static IP address preservation after failover

You can preserve one IP address of a guest VM (with static IP address) for its failover (DR) to an IPAM network. After the failover, the other IP addresses of the guest VM have to be reconfigured manually. To preserve an IP address of a guest VM (with static IP address), ensure that:

Caution: By default, you cannot preserve statically assigned DNS IP addresses after failover (DR) of guest VMs. However, you can create custom in-guest scripts to preserve the statically assigned DNS IP addresses. For more information, see Creating a Recovery Plan (Nutanix Disaster Recovery).

Both the primary and the recovery Nutanix clusters run AOS 5.11 or newer.
The protected guest VMs have Nutanix Guest Tools (NGT) version 1.5 or newer installed.
For information about installing NGT, see Nutanix Guest Tools in Prism Web Console Guide .
The protected guest VMs have at least one empty CD-ROM slot.
The empty CD-ROM is required for mounting NGT at the recovery AZ.
The protected guest VMs can reach the Controller VM from both the AZs.
The protected guest VMs have NetworkManager command-line tool (nmcli) version 0.9.10.0 or newer installed.
Also, the NetworkManager must manage the networks on Linux VMs. To enable NetworkManager on a Linux VM, in the interface configuration file, set the value of the NM_CONTROLLED field to yes . After setting the field, restart the network service on the VM.
Tip: In CentOS, the interface configuration file is /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-eth0 .

Requirements for static IP address mapping of guest VMs between source and target virtual networks

You can explicitly define IP addresses for guest VMs that have static IP addresses on the primary AZ. On recovery, such guest VMs retain the explicitly defined IP address. To map static IP addresses of guest VMs between source and target virtual networks, ensure that:

Both the primary and the recovery Nutanix clusters run AOS 5.17 or newer.
The protected guest VMs have static IP addresses at the primary AZ.
The protected guest VMs have Nutanix Guest Tools (NGT) version 1.5 or newer installed.
For information about installing NGT, see Nutanix Guest Tools in Prism Web Console Guide .
The protected guest VMs have at least one empty CD-ROM slot.
The empty CD-ROM is required for mounting NGT at the recovery AZ.
The protected guest VMs can reach the Controller VM from both the AZs.
The recovery plan selected for failover has VM-level IP address mapping configured.

Virtual network design requirements

You can design the virtual subnets that you plan to use for DR to the recovery AZ so that they can accommodate the guest VMs running in the source virtual network.

Maintain a uniform network configuration for all the virtual LANs (VLANs) with the same VLAN ID and network range in all the Nutanix clusters at a AZ. All such VLANs must have the same subnet name, IP address range, and IP address prefix length ( (Gateway IP/Prefix Length) ).
For example, if you have VLAN with id 0 and network 10.45.128.0/17, and three clusters PE1, PE2, and PE3 at the AZ AZ1, all the clusters must maintain the same name, IP address range, and IP address prefix length ( (Gateway IP/Prefix Length) ), for VLAN with id 0.
To use a virtual network as a recovery virtual network, ensure that the virtual network meets the following requirements.
- The network prefix is the same as the network prefix of the source virtual network. For example, if the source network address is 192.0.2.0/24, the network prefix of the recovery virtual network must also be 24.
- The gateway IP address is the same as the gateway IP address in the source network. For example, if the gateway IP address in the source virtual network 192.0.2.0/24 is 192.0.2.10, the last octet of the gateway IP address in the recovery virtual network must also be 10.
To use a single Nutanix cluster as a target for DR from multiple primary Nutanix clusters, ensure that the number of virtual networks on the recovery cluster is equal to the sum of the number of virtual networks on the individual primary Nutanix clusters. For example, if there are two primary Nutanix clusters, with one cluster having m networks and the other cluster having n networks, ensure that the recovery cluster has m + n networks. Such a design ensures that all recovered VMs attach to a network.

Additional Requirements

Both the primary and recovery Nutanix clusters must have an external IP address.
Both the primary and recovery Prism Centrals and Nutanix clusters must have a data services IP address.
The Nutanix cluster that hosts the Prism Central must meet the following requirements.
- The Nutanix cluster must be registered to the Prism Central instance.
- The Nutanix cluster must have an iSCSI data services IP address configured on it.
- The Nutanix cluster must also have sufficient memory to support a hot add of memory to all Prism Central nodes when you enable Leap. A small Prism Central instance (4 vCPUs, 16 GB memory) requires a hot add of 4 GB, and a large Prism Central instance (8 vCPUs, 32 GB memory) requires a hot add of 8 GB. If you enable Nutanix Flow, each Prism Central instance requires an extra hot-add of 1 GB.
Each node in a scaled-out Prism Central instance must have a minimum of 4 vCPUs and 16 GB memory.
For more information about the scaled-out deployments of a Prism Central, see Nutanix Disaster Recovery Terminology.
The protected guest VMs must have Nutanix VM mobility drivers installed.
Nutanix VM mobility drivers are required for accessing the guest VMs after failover. Without Nutanix VM mobility drivers, the guest VMs become inaccessible after a failover.
Maintain a uniform network configuration for all the virtual LANs (VLANs) with the same VLAN ID and network range in all the clusters at an AZ (AZ). All such VLANs must have the same subnet name, IP address range, and IP address prefix length ( (Gateway IP/Prefix Length) ).
For example, if you have VLAN with id 0 and network 10.45.128.0/17, and three clusters PE1, PE2, and PE3 at the AZ AZ1, all the clusters must maintain the same name, IP address range, and IP address prefix length ( (Gateway IP/Prefix Length) ), for VLAN with id 0.

Nutanix Disaster Recovery Limitations

Consider the following general limitations before configuring Nutanix Disaster Recovery . Along with the general limitations, there are specific protection limitations with the following supported replication schedules.

For specific limitations of protection with Asynchronous replication schedule (1 hour or greater RPO), see Asynchronous Replication Limitations (Nutanix Disaster Recovery).
For specific limitations of protection with NearSync replication schedule (1–15 minutes RPO), see NearSync Replication Limitations (Nutanix Disaster Recovery).
For specific limitations of protection with Synchronous replication schedule (0 RPO), see Synchronous Replication Limitations.

Virtual Machine Limitations

You cannot do or implement the following.

Deploy witness VMs.
Protect multiple guest VMs that use disk sharing (for example, multi-writer sharing, Microsoft Failover Clusters, Oracle RAC).
Protect VMware fault tolerance enabled guest VMs.
Recover vGPU console enabled guest VMs efficiently.
When you perform DR of vGPU console-enabled guest VMs, the VMs recover with the default VGA console (without any alert) instead of vGPU console. The guest VMs fail to recover when you perform cross-hypervisor disaster recovery (CHDR). For more information about DR and backup behavior of guest VMs with vGPU, see vGPU Enabled Guest VMs.
Configure NICs for a guest VM across both the virtual private clouds (VPC).
You can configure NICs for a guest VM associated with either production or test VPC.

Volume Groups Limitation

You cannot protect volume groups.

Network Segmentation Limitation

You cannot apply network segmentation for management traffic (any traffic not on the backplane network) in Leap.

You get an error when you try to enable network segmentation for management traffic on a Leap enabled Nutanix Cluster or enable Leap in a network segmentation enabled Nutanix cluster. For more information about network segmentation, see Securing Traffic Through Network Segmentation in the Security Guide .

Note: However, you can apply network segmentation for backplane traffic at the primary and recovery clusters. Nutanix does not recommend this because when you perform a planned failover of guest VMs having network segmentation for backplane enabled, the guest VMs fail to recover and the guest VMs at the primary AZ are removed.

Virtual Network Limitation

Although there is no limit to the number of VLANs that you can create, only the first 500 VLANs list in the drop-down of Network Settings while creating a recovery plan. For more information about VLANs in the recovery plan, see Nutanix Virtual Networks.

Nutanix to vSphere Cluster Mapping Limitation

Due to the way the Nutanix architecture distributes data, there is limited support for mapping a Nutanix cluster to multiple vSphere clusters. If a Nutanix cluster is split into multiple vSphere clusters, migrate and recovery operations fail.

Failover Limitation

After the failover, the recovered guest VMs do not retain their associated labels.

Tip: Assign categories to the guest VMs instead of labels because VM categories are retained after the failover.

vGPU Enabled Guest VMs

The following table list the behavior of guest VMs with vGPU to disaster recovery (DR) and backup deployments.

Table 1.
Primary cluster	Recovery cluster	DR or Backup	Identical vGPU models	Unidentical vGPU models or no vGPU
AHV	AHV	Nutanix Disaster Recovery	Supported: Recovery point creation Replication Restore Migrate VM start Failover and Failback	Supported: Recovery point creation Replication Restore Migrate Unsupported: VM start Failover and Failback Note: Only for Synchronous replication, protection of guest VMs fail.
		Backup: HYCU	Guest VMs with vGPU fail to recover.	Guest VMs with vGPU fail to recover.
		Backup: Veeam	Guest VMs with vGPU fail to recover.	Guest VMs with vGPU recover but with older vGPU. Guest VMs with vGPU recover but do not start. Tip: The VMs start when you disable vGPU on the guest VM
ESXi	ESXi	Nutanix Disaster Recovery	Guest VMs with vGPU cannot be protected.	Guest VMs with vGPU cannot be protected.
ESXi	ESXi	Backup	Guest VMs with vGPU cannot be protected.	Guest VMs with vGPU cannot be protected.
AHV	ESXi	Nutanix Disaster Recovery	vGPU is disabled after failover of Guest VMs with vGPU.	vGPU is disabled after failover of Guest VMs with vGPU.
ESXi	AHV	Nutanix Disaster Recovery	Guest VMs with vGPU cannot be protected.	Guest VMs with vGPU cannot be protected.

Nutanix Disaster Recovery Configuration Maximums

For the maximum number of entities you can configure with different replication schedules and perform failover (disaster recovery), see Nutanix Configuration Maximums. The limits have been tested for Leap production deployments. Nutanix does not guarantee the system to be able to operate beyond these limits.

Tip: Upgrade your NCC version to 3.10.1 to get configuration alerts.

Nutanix Disaster Recovery Recommendations

Nutanix recommends the following best practices for configuring Nutanix Disaster Recovery .

General Recommendations

Create all entities (protection policies, recovery plans, and VM categories) at the primary AZ (AZ).
Upgrade Prism Central before upgrading Prism Element on the Nutanix clusters registered to it. For more information about upgrading Prism Central, see Upgrading Prism Central in the Acropolis Upgrade Guide .
Do not include the guest VMs protected with Asynchronous, NearSync, and Synchronous replication schedules in the same recovery plan. You can include guest VMs protected with Asynchronous or NearSync replication schedules in the same recovery plan. However, if you combine these guest VMs with the guest VMs protected by Synchronous replication schedules in a recovery plan, the recovery fails.
Disable Synchronous replication before unpairing the AZs.
If you unpair the AZs while the guest VMs in the Nutanix clusters are still in synchronization, the Nutanix cluster becomes unstable. For more information about disabling Synchronous replication, see Synchronous Replication Management.

Recommendation for Migrating Protection Domains to Protection Policies

You can protect a guest VM either with the legacy DR solution (protection domain-based) or with Leap. To protect a legacy DR-protected guest VM with Leap, you must migrate the guest VM from the protection domain to a protection policy. During the migration, do not delete the guest VM snapshots in the protection domain. Nutanix recommends keeping the guest VM snapshots in the protection domain until the first recovery point for the guest VM is available on Prism Central. For more information, see Migrating Guest VMs from a Protection Domain to a Protection Policy.

Recommendation for DR to Nutanix Clusters at the Same On-Prem AZ

If the single Prism Central that you use for protection and DR to Nutanix clusters at the same AZ (AZ) becomes inactive, you cannot perform a failover when required. To avoid the single point of failure in such deployments, Nutanix recommends installing the single Prism Central at a different AZ (different fault domain).

Recommendation for Virtual Networks

Map the networks while creating a recovery plan in Prism Central.
Recovery plans do not support overlapping subnets in a network-mapping configuration. Do not create virtual networks that have the same name or overlapping IP address ranges.

Recommendation for Container Mapping

Create storage containers with the same name on both the primary and recovery Nutanix clusters.

Leap automatically maps the storage containers during the first replication (seeding) of a guest VM. If a storage container with the same name exists on both the primary and recovery Nutanix clusters, the recovery points replicate to the storage container with the same name only. For example, if your protected guest VMs are in the SelfServiceContainer on the primary Nutanix cluster, and the recovery Nutanix cluster also has SelfServiceContainer , the recovery points replicate to SelfServiceContainer only. If a storage container with the same name does not exist at the recovery AZ, the recovery points replicate to a random storage container at the recovery AZ. For more information about creating storage containers on the Nutanix clusters, see Creating a Storage Container in Prism Web Console Guide .

Nutanix Disaster Recovery Service-Level Agreements (SLAs)

Nutanix Disaster Recovery enables protection of your guest VMs and disaster recovery (DR) to one or more Nutanix clusters at the same or different on-prem AZs. A Nutanix cluster is essentially an AHV or an ESXi cluster running AOS. In addition to performing DR to Nutanix clusters running the same hypervisor type, you can also perform cross-hypervisor disaster recovery (CHDR)—DR from AHV clusters to ESXi clusters, or from ESXi clusters to AHV clusters.

Leap supports DR (and CHDR) to maximum two different Nutanix clusters at the same or different AZs (AZs). You can protect your guest VMs with the following replication schedules.

Asynchronous replication schedule (1 hour or greater RPO). For information about protection with Asynchronous replication schedule, see Protection with Asynchronous Replication Schedule and DR (Nutanix Disaster Recovery).
NearSync replication schedule (1–15 minute RPO). For information about protection with NearSync replication schedule, see Protection with NearSync Replication Schedule and DR (Nutanix Disaster Recovery).
Synchronous replication schedule (0 RPO). For information about protection with Synchronous replication schedule, see Protection with Synchronous Replication Schedule (0 RPO) and DR.
To maintain the efficiency in protection and DR, Leap allows to protect a guest VM with Synchronous replication schedule to only one AHV cluster and at the different on-prem availability zone.

Nutanix Disaster Recovery Views

The disaster recovery (DR) views enable you to perform CRUD operations on the following types of Leap entities.

Configured entities (for example, AZs, protection policies, and recovery plans)
Created entities (for example, guest VMs, and recovery points)

This chapter describes the views of Prism Central (on-prem AZ).

AZs View

The AZs view under the hamburger icon > Administration lists all of your paired AZs.

The following figure is a sample view, and the tables describe the fields and the actions that you can perform in this view.

Table 1. AZs View Fields
Field	Description
Name	Name of the AZ.
Region	Region to which the AZ belongs.
Type	Type of AZ. AZs that are backed by on-prem Prism Central instances are shown to be of type physical. The AZ that you are logged in to is shown as a local AZ.
Connectivity Status	Status of connectivity between the local AZ and the paired AZ.

Table 2. Workflows Available in the AZs View
Workflow	Description
Connect to AZ (on-prem Prism Central only)	Connect to an on-prem Prism Central or to a Xi Cloud Services for data replication.

Table 3. Actions Available in the Actions Menu
Action	Description
Disconnect	Disconnect the remote AZ. When you disconnect an availability zone, the pairing is removed.

Protection Summary View

The Protection Summary view under the hamburger icon > Data Protection shows detailed information about the Leap entities in an AZ (AZ) and helps you generate DR reports for the specified time. The information in the Protection Summary view enables you to monitor the health of your DR deployments (Leap) and the activities performed on Leap entities. Select a topology in the left-hand side pane and protection and recovery information of the selected topology shows up in DR widgets on the right-hand side pane. The following figures are a sample view, and the tables describe the fields and the actions that you can perform in the DR widgets.

Protection Summary View: Configuration Alerts

Protection Summary View: Reports and Recovery Events

Table 1. Protected Entities
Field	Description
Total	Number of guest VMs protected. Clicking the number shows the guest VMs protected in protection policies.
RPO Not Met	Number of guest VMs that are protected but do not meet the specified RPO. Clicking the number shows the guest VMs that do not meet the specified RPO.

Table 2. Replication Tasks
Field	Description
Ongoing	Number of ongoing replication tasks.
Stuck	Number of replication tasks that are stuck. Clicking the number shows the stuck alerts generated in Alerts .
Failed	Number of replication tasks that failed. Clicking the number shows the alerts generated in Alerts .

Table 3. Recovery Readiness
Field	Description
Measured by	Failover operations to check the readiness of the recovery plans. You can use Validate , Test Failover , or Planned Failover from the drop-down list to check recovery readiness.
Succeeded	Number of recovery plans on which the selected failover operation ran successfully. Clicking the number shows the recovery plans on which the selected failover operation ran successfully.
Succeeded With Warnings	Number of recovery plans on which the selected failover operation ran successfully but with warnings. Clicking the number shows the recovery plans on which the selected failover operation ran successfully with warnings.
Failed	Number of recovery plans on which the selected failover operation failed to run successfully. Clicking the number shows the recovery plans on which the selected failover operation failed to run successfully.
Not Executed	Number of recovery plans on which no failover operation ran. Clicking the number shows the recovery plans on which no failover operation ran.

Table 4. Entities with RPO Not Met
Field	Description
Name	Names of guest VMs that do not meet the specified RPO. You can use the filters on the guest VMs to investigate the reason for RPO not meeting.

Table 5. Configuration Alerts
Field	Description
Alert Description	Description of configuration alerts raised on protection policies and recovery plans.
Impacted Entity	The entities impacted by the configuration alerts.

Table 6. Reports
Field	Description
Report Name	Name of the report.
Generated at	Date and time when the report was generated.
Download	Option to download the report as a PDF or a CSV document.

Recovery Events

This widget shows you a detailed view of the Recovery Readiness . You can view information about all the recovery plans that ran on the selected AZs in the last 3 months.

Protection Policies View

The Protection Policies view under the hamburger icon > Data Protection lists all of configured protection policies from all the paired availability zones.

The following figure is a sample view, and the tables describe the fields and the actions that you can perform in this view.

Table 1. Protection Policies View Fields
Field	Description
Policy Name	Name of the protection policy.
Schedules	Number of schedules configured in the protection policy. If the protection policy has multiple schedules, a drop-down icon is displayed. Click the drop-down icon to see the primary location:primary Nutanix cluster , recovery location:recovery Nutanix cluster , and RPO of the schedules in the protection policy.
Alerts	Number of alerts issued for the protection policy.

Table 2. Workflows Available in the Protection Policies View
Workflow	Description
Create protection policy	Create a protection policy.

Table 3. Actions Available in the Actions Menu
Action	Description
Update	Update the protection policy.
Clone	Clone the protection policy.
Delete	Delete the protection policy.

Recovery Plans View

The Recovery Plans view under the hamburger icon > Data Protection lists all of configured recovery plans from all the paired availability zones.

The following figure is a sample view, and the tables describe the fields and the actions that you can perform in this view.

Table 1. Recovery Plans View Fields
Field	Description
Name	Name of the recovery plan.
Primary Location	Replication source AZ for the recovery plan.
Recovery Location	Replication target AZ for the recovery plan.
Entities	Sum of the following VMs: Number of local, live VMs that are specified in the recovery plan. Number of remote VMs that the recovery plan can recover at this AZ.
Last Validation Status	Status of the most recent validation of the recovery plan.
Last Test Status	Status of the most recent test performed on the recovery plan.
Last Failover Status	Status of the most recent failover performed on the recovery plan.

Table 2. Workflows Available in the Recovery Plans View
Workflow	Description
Create Recovery Plan	Create a recovery plan.

Table 3. Actions Available in the Actions Menu
Action	Description
Validate	Validates the recovery plan to ensure that the VMs in the recovery plan have a valid configuration and can be recovered.
Test	Tests the recovery plan.
Clean-up test VMs	Cleans up the VMs failed over as a result of testing recovery plan.
Update	Updates the recovery plan.
Failover	Performs a failover.
Delete	Deletes the recovery plan.

VM Recovery Points

The VM Recovery Points view under the hamburger icon > Data Protection lists all the recovery points of all the protected guest VMs (generated over time).

The following figure is a sample view, and the tables describe the fields and the actions that you can perform in this view.

Table 1. VM Recovery Points View Fields
Field	Description
Name	Name of the recovery point.
Latest Recovery Point on Local AZ	Replication source AZ for the recovery plan.
Oldest Recovery Point on Local AZ	Replication target AZ for the recovery plan.
Total Recovery Points	Number of recovery points generated for the guest VM.
Owner	Owner account of the recovery point.

Table 2. Actions Available in the Actions Menu
Action	Description
Clone (Previously Restore)	Clones the guest VM from the selected recovery points. The operation creates a copy of guest VM in the same Nutanix cluster without overwriting the original guest VM (out-of-place restore). For more information, see Manual Recovery of Guest VMs.
Revert	Reverts the guest VMs to the selected recovery points. The operation recreates the guest VM in the same Nutanix cluster by overwriting the original guest VM (in-place restore). For more information, see Manual Recovery of Guest VMs.
Replicate	Manually replicates the selected recovery points to a different Nutanix cluster in the same or different AZs. For more information, see Replicating Recovery Points Manually.

Dashboard Widgets

The dashboard includes widgets that display the statuses of configured protection policies and recovery plans. If you have not configured these VMs, the widgets display a summary of the steps required to get started with Leap.

To view these widgets, click the Dashboard tab.

The following figure is a sample view of the dashboard widgets.

Enabling Nutanix Disaster Recovery for On-Prem AZ

To perform disaster recovery (DR) to Nutanix clusters at different on-prem available zones (AZs), enable Leap at both the primary and recovery AZs (Prism Central). Without enabling Leap, you can configure protection policies and recovery plans that synchronize to the paired AZs but you cannot perform failover and failback operations. To perform DR to different Nutanix clusters at the same AZ, enable Leap in the single Prism Central.

About this task

To enable Nutanix Disaster Recovery , perform the following procedure.

Note: You cannot disable Nutanix Disaster Recovery once you have enabled it.

Procedure

Log on to the Prism Central web console.
Click the settings button (gear icon) at the top-right corner of the window.
Click Enable Leap in the Setup section on the left pane.

Figure. Enabling Leap
Click to enlarge

The Leap dialog box run prechecks. If any precheck fails, resolve the issue that is causing the failure and click check again .
Click Enable after all the prechecks pass.
Leap is enabled after at least 10 seconds.

Pairing AZs (Nutanix Disaster Recovery)

To replicate entities (protection policies, recovery plans, and recovery points) to different on-prem AZs (AZs) bidirectionally, pair the AZs with each other. To replicate entities to different Nutanix clusters at the same AZ bidirectionally, you need not pair the AZs because the primary and the recovery Nutanix clusters are registered to the same AZ (Prism Central). Without pairing the AZs, you cannot perform DR to a different AZ.

About this task

To pair an on-prem AZ with another on-prem AZ, perform the following procedure at either of the on-prem AZs.

Procedure

Log on to the Prism Central web console.
Click the hamburger icon at the top-left corner of the window. Go to Administration > AZs in the left pane.

Figure. Pairing AZ
Click to enlarge
Click Connect to AZ .
Specify the following information in the Connect to Availability Zone window.
Figure. Connect to AZ
Click to enlarge
1. AZ Type : Select Physical Location from the drop-down list.
  A physical location is an on-prem AZ (AZ). To pair the on-prem AZ with Xi Cloud Services, select XI from the drop-down list, and enter the credentials of your Xi Cloud Services account in step c and set d.
2. IP Address for Remote PC : Enter the IP address of the recovery AZ Prism Central.
3. Username : Enter the username of your recovery AZ Prism Central.
4. Password : Enter the password of your recovery AZ Prism Central.
Click Connect .
Both the on-prem AZs are paired to each other.

Protection and Automated DR (Nutanix Disaster Recovery)

Automated disaster recovery (DR) configurations use protection policies to protect your guest VMs, and recovery plans to orchestrate the recovery of those guest VMs to different Nutanix clusters at the same or different AZs (AZs). You can automate protection of your guest VMs with the following supported replication schedules in Nutanix Disaster Recovery .

Asynchronous replication schedule (1 hour or greater RPO). For information about protection with Asynchronous replication schedule, see Protection with Asynchronous Replication Schedule and DR (Nutanix Disaster Recovery).
NearSync replication schedule (1–15 minute RPO). For information about protection with NearSync replication schedule, see Protection with NearSync Replication Schedule and DR (Nutanix Disaster Recovery).
Synchronous replication schedule (0 RPO). For information about protection with Synchronous replication schedule, see Protection with Synchronous Replication Schedule (0 RPO) and DR.
To maintain the efficiency in protection and DR, Leap allows to protect a guest VM with Synchronous replication schedule to only one AHV cluster and at the different on-prem availability zone.

Protection with Asynchronous Replication Schedule and DR (Nutanix Disaster Recovery)

Asynchronous replication schedules enable you to protect your guest VMs with an RPO of 1 hour or beyond. A protection policy with an Asynchronous replication schedule creates a recovery point in an hourly time interval, and replicates it to the recovery AZs (AZs) for High Availability. For guest VMs protected with Asynchronous replication schedule, you can perform disaster recovery (DR) to different Nutanix clusters at same or different AZs. In addition to performing DR to Nutanix clusters running the same hypervisor type, you can also perform cross-hypervisor disaster recovery (CHDR)—DR from AHV clusters to ESXi clusters, or from ESXi clusters to AHV clusters.

Note: Nutanix provides multiple DR solutions to protect your environment. See Nutanix Disaster Recovery Solutions for the detailed representation of the DR offerings of Nutanix.

Asynchronous Replication Requirements (Nutanix Disaster Recovery)

The following are the specific requirements for protecting your guest VMs with Asynchronous replication schedule. Ensure that you meet the following requirements in addition to the general requirements of Nutanix Disaster Recovery .

For information about the general requirements of Nutanix Disaster Recovery , see Nutanix Disaster Recovery Requirements.

For information about node, disk and Foundation configurations required to support Asynchronous replication schedules, see On-Prem Hardware Resource Requirements.

Hypervisor Requirements

AHV or ESXi

The AHV clusters must be running on AHV versions that come bundled with the supported version of AOS.
The ESXi clusters must be running on version ESXi 6.5 GA or newer.

Nutanix Software Requirements

Each on-prem AZ must have a Nutanix Disaster Recovery enabled Prism Central instance.

The primary and recovery Prism Central and Prism Element on the Nutanix clusters must be running the following versions of AOS.

AHV clusters
- AOS 5.17 or newer for DR to different Nutanix clusters at the same AZ.
- AOS 5.10 or newer for DR to Nutanix clusters at the different AZs.
ESXi clusters
- AOS 5.17 or newer for DR to different Nutanix clusters at the same AZ.
- AOS 5.11 or newer for DR to Nutanix clusters at the different AZs.

Cross Hypervisor Disaster Recovery (CHDR) Requirements

Guest VMs protected with Asynchronous replication schedule support cross-hypervisor disaster recovery. You can perform failover (DR) to recover guest VMs from AHV clusters to ESXi clusters or guest VMs from ESXi clusters to AHV clusters by considering the following requirements.

Both the primary and the recovery Nutanix clusters must be running AOS 5.17 or newer for CHDR to Nutanix clusters at the same AZ.
Both the primary and the recovery Nutanix clusters must be running AOS 5.11.2 or newer for CHDR to Nutanix clusters at different AZs.
Install and configure Nutanix Guest Tools (NGT) on all the guest VMs. For more information, see Enabling and Mounting Nutanix Guest Tools in Prism Web Console Guide .
NGT configures the guest VMs with all the required drivers for VM portability. For more information about general NGT requirements, see Nutanix Guest Tools Requirements and Limitations in Prism Web Console Guide .
CHDR supports guest VMs with flat files only.
CHDR supports IDE/SCSI and SATA disks only.
For all the non-boot SCSI disks of Windows guest VMs, set the SAN policy to OnlineAll so that they come online automatically.
In vSphere 6.7, guest VMs are configured with UEFI secure boot by default. Upon CHDR to an AHV cluster, these guest VMs do not start if the host does not support the UEFI secure boot feature. For more information about supportability of UEFI secure boot on Nutanix clusters, see Compatibility Matrix.
For information about operating systems that support UEFI and Secure Boot, see UEFI and Secure Boot Support for CHDR.
Nutanix does not support vSphere inventory mapping (for example, VM folder and resource pools) when protecting workloads between VMware clusters.
Nutanix does not support vSphere snapshots or delta disk files.
If you have delta disks attached to a guest VM and you proceed with failover, you get a validation warning and the guest VM does not recover. Contact Nutanix Support for assistance.

Table 1. Operating Systems Supported for CHDR (Asynchronous Replication)
Operating System	Version	Requirements and limitations
Windows	Windows 2008 R2 or newer versions Windows 7 or newer versions	Only 64-bit operating systems are supported.
Linux	CentOS 6.5 and 7.0 RHEL 6.5 or newer and RHEL 7.0 or newer. Oracle Linux 6.5 and 7.0 Ubuntu 14.04	SLES operating system is not supported.

Additional Requirement

The storage container name of the protected guest VMs must be the same on both the primary and recovery clusters. Therefore, a storage container must exist on the recovery cluster with the same name as the one on the primary cluster. For example, if the protected VMs are in the SelfServiceContainer storage container on the primary cluster, there must also be a SelfServiceContainer storage container on the recovery cluster.

Asynchronous Replication Limitations (Nutanix Disaster Recovery)

Consider the following specific limitations before protecting your guest VMs with Asynchronous replication schedule. These limitations are in addition to the general limitations of Nutanix Disaster Recovery .

For information about the general limitations of Leap, see Nutanix Disaster Recovery Limitations.

You cannot restore guest VMs with incompatible GPUs at the recovery Nutanix cluster.
You cannot protect guest VMs configured as part of a network function chain.
You cannot retain hypervisor-specific properties after cross hypervisor disaster recovery (CHDR).
CHDR does not preserve hypervisor-specific properties (for example, multi-writer flags, independent persistent and non-persistent disks, changed block tracking (CBT), PVSCSI disk configurations).

Creating a Protection Policy with an Asynchronous Replication Schedule (Nutanix Disaster Recovery)

To protect the guest VMs in an hourly replication schedule, configure an Asynchronous replication schedule while creating the protection policy. The policy takes recovery points of those guest VMs in the specified time intervals (hourly) and replicates them to the recovery AZs (AZs) for High Availability. To protect the guest VMs at the same or different recovery AZs, the protection policy allows you to configure Asynchronous replication schedules to at most two recovery AZs—a unique replication schedule to each recovery AZ. The policy synchronizes continuously to the recovery AZs in a bidirectional way.

Before you begin

See Asynchronous Replication Requirements (Nutanix Disaster Recovery) and Asynchronous Replication Limitations (Nutanix Disaster Recovery) before you start.

About this task

To create a protection policy with an Asynchronous replication schedule, do the following at the primary AZ. You can also create a protection policy at the recovery AZ. Protection policies you create or update at a recovery AZ synchronize back to the primary AZ.

Procedure

Log on to the Prism Central web console.
Click the hamburger icon at the top-left corner of the window. Go to Policies > Protection Policies in the left pane.

Figure. Protection Policy Configuration: Protection Policies
Click to enlarge
Click Create Protection Policy .
Specify the following information in the Create Protection Policy window.

Figure. Protection Policy Configuration: Select Primary Location
Click to enlarge
1. Policy name : Enter a name for the protection policy.
  
  Caution: The name can be of only alphanumeric, dot, dash, and underscore characters.
2. In the Primary Location pane, specify the following information.
  - 1. Location : From the drop-down list, check an AZ that hosts the guests VMs to protect.
      The drop-down lists all the AZs paired with the local AZ. Local AZ represents the local AZ (Prism Central). For your primary AZ, you can check either the local AZ or a non-local AZ.
    2. Cluster : From the drop-down list, check the Nutanix cluster that hosts the guest VMs to protect.
      The drop-down lists all the Nutanix clusters registered to Prism Central representing the selected AZ. If you want to protect the guest VMs from multiple Nutanix clusters in the same protection policy, check the clusters that host those guest VMs. All Clusters protects the guest VMs of all Nutanix clusters registered to Prism Central.
    3. Click Save .
      Clicking Save activates the Recovery Location pane. After saving the primary AZ configuration, you can optionally add a local schedule (step iv) to retain the recovery points at the primary AZ.
    4. Click + Add Local Schedule if you want to retain recovery points locally in addition to retaining recovery points in a replication schedule (step d.iv). For example, you can create a local schedule to retain 15 minute recovery points locally and also an hourly replication schedule to retain recovery points and replicate them to a recovery AZ every 2 hours. The two schedules apply differently on the guest VMs.
      Specify the following information in the Add Schedule window.
      
      Figure. Protection Policy Configuration: Add Local Schedule
      Click to enlarge
      
      Take Snapshot Every : Specify the frequency in minutes , hours , days , or weeks at which you want the recovery points to be taken locally.
      
      Retention Type : Specify one of the following two types of retention policy.
      
      Linear : Implements a simple retention scheme at the local AZ. If you set the retention number to n, the local AZ retains the n recent recovery points.
      When you enter the frequency in minutes , the system selects the Roll-up retention type by default because minutely recovery points do not support Linear retention types.
      
      Roll-up : Rolls up the recovery points into a single recovery point at the local AZ.
      For more information about the roll-up recovery points, see step d.iii.
      
      Retention on Local AZ:PE_A3_AHV : Specify the retention number for the local AZ.
      
      If you want to take application-consistent recovery points, check Take App-Consistent Recovery Point .
      Irrespective of the local or replication schedules, the recovery points are of the specified type. If you check Take App-Consistent Recovery Point , the recovery points generated are application-consistent and if you do not check Take App-Consistent Recovery Point , the recovery points generated are crash-consistent. If the time in the local schedule and the replication schedule match, the single recovery point generated is application-consistent.
      
      Note: See Application-consistent Recovery Point Conditions and Limitations before you take application-consistent snapshot.
      
      Click Save Schedule .
3. In the Recovery Location pane, specify the following information.
  
  Figure. Protection Policy Configuration: Select Recovery Location
  Click to enlarge
  - 1. Location : From the drop-down list, select the AZ (AZ) where you want to replicate the recovery points.
      The drop-down lists all the AZs paired with the local AZ. Local AZ represents the local AZ (Prism Central). Select Local AZ if you want to configure DR to a different Nutanix cluster at the same AZ.
      
      If you do not select a AZ, local recovery points that are created by the protection policy do not replicate automatically. You can, however, replicate the recovery points manually and use recovery plans to recover the guest VMs. For more information, see Protection and Manual DR (Nutanix Disaster Recovery).
    2. Cluster : From the drop-down list, select the Nutanix cluster where you want to replicate the recovery points.
      The drop-down lists all the Nutanix clusters registered to Prism Central representing the selected AZ. You can select one cluster at the recovery AZ. If you want to replicate the recovery points to more clusters at the same or different AZs, add another recovery AZ with a replication schedule. For more information to add another recovery AZ with a replication schedule, see step e.
      
      Note: Selecting auto-select from the drop-down list replicates the recovery points to any available cluster at the recovery AZ. Select auto-select from the drop-down list only if all the clusters at the recovery AZ are up and running.
      
      Caution: If the primary Nutanix cluster contains an IBM POWER Systems server, you can replicate recovery points to an on-prem AZ only if that on-prem AZ contains an IBM Power Systems server.
    3. Click Save .
      Clicking Save activates the + Add Schedule button between the primary and the recovery AZ. After saving the recovery AZ configuration, you can optionally add a local schedule to retain the recovery points at the recovery AZ.
    4. Click + Add Local Schedule if you want to retain recovery points locally in addition to retaining recovery points in a replication schedule (step d.iv). For example, you can create a local schedule to retain one hourly recovery points locally to supplement the hourly replication schedule. The two schedules apply differently on the guest VMs after failover, when the recovery points replicate back to the primary AZ.
      Specify the following information in the Add Schedule window.
      
      Figure. Protection Policy Configuration: Add Local Schedule
      Click to enlarge
      
      Take Snapshot Every : Specify the frequency in minutes , hours , days , or weeks at which you want the recovery points to be taken locally.
      
      Retention Type : Specify one of the following two types of retention policy.
      
      Linear : Implements a simple retention scheme at the local AZ. If you set the retention number to n, the local AZ retains the n recent recovery points.
      When you enter the frequency in minutes , the system selects the Roll-up retention type by default because minutely recovery points do not support Linear retention types.
      
      Roll-up : Rolls up the recovery points into a single recovery point at the local AZ.
      For more information about the roll-up recovery points, see step d.iii.
      
      Retention on 10.xx.xx.xxx:PE_C1_AHV : Specify the retention number for the local AZ.
      
      If you want to take application-consistent recovery points, check Take App-Consistent Recovery Point .
      Irrespective of the local or replication schedules, the recovery points are of the specified type. If you check Take App-Consistent Recovery Point , the recovery points generated are application-consistent and if you do not check Take App-Consistent Recovery Point , the recovery points generated are crash-consistent. If the time in the local schedule and the replication schedule match, the single recovery point generated is application-consistent.
      
      Note: See Application-consistent Recovery Point Conditions and Limitations before you take application-consistent snapshot.
      
      Click Save Schedule .
4. Click + Add Schedule to add a replication schedule between the primary and the recovery AZ.
  Specify the following information in the Add Schedule window. The window auto-populates the Primary Location and Recovery Location that you have selected in step b and step c.
  
  Figure. Protection Policy Configuration: Add Schedule (Asynchronous)
  Click to enlarge
  - 1. Protection Type : Click Asynchronous .
    2. Take Snapshot Every : Specify the frequency in hours , days , or weeks at which you want the recovery points to be taken.
      The specified frequency is the RPO. For more information about RPO, see Nutanix Disaster Recovery Terminology.
    3. Retention Type : Specify one of the following two types of retention policy.
      
      Linear : Implements a simple retention scheme at both the primary (local) and the recovery (remote) AZ. If you set the retention number for a given AZ to n, that AZ retains the n recent recovery points. For example, if the RPO is 1 hour, and the retention number for the local AZ is 48, the local AZ retains 48 hours (48 X 1 hour) of recovery points at any given time.
      Tip: Use linear retention policies for small RPO windows with shorter retention periods or in cases where you always want to recover to a specific RPO window.
      
      Roll-up : Rolls up the recovery points as per the RPO and retention period into a single recovery point at a AZ. For example, if you set the RPO to 1 hour, and the retention time to 5 days, the 24 oldest hourly recovery points roll up into a single daily recovery point (one recovery point = 24 hourly recovery points) after every 24 hours. The system keeps one day (of rolled-up hourly recovery points) and 4 days of daily recovery points.
      Note:
      
      If the retention period is n days, the system keeps 1 day of RPO (rolled-up hourly recovery points) and n-1 days of daily recovery points.
      
      If the retention period is n weeks, the system keeps 1 day of RPO, 1 week of daily and n-1 weeks of weekly recovery points.
      
      If the retention period is n months, the system keeps 1 day of RPO, 1 week of daily, 1 month of weekly, and n-1 months of monthly recovery points.
      
      If the retention period is n years, the system keeps 1 day of RPO, 1 week of daily, 1 month of weekly, and n-1 months of monthly recovery points.
      
      Note: The recovery points that are used to create a rolled-up recovery point are discarded.
      
      Tip: Use roll-up retention policies for anything with a longer retention period. Roll-up policies are more flexible and automatically handle recovery point aging/pruning while still providing granular RPOs for the first day.
    4. To specify the retention number for the primary and recovery AZs, do the following.
      
      Retention on Local AZ: PE_A3_AHV : Specify the retention number for the primary AZ.
      This field is unavailable if you do not specify a recovery location.
      
      Retention on 10.xx.xx.xxx:PE_C1_AHV : Specify the retention number for the recovery AZ.
      If you select linear retention, the remote and local retention count represents the number of recovery points to retain at any given time. If you select roll-up retention, these numbers specify the retention period.
    5. If you want to enable reverse retention of the recovery points, check Reverse retention for VMs on recovery location .
      Note: Reverse retention for VMs on recovery location is available only when the retention numbers on the primary and recovery AZs are different.
      
      Reverse retention maintains the retention numbers of recovery points even after failover to a recovery AZ in the same or different AZs. For example, if you retain two recovery points at the primary AZ and three recovery points at the recovery AZ, and you enable reverse retention, a failover event does not change the initial retention numbers when the recovery points replicate back to the primary AZ. The recovery AZ still retains two recovery points while the primary AZ retains three recovery points. If you do not enable reverse retention, a failover event changes the initial retention numbers when the recovery points replicate back to the primary AZ. The recovery AZ retains three recovery points while the primary AZ retains two recovery points.
      
      Maintaining the same retention numbers at a recovery AZ is required if you want to retain a particular number of recovery points, irrespective of where the guest VM is after its failover.
    6. If you want to take application-consistent recovery points, check Take App-Consistent Recovery Point .
      Application-consistent recovery points ensure that application consistency is maintained in the replicated recovery points. For application-consistent recovery points, install NGT on the guest VMs running on AHV clusters. For guest VMs running on ESXi clusters, you can take application-consistent recovery points without installing NGT, but the recovery points are hypervisor-based, and leads to VM stuns (temporary unresponsive VMs) after failover to the recovery AZs.
      
      Note: See Application-consistent Recovery Point Conditions and Limitations before you take application-consistent snapshot.
      
      Caution: Application-consistent recovery points fail for EFI-boot enabled Windows 2019 VM running on ESXi when NGT is not installed. Nutanix recommends installing NGT on guest VMs running on ESXi also.
    7. Click Save Schedule .
5. Click + Add Recovery Location at the top-right if you want to add an additional recovery AZ for the guest VMs in the protection policy.
  - To add an on-prem AZ for recovery, see Protection and DR between On-Prem AZs (Nutanix Disaster Recovery)
  - To add Xi Cloud Services for recovery, see Protection and DR between On-Prem AZ and Xi Cloud Service (Xi Leap).
  Figure. Protection Policy Configuration: Additional Recovery Location Click to enlarge
6. Click + Add Schedule to add a replication schedule between the primary AZ and the additional recovery AZ you specified in step e.
  Perform step d again in the Add Schedule window to add the replication schedule. The window auto-populates the Primary Location and the additional Recovery Location that you have selected in step b and step c.
  By default, recovery point creation begins immediately after you create the protection policy. If you want to specify when recovery point creation must begin, click Immediately at the top-right corner, and then, in the Start Time dialog box, do the following.
  - 1. Click Start protection at specific point in time .
    2. Specify the time at which you want to start taking recovery points.
    3. Click Save .
7. Click Next .
  Clicking Next shows a list of VM categories where you can optionally check one or more VM categories to protect in the protection policy. DR configurations using Leap allows you to protect a guest VM by using only one protection policy. Therefore, VM categories specified in another protection policy are not in the list. If you protect a guest VM in another protection policy by specifying the VM category of the guest VM (category-based inclusion), and if you protect the guest VM from the VMs page in this policy (individual inclusion), the individual inclusion supersedes the category-based inclusion. Effectively, only the protection policy that protected the individual guest VM protects the guest VM.
  For example, the guest VM VM_SherlockH is in the category Department:Admin , and you add this category to the protection policy named PP_AdminVMs . Now, if you add VM_SherlockH from the VMs page to another protection policy named PP_VMs_UK , VM_SherlockH is protected in PP_VMs_UK and unprotected from PP_AdminVMs .
8. If you want to protect the guest VMs category wise, check the VM categories that you want to protect from the list and click Add .
  
  Figure. Protection Policy Configuration: Add VM Categories Click to enlarge
  
  Prism Central includes built-in VM categories for frequently encountered applications (for example, MS Exchange and Oracle). If the VM category or value you want is not available, first create the category with the required values, or update an existing category so that it has the values you require. Doing so ensures that the VM categories and values are available for selection. You can add VMs to the category either before or after you configure the protection policy. If the guest VMs have a common characteristic, such as belonging to a specific application or location, create a VM category and add the guest VMs into the category.
  If you do not want to protect the guest VMs category wise, proceed to the next step without checking VM categories. You can add the guest VMs individually to the protection policy later from the VMs page (see Adding Guest VMs Individually to a Protection Policy).
9. Click Create .
  The protection policy with an Asynchronous replication schedule is created. To verify the protection policy, see the Protection Policies page. If you check VM categories in step h, the protection policy starts generating recovery points of the guest VMs in those VM categories. To see the generated recovery points, click the hamburger icon at the top-left corner of the window and go to VM Recovery Points . Click the recovery points for its information. You can see the time estimated for the very first replication (seeding) to the recovery AZs.
  Figure. Recovery Points Overview Click to enlarge

Application-consistent Recovery Point Conditions and Limitations

This topic describes the conditions and limitations for application-consistent recovery points that you can generate through a protection policy. For information about the operating systems that support the AOS version you have deployed, see the Compatibility Matrix.

Before taking an application-consistent recovery point, consider the workload type of your guest VM.
Applications running in your guest VM must be able to quiesce I/O operations. For example, For example, you can quiesce I/O operations for database applications and similar workload types.
Before taking an application-consistent recovery point, install and enable Nutanix Guest Tools (NGT) on your guest VM.
For installing and enabling NGT, see Nutanix Guest Tools in the Prism Web Console Guide .

For guest VMs running on ESXi, consider these points.
Install and enable NGT on guest VMs running on ESXi also. Application-consistent recovery points fail for EFI boot-enabled Windows 2019 VMs running on ESXi without installing NGT.
(vSphere) If you do not enable NGT and then try to take an application-consistent recovery point, the system creates a Nutanix native recovery point with a single vSphere host-based recovery point. The system deletes the vSphere host-based recovery point. If you enable NGT and then try to take application-consistent recovery point, the system directly captures a Nutanix native recovery point.
Do not delete the .snapshot folder in the vCenter.
The following table lists the operating systems that support application-consistent recovery points with NGT installed.

Table 1. Supported Operating Systems (NGT Installed)
Operating system	Version
Windows	Windows 2008 R2 through Windows 2019
Linux	CentOS 6.5 through 6.9 and 7.0 through 7.3 Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) 6.5 through 6.9 and 7.0 through 7.3. Oracle Linux 6.5 and 7.0 SUSE Linux Enterprise Server (SLES) 11 SP1 through 11 SP4 and 12 SP1 through 12 SP3 Ubuntu 14.04

Application-consistent Recovery Points with Microsoft Volume Shadow Copy Service (VSS)

To take application-consistent recovery points on Windows guest VMs, enable Microsoft VSS services.
When you configure a protection policy and select Take App-Consistent Recovery Point , the Nutanix cluster transparently invokes the VSS (also known as Shadow copy or volume snapshot service).

Note: This option is available for ESXi and AHV only. However, you can use third-party backup products to invoke VSS for Hyper-V.
To take application-consistent recovery points on guest VMs that use VSS, systems invoke Nutanix native in-guest VmQuiesced Snapshot Service (VSS) agent. VSS framework takes application-consistent recovery points without causing VM stuns (temporary unresponsive VMs).
VSS framework enables third-party backup providers like Commvault and Rubrik to take application-consistent snapshots on Nutanix platform in a hypervisor-agnostic manner.
The default and only backup type for VSS snapshots is VSS_BT_COPY (copy backup).
Third party Backup products can choose between VSS_BT_FULL (full backup )and VSS_BT_COPY (copy backup) backup types.
Guest VMs with delta, SATA, and IDE disks do not support Nutanix VSS recovery points.
Guest VMs with iSCSI attachments (LUNs) do not support Nutanix VSS recovery points.
Nutanix VSS recovery points fail for such guest VMs.
Do not take Nutanix enabled application-consistent recovery points while using any third-party backup provider enabled VSS snapshots (for example, Veeam).

Pre-freeze and Post-thaw scripts

You can take application-consistent recovery points on NGT and Volume Shadow Copy Service (VSS) enabled guest VMs. However, some applications require more steps before or after the VSS operations to fully quiesce the guest VMs to an appropriate restore point or state in which the system can capture a recovery point. Such applications need pre-freeze and post-thaw scripts to run the necessary extra steps.
Any operation that the system must perform on a guest VM before replication or a recovery point capture is a pre-freeze operation. For example, if a guest VM hosts a database, you can enable hot backup of the database before replication using a pre-freeze script. Similarly, any operation that the system must perform on guest VM after replication or a recovery point capture is a post-thaw operation.
Tip: Vendors such as CommVault provide pre-freeze and post-thaw scripts. You can also write your own pre-freeze and post-thaw scripts.

Script Requirements

For Windows VMs, you must administrator and have read, write, and execute permissions on the scripts.
For Linux VMs, you must have root ownership and root access with 700 permissions on the scripts.
For completion of any operation before or after replication or recovery point capture, you must have both the pre_freeze and post_thaw scripts for the operation.
Timeout for both the scripts is 60 seconds.
A script must return 0 to indicate a successful run. A non-zero return value implies that the script execution failed. The necessary log entries are available in the NGT logs.
Tip: (AHV) For a non-zero return value from the pre-freeze script, the system captures a non application-consistent snapshot and raises an alert on the Prism web console. Similarly, for a non-zero return value from the post-thaw script, the system attempts to capture an application-consistent snapshot once again. If the attempt fails, the system captures a non application-consistent snapshot, and raises an alert on the Prism web console.
Irrespective of whether the pre-freeze script execution is successful, the corresponding post-thaw script runs.

Script Location

You can define Python or shell scripts or any executable or batch files at the following locations in Linux or Windows VMs. The scripts can contain commands and routines necessary to run specific operations on one or more applications.

In Windows VMs,
- Batch script file path for pre_freeze scripts:
```
C:\Program Files\Nutanix\Scripts\pre_freeze.bat
```
- Batch script file path for post_thaw scripts:
```
C:\Program Files\Nutanix\Scripts\post_thaw.bat
```

In Linux VMs,
- Shell script file path for production failover:
```
/usr/local/sbin/pre_freeze
```
  Replace pre_freeze with the script name (without extension).
- Shell script file path for test failover:
```
/usr/local/sbin/post_thaw
```
  Replace post_thaw with the script name (without extension).
  
  Note: The scripts must have root ownership and root access with 700 permissions.

Script Sample

Note: The following are only sample scripts and therefore must be modified to fit your deployment.

For Linux VMs

#!/bin/sh
#pre_freeze-script
date >> '/scripts/pre_root.log'
echo -e "\n attempting to run pre_freeze script for MySQL as root user\n" >> /scripts/pre_root.log
if [ "$(id -u)" -eq "0" ]; then
python '/scripts/quiesce.py' &
echo -e "\n executing query flush tables with read lock to quiesce the database\n" >> /scripts/pre_freeze.log
echo -e "\n Database is in quiesce mode now\n" >> /scripts/pre_freeze.log
else
date >> '/scripts/pre_root.log'
echo -e "not root useri\n" >> '/scripts/pre_root.log'
fi

#!/bin/sh
#post_thaw-script
date >> '/scripts/post_root.log'
echo -e "\n attempting to run post_thaw script for MySQL as root user\n" >> /scripts/post_root.log
if [ "$(id -u)" -eq "0" ]; then
python '/scripts/unquiesce.py'
else
date >> '/scripts/post_root.log'
echo -e "not root useri\n" >> '/scripts/post_root.log'
fi

For Windows VMs

@echo off 
echo Running pre_freeze script >C:\Progra~1\Nutanix\script\pre_freeze_log.txt

@echo off 
echo Running post_thaw script >C:\Progra~1\Nutanix\script\post_thaw_log.txt

Note: If any of these scripts prints excessive output to the console session, the script freezes. To avoid script freeze, perform the following.

Add @echo off to your scripts.
Redirect the script output to a log file.

If you receive a non-zero return code from the pre-freeze script, the system captures a non application-consistent recovery point and raises an alert on the Prism web console. If you receive a non-zero return code from the post-thaw script, the system attempts to capture an application-consistent snapshot once again. If that attempt fails, the system captures a non application-consistent snapshot, and raises an alert on the Prism web console.

Applications supporting application-consistent recovery points without scripts

Only the following applications support application-consistent recovery points without pre-freeze and post-thaw scripts.

Microsoft SQL Server 2008, 2012, 2016, and 2019
Microsoft Exchange 2010
Microsoft Exchange 2013
Microsoft Exchange 2016

Nutanix does not support application-consistent recovery points on Windows VMs that have mounted VHDX disks.
The system captures hypervisor-based recovery points only when you have VMware Tools running on the guest VM and the guest VM does not have any independent disks attached to it.
If these requirements are not met, the system captures crash-consistent snapshots.

The following table provides detailed information on whether a recovery point is application-consistent or not depending on the operating systems and hypervisors running in your environment.
Note:
- Installed and active means that the guest VM has the following.
  - NGT installed.
  - VSS capability enabled.
  - Powered on.
  - Actively communicating with the CVM.

Table 2. Application-consistent Recovery Points
Server	ESXi		AHV
Server	NGT status	Result	NGT status	Result
Microsoft Windows Server edition	Installed and active. Also pre-freeze and post-thaw scripts are present.	Nutanix script-based VSS snapshots	Installed and active. Also pre-freeze and post-thaw scripts are present.	Nutanix script-based VSS snapshots
	Installed and active	Nutanix VSS-enabled snapshots.	Installed and active	Nutanix VSS-enabled snapshots
	Not enabled	Hypervisor-based application-consistent or crash-consistent snapshots.	Not enabled	Crash-consistent snapshots
Microsoft Windows Client edition	Installed and active. Also pre-freeze and post-thaw scripts are present.	Nutanix script-based VSS snapshots	Installed and active. Also pre-freeze and post-thaw scripts are present.	Nutanix script-based VSS snapshots
Microsoft Windows Client edition	Not enabled	Hypervisor-based snapshots or crash-consistent snapshots.	Not enabled	Crash-consistent snapshots
Linux VMs	Installed and active. Also pre-freeze and post-thaw scripts are present.	Nutanix script-based VSS snapshots	Installed and active. Also pre-freeze and post-thaw scripts are present.	Nutanix script-based VSS snapshots
Linux VMs	Not enabled	Hypervisor-based snapshots or crash-consistent snapshots.	Not enabled	Crash-consistent snapshots

Creating a Recovery Plan (Nutanix Disaster Recovery)

To orchestrate the failover (disaster recovery) of the protected guest VMs to the recovery AZ, create a recovery plan. After a failover, a recovery plan recovers the protected guest VMs to the recovery AZ. If you have configured two on-prem recovery AZs in a protection policy, create two recovery plans for DR—one for recovery to each recovery AZ. The recovery plan synchronizes continuously to the recovery AZ in a bidirectional way.

About this task

To create a recovery plan, do the following at the primary AZ. You can also create a recovery plan at a recovery AZ. The recovery plan you create or update at a recovery AZ synchronizes back to the primary AZ.

Procedure

Log on to the Prism Central web console.
Click the hamburger icon at the top-left corner of the window. Go to Policies > Recovery Plans in the left pane.

Figure. Recovery Plan Configuration: Recovery Plans
Click to enlarge
Click Create Recovery Plan .
Specify the following information in the Create Recovery Plan window.

Figure. Recovery Plan Configuration: General Click to enlarge
In the General tab, enter Recovery Plan Name , Recovery Plan Description , Primary Location , Recovery Location , and click Next .
From Primary Location and Recovery Location drop-down lists, you can select either the local AZ (AZ) or a non-local AZ to serve as your primary and recovery AZs respectively. Local AZ represents the local AZ (Prism Central). If you are configuring recovery plan to recover the protected guest VMs to another Nutanix cluster at the same AZ, select Local AZ from both Primary Location and Recovery Location drop-down lists.
In the Power On Sequence tab, click + Add Entities to add the guest VMs to the start sequence.

Figure. Recovery Plan Configuration: Add Entities
Click to enlarge
1. In the Search Entities by , select VM Name from the drop-down list to specify guest VMs by name.
2. In the Search Entities by , select Category from the drop-down list to specify guest VMs by category.
3. To add the guest VMs or VM categories to the stage, select the VMs or VM categories from the list.
  
  Note: The VMs listed in the search result are in the active state of replication.
4. Click Add .
  The selected guest VMs are added to the start sequence in a single stage by default. You can also create multiple stages to add guest VMs and define the order of their power-on sequence. For more information about stages, see Stage Management.
  Caution: Do not include the guest VMs protected with Asynchronous, NearSync, and Synchronous replication schedules in the same recovery plan. You can include guest VMs protected with Asynchronous or NearSync replication schedules in the same recovery plan. However, if you combine these guest VMs with the guest VMs protected by Synchronous replication schedules in a recovery plan, the recovery fails.
5. To automate in-guest script execution on the guest VMs during recovery, select the individual guest VMs or VM categories in the stage and click Manage Scripts .
  Note: In-guest scripts allow you to automate various task executions upon recovery of the guest VMs. For example, in-guest scripts can help automate the tasks in the following scenarios.
  - After recovery, the guest VMs must use new DNS IP addresses and also connect to a new database server that is already running at the recovery AZ.
    Traditionally, to achieve this new configuration, you would manually log on to the recovered VM and modify the relevant files. With in-guest scripts, you have to write a script to automate the required steps and enable the script when you configure a recovery plan. The recovery plan execution automatically invokes the script and performs the reassigning of DNS IP address and reconnection to the database server at the recovery AZ.
  - If guest VMs are part of domain controller AZA.com at the primary AZ AZ1 , and after the guest VMs recover at the AZ AZ2 , you want to add the recovered guest VMs to the domain controller AZB.com .
    Traditionally, to reconfigure, you would manually log on to the VM, remove the VM from an existing domain controller, and then add the VM to a new domain controller. With in-guest scripts, you can automate the task of changing the domain controller.
  Note: In-guest script execution requires NGT version 1.9 or newer installed on the VM. The in-guest scripts run as a part of the recovery plan only if they have executable permissions for the following.
  - Administrator user (Windows)
  - Root user (Linux)
  Note: You can define a batch or shell script that executes automatically in the guest VMs after their disaster recovery. Place two scripts—one for production failover and the other for test failover—at the following locations in the guest VMs with the specified name.
  - In Windows VMs,
    
    Batch script file path for production failover:
    C:\Program Files\Nutanix\scripts\production\vm_recovery.bat
    
    Batch script file path for test failover:
    C:\Program Files\Nutanix\scripts\test\vm_recovery.bat
  - In Linux VMs,
    
    Shell script file path for production failover:
    /usr/local/sbin/production_vm_recovery
    
    Shell script file path for test failover:
    /usr/local/sbin/test_vm_recovery
  Note: When an in-guest script runs successfully, it returns code 0 . Any non-zero error code signifies that the execution of the in-guest script was unsuccessful.
  Figure. Recovery Plan Configuration: In-guest Script Execution
  Click to enlarge
  - 1. To enable script execution, click Enable .
      A command prompt icon appears against the guest VMs or VM categories to indicate that in-guest script execution is enabled on those guest VMs or VM categories.
    2. To disable script execution, click Disable .
In the Network Settings tab, map networks in the primary cluster to networks at the recovery cluster.

Figure. Recovery Plan Configuration: Network Settings
Click to enlarge

Network mapping enables replicating the network configurations of the primary Nutanix clusters to the recovery Nutanix clusters, and recover guest VMs into the same subnet at the recovery Nutanix cluster. For example, if a guest VM is in the vlan0 subnet at the primary Nutanix cluster, you can configure the network mapping to recover that guest VM in the same vlan0 subnet at the recovery Nutanix cluster. To specify the source (primary Nutanix cluster) and destination (recovery Nutanix cluster) network information for network mapping, do the following in Local AZ (Primary) and PC 10.xx.xx.xxx (Recovery) panes.
1. Under Production in Virtual Network or Port Group drop-down list, select the production subnet that contains the protected guest VMs. (optional) If the virtual network is a non-IPAM network, specify the gateway IP address and prefix length in the Gateway IP/Prefix Length field.
2. Under Test Failback in Virtual Network or Port Group drop-down list, select the test subnet that you want to use for testing failback from the recovery Nutanix cluster. (optional) If the virtual network is a non-IPAM network, specify the gateway IP address and prefix length in the Gateway IP/Prefix Length field.
3. To add more network mappings, click Add Networks at the top-right corner of the page, and then repeat the steps 6.a-6.b.
  
  Note: The primary and recovery Nutanix clusters must have identical gateway IP addresses and prefix length. Therefore you cannot use a test failover network for two or more network mappings in the same recovery plan.
4. Click Done .
Note: For ESXi, you can configure network mapping for both standard and distributed (DVS) port groups. For more information about DVS, see VMware documentation.

Caution: Leap does not support VMware NSX-T datacenters. For more information about NSX-T datacenters, see VMware documentation.
To perform VM-level static IP address mapping between the primary and the recovery AZs, click Advanced Settings , click Custom IP Mapping , and then do the following.

Note: The Custom IP Mapping shows all the guest VMs with static IP address configured, NGT installed, and VNIC in the source subnet specified in the network mapping.
1. To locate the guest VM, type the name of the guest VM in the filter field.
  A guest VM that has multiple NICs lists in multiple rows, allowing you to specify an IP address mapping for each VNIC. All the fields auto-populate with the IP addresses generated based on the offset IP address-mapping scheme.
2. In the Test Failback field for the local AZ, Production field for the remote (recovery) AZ, and Test Failover for the remote AZ, edit the IP addresses.
  Perform this step for all the IP addresses that you want to map.
  Caution: Do not edit the IP address assigned to the VNIC in the local AZ. If you do not want to map static IP addresses for a particular VNIC, you can proceed with the default entries.
3. Click Save .
4. If you want to edit one or more VM-level static IP address mappings, click Edit , and then change the IP address mapping.
If VM-level static IP address mapping is configured between the primary and the recovery Nutanix clusters and you want to use the default, offset-based IP address-mapping scheme, click Reset to Matching IP Offset .
Click Done .
The recovery plan is created. To verify the recovery plan, see the Recovery Plans page. You can modify the recovery plan to change the recovery location, add, or remove the protected guest VMs. For information about various operations that you can perform on a recovery plan, see Recovery Plan Management.

Stage Management

A stage defines the order in which the protected guest VMs start at the recovery cluster. You can create multiple stages to prioritize the start sequence of the guest VMs. In the Power On Sequence , the VMs in the preceding stage start before the VMs in the succeeding stages. On recovery, it is desirable to start some VMs before the others. For example, database VMs must start before the application VMs. Place all the database VMs in the stage before the stage containing the application VMs, in the Power On Sequence .

Recovery Plan Configuration: Power On Sequence

To Add a Stage in the Power-On Sequence and Add Guest VMs to It, Do the Following.

Click +Add New Stage .
Click +Add Entities .
To add guest VMs to the current stage in the power-on sequence, do the following.
1. In the Search Entities by , select VM Name from the drop-down list to specify guest VMs by name.
2. In the Search Entities by , select Category from the drop-down list to specify guest VMs by category.
3. To add the guest VMs or VM categories to the stage, select the guest VMs or VM categories from the list.
  Note: The VMs listed in the search result are in the active state of replication.
Click Add .

To Remove a Stage from the Power-On Sequence, Do the Following.

Click Actions > Remove Stage

Note: You see Actions in a stage only when none of the VMs in the stage are selected. When one or more VMs in the stage are selected, you see More Actions .

To Change the Position of a Stage in the Power-On Sequence, Do the Following.

To move a stage up or down in the power-on sequence, click ↑ or ↓ respectively, at the top-right corner of the stage.
To expand or collapse a stage, click + or - respectively, at the top-right corner of the stage.
To move VMs to a different stage, select the VMs, do the following.
1. Click More Actions > Move .
2. Select the target stage from the list.
Note: You see Move in the More Actions only when you have defined two or more stages.

To Set a Delay Between the Power-On Sequence of Two Stages, Do the Following.

Click +Add Delay .
Enter the time in seconds.
Click Add .

To Add Guest VMs to an Existing Stage, Do the Following.

Click Actions > Add Entities .
Note: You see Actions in a stage only when none of the VMs in the stage are selected. When one or more VMs in the stage are selected, you see More Actions .
To add VMs to the current stage in the power-on sequence, do the following.
1. In the Search Entities by , select VM Name from the drop-down list to specify guest VMs by name.
2. In the Search Entities by , select Category from the drop-down list to specify guest VMs by category.
3. To add the guest VMs or VM categories to the stage, select the guest VMs or VM categories from the list.
  Note: The VMs listed in the search result are in the active state of replication.
Click Add .

To Remove Guest VMs from an Existing Stage, Do the Following.

Select the VMs from the stage.
Click More Actions > Remove .
Note: You see More Actions in a stage only when one or more VMs in the stage are selected. When none of the VMs in the stage are selected, you see Actions .

To Move Guest VMs to a Different Stage, Do the Following.

Select the VMs from the stage.
Click More Actions > Move .
Note: You see More Actions in a stage only when one or more VMs in the stage are selected. When none of the VMs in the stage are selected, you see Actions .
Select the target stage from the list.

Failover and Failback Management

You perform failover of the protected guest VMs when unplanned failure events (for example, natural disasters) or planned events (for example, scheduled maintenance) happen at the primary AZ (AZ) or the primary cluster. The protected guest VMs migrate to the recovery AZ where you perform the failover operations. On recovery, the protected guest VMs start in the Nutanix cluster you specify in the recovery plan that orchestrates the failover.

The following are the types of failover operations.

Test failover: To ensure that the protected guest VMs failover efficiently to the recovery AZ, you perform a test failover. When you perform a test failover, the guest VMs recover in the virtual network designated for testing purposes at the recovery AZ. However, the guest VMs at the primary AZ are not affected. Test failovers rely on the presence of VM recovery points at the recovery AZs.
Planned failover: To ensure VM availability when you foresee service disruption at the primary AZ, you perform a planned failover to the recovery AZ. For a planned failover to succeed, the guest VMs must be available at the primary AZ. When you perform a planned failover, the recovery plan first creates a recovery point of the protected guest VM, replicates the recovery point to the recovery AZ, and then starts the guest VM at the recovery AZ. The recovery point used for migration is retained indefinitely. After a planned failover, the guest VMs no longer run at the primary AZ.
Unplanned failover: To ensure VM availability when a disaster causing service disruption occurs at the primary AZ, you perform an unplanned failover to the recovery AZ. In an unplanned failover, you can expect some data loss to occur. The maximum data loss possible is equal to the least RPO you specify in the protection policy, or the data that was generated after the last manual recovery point for a given guest VM. In an unplanned failover, by default, the protected guest VMs recover from the most recent recovery point. However, you can recover from an earlier recovery point by selecting a date and time of the recovery point.
At the recovery AZ, the guest VMs can recover using the recovery points replicated from the primary AZ only. The guest VMs cannot recover using the local recovery points. For example, if you perform an unplanned failover from the primary AZ AZ1 to the recovery AZ AZ2 , the guest VMs recover at AZ2 using the recovery points replicated from AZ1 to AZ2 .

You can perform a planned or an unplanned failover in different scenarios of network failure. For more information about network failure scenarios, see Nutanix Disaster Recovery and Xi Leap Failover Scenarios.

At the recovery AZ after a failover, the recovery plan creates only the VM category that was used to include the guest VM in the recovery plan. Manually create the remaining VM categories at the recovery AZ and associate the guest VMs with those categories.

The recovered guest VMs generate recovery points as per the replication schedule that protects it even after recovery. The recovery points replicate back to the primary AZ when the primary AZ starts functioning. The approach for reverse replication enables you to perform failover of the guest VMs from the recovery AZ back to the primary AZ (failback). The same recovery plan applies to both the failover and the failback operations. Only, for failover, you must perform the failover operations on the recovery plan at the recovery AZ while for failback, you must perform the failover operations on the recovery plan at the primary AZ. For example, if a guest VM fails over from AZ1 (Local) to AZ2 , the failback fails over the same VMs from AZ2 (Local) back to AZ1 .

Nutanix Disaster Recovery and Xi Leap Failover Scenarios

You have the flexibility to perform a real or simulated failover for the full and partial workloads (with or without networking). The term virtual network is used differently on on-prem clusters and Xi Cloud Services. In Xi Cloud Services, the term virtual network is used to describe the two built-in virtual networks—production and test. Virtual networks on the on-prem clusters are virtual subnets bound to a single VLAN. Manually create these virtual subnets, and create separate virtual subnets for production and test purposes. Create these virtual subnets before you configure recovery plans. When configuring a recovery plan, you map the virtual subnets at the primary AZ to the virtual subnets at the recovery AZ.

The following are the various scenarios that you can encounter in Leap configurations for disaster recovery (DR) to an on-prem AZ (AZ) or to Xi Cloud (Xi Leap). Each scenario is explained with the required network-mapping configuration for Xi Leap. However, the configuration remains the same irrespective of disaster recovery (DR) using Leap or Xi Leap. You can either create a recovery plan with the following network mappings (see Creating a Recovery Plan (Nutanix Disaster Recovery)) or update an existing recovery plan with the following network mappings (see Updating a Recovery Plan).

Scenario 1: Leap Failover (Full Network Failover)

Full network failure is the most common scenario. In this case, it is desirable to bring up the whole primary AZ in the Xi Cloud. All the subnets must failover, and the WAN IP address must change from the on-prem IP address to the Xi WAN IP address. Floating IP addresses can be assigned to individual guest VMs, otherwise, everything use Xi network address translation (NAT) for external communication.

Perform the failover when the on-prem subnets are down and jump the host available on the public Internet through the floating IP address of Xi production network.

To set up the recovery plan that orchestrates the full network failover, perform the following.

Open the Network Settings page to configure network mappings in a recovery plan.
Select the Local AZ > Production > Virtual Network or Port Group .
The selection auto-populates the Xi production and test failover subnets.
Select the Outbound Internet Access switch to allow the Xi NAT to use for Internet access.
Dynamically assign the floating IP addresses to the guest VMs you select in the recovery plan.
Perform steps 1–4 for every subnet.

Recovery Plan Configuration: Network Settings

Scenario 2: Xi Network Failover (Partial Network Failover)

You want to failover one or more subnets from the primary AZ to Xi Cloud. The communications between the AZs happen through the VPN or using the external NAT or floating IP addresses. A use case of this type of scenario is that the primary AZ needs maintenance, but some of its subnets must see no downtime.

Perform partial failover when some subnets are active in the production networks at both on-prem and Xi Cloud, and jump the host available on the public Internet through the floating IP address of Xi production network.

On-prem guest VMs can connect to the guest VMs on the Xi Cloud Services.

To set up the recovery plan that orchestrates the partial network failover, perform the following.

Open the Network Settings page to configure network mappings in a recovery plan.
Select the Local AZ > Production > Virtual Network or Port Group .
The selection auto-populates the Xi production and test failover subnets.
Select the Outbound Internet Access switch to allow the Xi NAT to use for Internet access.
Dynamically assign the floating IP addresses to the guest VMs you select in the recovery plan.
Perform steps 1–4 for one or more subnets based on the maintenance plan.

Scenario 3: Xi Network Failover (Partial Subnet Network Failover)

You want to failover some guest VMs to Xi Cloud, while keeping the other guest VMs up and running at the on-prem cluster (primary AZ). A use case of this type of scenario is that the primary AZ needs maintenance, but some of its guest VMs must see no downtime.

This scenario requires changing IP addresses for the guest VMs running at Xi Cloud. Since you cannot have the subnet active on both the AZs, create a subnet to host the failed over guest VMs. Jump the host available on the public Internet through the floating IP address of Xi production network.

On-prem guest VMs can connect to the guest VMs on the Xi Cloud Services.

To set up the recovery plan that orchestrates the partial subnet network failover, perform the following.

Open the Network Settings page to configure network mappings in a recovery plan.
Select the Local AZ > Production > Virtual Network or Port Group .
The selection auto-populates the Xi production and test failover subnets for a full subnet failover

Note: In this case, you have created subnets on the Xi Cloud Services also. Choose that subnets to avoid full subnet failover (scenario 1).
Select the Outbound Internet Access switch to allow the Xi NAT to use for Internet access.
Dynamically assign the floating IP addresses to the guest VMs you select in the recovery plan.
Perform steps 1–4 for one or more subnets based on the maintenance plan.

Scenario 4: Xi Network Failover (Test Failover and Failback)

You want to test all the preceding three scenarios by creating an isolated test network so that no routing or IP address conflict happens. Clone all the guest VMs from a local recovery point and bring up to test failover operations. Test failover test when all on-prem subnets are active and on-prem guest VMs can connect to the guest VMs at the Xi Cloud. Jump the host available on the public Internet through the floating IP address of Xi production network.

In this case, focus on the test failover section when creating the recovery plan. When you select a local AZ production subnet, it copies to the test network. You can go one step further and create a test subnet at the Xi Cloud.

After the guest VMs test failover to Xi Cloud, you can do a test failback to the primary AZ.

Note: Make a test subnet in advance for the failback to the on-prem cluster.

Failover and Failback Operations (Nutanix Disaster Recovery)

You can perform test failover, planned failover, and unplanned failover of the guest VMs protected with Asynchronous replication schedule across different Nutanix clusters at the same or different on-prem AZs (AZs). The steps to perform test, planned, and unplanned failover are largely the same irrespective of the replication schedules that protect the guest VMs.

Performing a Test Failover (Leap)

After you create a recovery plan, you can run a test failover periodically to ensure that the failover occurs smoothly when required. To perform a test failover, do the following procedure at the recovery AZ. If you have two recovery AZs for DR, perform the test at the AZ where you want to recover the guest VMs.

Procedure

Log on to the Prism Central web console.
Click the hamburger icon at the top-left corner of the window. Go to Policies > Recovery Plans in the left pane.
Select the recovery plan that you want to test.
Click Test from the Actions drop-down menu.

Figure. Test Failover (Drop-down) Click to enlarge

Test Recovery Plan window shows. The window auto-populates the Failover From and Failover To locations from the recovery plan you select in step 3. Failover To location is Local AZ by default and is unavailable for editing.

Figure. Test Recovery Plan Click to enlarge
Click + Add target clusters if you want to failover to specific Nutanix clusters at the recovery AZ.
If you do not add target clusters, the recovery plan recovers the guest VMs to any eligible cluster at the recovery AZ.
Click Test .
The Test Recovery Plan dialog box lists the errors and warnings, if any, and allows you to stop or continue the test operation. If there are no errors or you resolve the errors in step 7, the guest VMs failover to the recovery cluster.
If you see errors, do the following.
- To review errors or warnings, click View Details in the description.
  Resolve the error conditions and then restart the test procedure.
- Select one of the following.
  - To stop the failover operation, click Abort .
  - To continue the failover operation despite the warnings, click Execute Anyway .
    Note: You cannot continue the failover operation when the validation fails with errors.

Cleaning up Test VMs (Leap)

After testing a recovery plan, you can remove the test VMs that the recovery plan creates in the recovery test network. To clean up the test VMs, do the following at the recovery AZ where the test failover created the test VMs.

Procedure

Log on to the Prism Central web console.
Click the hamburger icon at the top-left corner of the window. Go to Policies > Recovery Plans in the left pane.
Select the recovery plans whose test VMs you want to remove.
Click Clean Up Test VMs from the Actions drop-down menu.
Clean Up Test VMs dialog box shows with the name of the recovery plan you selected in step 3.
Click Clean .

Figure. Clean Up Test VMs Click to enlarge

Performing a Planned Failover (Leap)

If there is a planned event (for example, scheduled maintenance of guest VMs) at the primary AZ (AZ), perform a planned failover to the recovery AZ. To perform a planned failover, do the following procedure at the recovery AZ. If you have two recovery AZs for DR, perform the failover at the AZ where you want to recover the guest VMs.

Procedure

Log on to the Prism Central web console.
Click the hamburger icon at the top-left corner of the window. Go to Policies > Recovery Plans in the left pane.
Select a recovery plan for the failover operation.
Click Failover from the Actions drop-down menu.

Note: If you select more than one recovery plan in step 3, the Failover action is available only when the selected recovery plans have the same primary and recovery locations.

Specify the following information in the Failover from Recovery Plan window. The window auto-populates the Failover From and Failover To locations from the recovery plan you select in step 3.

Figure. Planned Failover
Click to enlarge
1. Failover Type : Click Planned Failover .
  
  Warning: Do not check Live Migrate VMs . Live migration works only for the planned failover of the guest VMs protected in Synchronous replication schedule. If you check Live Migrate VMs for the planned failover of the guest VMs protected in Asynchronous or NearSync replication schedule, the failover task fails.
2. Click + Add target clusters if you want to failover to specific Nutanix clusters at the recovery AZ.
  
  Figure. Planned Failover: Select Recovery Cluster
  Click to enlarge
  
  If you do not add target clusters, the recovery plan recovers the guest VMs to any eligible cluster at the recovery AZ.
Click Failover .
The Failover from Recovery Plan dialog box lists the errors and warnings, if any, and allows you to stop or continue the failover operation. If there are no errors or you resolve the errors in step 6, the guest VMs failover to the recovery Nutanix cluster.
If you see errors, do the following.
- To review errors or warnings, click View Details in the description.
  Resolve the error conditions and then restart the failover procedure.
- Select one of the following.
  - To stop the failover operation, click Abort .
  - To continue the failover operation despite the warnings, click Execute Anyway .
    Note: You cannot continue the failover operation when the validation fails with errors.
Note:

The entities of AHV/ESXi clusters recover at a different path on the ESXi clusters if their files conflict with the existing files on the recovery ESXi cluster. For example, there is a file name conflict if a VM (VM1) migrates to a recovery cluster that already has a VM (VM1) in the same container.

However, the entities recover at a different path with VmRecoveredAtAlternatePath alert only if the following conditions are met.
- Prism Element running on both the primary and the recovery Nutanix clusters are of version 5.17 or newer.
- A path for the entity recovery is not defined while initiating the failover operation.
- The protected entities do not have shared disk/s.
If these conditions are not satisfied, the failover operation fails.

Performing an Unplanned Failover (Leap)

If there is an unplanned event (for example, a natural disaster or network failure) at the primary AZ (AZ), perform an unplanned failover to the recovery AZ. To perform an unplanned failover, do the following procedure at the recovery AZ. If you have two recovery AZs for DR, perform the failover at the AZ where you want to recover the guest VMs.

Procedure

Log on to the Prism Central web console.
Click the hamburger icon at the top-left corner of the window. Go to Policies > Recovery Plans in the left pane.
Select a recovery plan for the failover operation.
Click Failover from the Actions drop-down menu.

Note: If you select more than one recovery plan in step 3, the Failover action is available only when the selected recovery plans have the same primary and recovery locations.

Specify the following information in the Failover from Recovery Plan window. The window auto-populates the Failover From and Failover To locations from the recovery plan you select in step 3.

Figure. Unplanned Failover
Click to enlarge
1. Failover Type : Click Unplanned Failover and do one of the following.
  - Click Recover from latest Recovery Point to use the latest recovery point for recovery.
  - Click Recover from specific point in time to use a recovery point taken at a specific point in time for recovery.
    Note: If you click Recover from specific point in time , select a Nutanix cluster that hosts the specific point in time recovery point (step 4.b). If you do not select a cluster, or select multiple clusters where the same recovery points exist, the guest VMs fail to recover efficiently because the system encounters more than one recovery point at the recovery AZ. For example, if a primary AZ AZ1 replicates the same recovery points to two clusters CLA and CLB at AZ AZ2 , select either the cluster CLA or the cluster CLB as the target cluster when you click to recover from a specific point in time. If you select both CLA and CLB , the guest VMs fail to recover.
2. Click + Add target clusters if you want to failover to specific Nutanix clusters at the recovery AZ.
  
  Figure. Unplanned Failover: Select Recovery Cluster
  Click to enlarge
  
  If you do not add target clusters, the recovery plan recovers the guest VMs to any eligible cluster at the recovery AZ.
Note: If recovery plans contain VM categories, the VMs from those categories recover in the same category after an unplanned failover to the recovery AZ. Also, the recovery points keep generating at the recovery AZ for those recovered VMs. Since the VM count represents the number of recoverable VMs (calculated from recovery points), the recovered VMs and their newly created recovery points sum up. Their sum gives double the count of the originally recovered VMs on the recovery plans page. Now, if some VMs belonging to the given category at the primary or recovery AZ are deleted, the VM count at both AZs still stay the same until the recovery points of deleted VMs expire. For example, when two VMs have failed over, the recovery plans page at the recovery AZ shows four VMs (two replicated recovery points from source and two newly generated recovery points). The page shows four VMs even if the VMs are deleted from the primary or recovery AZ. The VM count synchronizes and becomes consistent in the subsequent RPO cycle conforming to the retention policy set in the protection policy (due to the expiration of recovery points).
Click Failover .
The Failover from Recovery Plan dialog box lists the errors and warnings, if any, and allows you to stop or continue the failover operation. If there are no errors or you resolve the errors in step 6, the guest VMs failover to the recovery Nutanix cluster.
If you see errors, do the following.
- To review errors or warnings, click View Details in the description.
  Resolve the error conditions and then restart the failover procedure.
- Select one of the following.
  - To stop the failover operation, click Abort .
  - To continue the failover operation despite the warnings, click Execute Anyway .
    Note: You cannot continue the failover operation when the validation fails with errors.
Note: To avoid conflicts when the primary AZ becomes active after the failover, shut down the guest VMs associated with this recovery plan. Manually power off the guest VMs on either primary or recovery AZ after the failover is complete. You can also block the guest VMs associated with this recovery plan through the firewall.
Note:

The entities of AHV/ESXi clusters recover at a different path on the ESXi clusters if their files conflict with the existing files on the recovery ESXi cluster. For example, there is a file name conflict if a VM (VM1) migrates to a recovery cluster that already has a VM (VM1) in the same container.

However, the entities recover at a different path with VmRecoveredAtAlternatePath alert only if the following conditions are met.
- Prism Element running on both the primary and the recovery Nutanix clusters are of version 5.17 or newer.
- A path for the entity recovery is not defined while initiating the failover operation.
- The protected entities do not have shared disk/s.
If these conditions are not satisfied, the failover operation fails.

Performing Failback (Leap)

A failback is failover of the guest VMs from the recovery AZ (AZ) back to the primary AZ. The same recovery plan applies to both the failover and the failback operations. Only, for failover, you must perform the failover operations on the recovery plan at the recovery AZ while for failback, you must perform the failover operations on the recovery plan at the primary AZ.

About this task

To perform a failback, do the following procedure at the primary AZ.

Procedure

Log on to the Prism Central web console.
Click the hamburger icon at the top-left corner of the window. Go to Policies > Recovery Plans in the left pane.
Select a recovery plan for the failover operation.
Click Failover from the Actions drop-down menu.

Note: If you select more than one recovery plan in step 3, the Failover action is available only when the selected recovery plans have the same primary and recovery locations.

Specify the following information in the Failover from Recovery Plan window. The window auto-populates the Failover From and Failover To locations from the recovery plan you select in step 3.

Figure. Unplanned Failover
Click to enlarge
1. Failover Type : Click Unplanned Failover and do one of the following.
  
  Tip: You can also click Planned Failover to perform planned failover procedure for a failback.
  - Click Recover from latest Recovery Point to use the latest recovery point for recovery.
  - Click Recover from specific point in time to use a recovery point taken at a specific point in time for recovery.
2. Click + Add target clusters if you want to failover to specific Nutanix clusters at the primary AZ.
  If you do not add target clusters, the recovery plan recovers the guest VMs to any eligible cluster at the primary AZ.
Note: If recovery plans contain VM categories, the VMs from those categories recover in the same category after an unplanned failover to the recovery AZ. Also, the recovery points keep generating at the recovery AZ for those recovered VMs. Since the VM count represents the number of recoverable VMs (calculated from recovery points), the recovered VMs and their newly created recovery points sum up. Their sum gives double the count of the originally recovered VMs on the recovery plans page. Now, if some VMs belonging to the given category at the primary or recovery AZ are deleted, the VM count at both AZs still stay the same until the recovery points of deleted VMs expire. For example, when two VMs have failed over, the recovery plans page at the recovery AZ shows four VMs (two replicated recovery points from source and two newly generated recovery points). The page shows four VMs even if the VMs are deleted from the primary or recovery AZ. The VM count synchronizes and becomes consistent in the subsequent RPO cycle conforming to the retention policy set in the protection policy (due to the expiration of recovery points).
Click Failover .
The Failover from Recovery Plan dialog box lists the errors and warnings, if any, and allows you to stop or continue the failover operation. If there are no errors or you resolve the errors in step 6, the guest VMs failover to the recovery cluster.
If you see errors, do the following.
- To review errors or warnings, click View Details in the description.
  Resolve the error conditions and then restart the failover procedure.
- Select one of the following.
  - To stop the failover operation, click Abort .
  - To continue the failover operation despite the warnings, click Execute Anyway .
    Note: You cannot continue the failover operation when the validation fails with errors.
Note: To avoid conflicts when the primary AZ becomes active after the failover, shut down the guest VMs associated with this recovery plan. Manually power off the guest VMs on either primary or recovery AZ after the failover is complete. You can also block the guest VMs associated with this recovery plan through the firewall.
Note:

The entities of AHV/ESXi clusters recover at a different path on the ESXi clusters if their files conflict with the existing files on the recovery ESXi cluster. For example, there is a file name conflict if a VM (VM1) migrates to a recovery cluster that already has a VM (VM1) in the same container.

However, the entities recover at a different path with VmRecoveredAtAlternatePath alert only if the following conditions are met.
- Prism Element running on both the primary and the recovery Nutanix clusters are of version 5.17 or newer.
- A path for the entity recovery is not defined while initiating the failover operation.
- The protected entities do not have shared disk/s.
If these conditions are not satisfied, the failover operation fails.

Monitoring a Failover Operation (Leap)

After you trigger a failover operation, you can monitor failover-related tasks. To monitor a failover, perform the following procedure at the recovery AZ. If you have two recovery AZs for DR, perform the procedure at the AZ where you trigger the failover.

Procedure

Log on to the Prism Central web console.
Click the hamburger icon at the top-left corner of the window. Go to Policies > Recovery Plans in the left pane.
Click the name of the recovery plan for which you triggered failover.
Click the Tasks tab.
The left pane displays the overall status. The table in the details pane lists all the running tasks and their individual statuses.

Leap Role-Based Access Control (RBAC)

You can configure RBAC policies allowing other Prism Central Active Directory users (non-administrator roles) to perform operations on recovery points and recovery plans. This section guides you to configure recovery plan RBAC policies. For information about RBAC policies for recovery points, see Controlling User Access (RBAC) in the Nutanix Security Guide . Perform the following steps to configure recovery plan RBAC policies.

Note: You can configure recovery plan RBAC policies for Leap deployments with single IAM v2 enabled Prism Central version 2022.4 or newer only.

Create a custom role in Prism Central. See Creating a Custom Role.
You must create a custom role because none of the in-built roles support recovery plan operations.

Tip: To modify or delete a custom role, see Modifying a Custom Role. For more information about user role management, see Security and User Management in the Prism Central Guide .
1. Assign permissions to the custom role. See Custom Role Permissions.
Assign entities to the custom role. See Assigning a Role.
The custom role is created. The Active Directory (AD) users or User Groups can now log on to Prism Central, view the assigned recovery plans, and perform recovery plan operations. For recovery plan operations, see Failover and Failback Operations (Nutanix Disaster Recovery).
Note: After an entity failover, the Access Control Policies (ACP) where the access is based on ownership, project, or category is retained on the recovery AZ. The access to an entity is revoked in the following scenarios.
- When you perform an unplanned failover of the entity.
  The entity access is revoked because the entity UUID changes after the unplanned failover.
- When the entity access is cluster based.

Creating a Custom Role

About this task

To create a custom role, do the following:

Procedure

Go to the roles dashboard (select Administration > Roles in the pull-down menu) and click the Create Role button.

The Roles page appears. See Custom Role Permissions for a list of the permissions available for each custom role option.
In the Roles page, do the following in the indicated fields:
1. Role Name : Enter a name for the new role.
2. Description (optional): Enter a description of the role.
  
  Note: All entity types are listed by default, but you can display just a subset by entering a string in the Filter Entities search field.
  
  Figure. Filter Entities Click to enlarge
3. Select an entity you want to add to this role and provide desired access permissions from the available options. The access permissions vary depending on the selected entity.
  For example, for the VM entity, click the radio button for the desired VM permissions:
  - No Access
  - View Access
  - Basic Access
  - Edit Access
  - Set Custom Permissions
  If you select Set Custom Permissions , click the Change link to display the Custom VM Permissions window, check all the permissions you want to enable, and then click the Save button. Optionally, check the Allow VM Creation box to allow this role to create VMs.
  Figure. Custom VM Permissions Window Click to enlarge
4. Recovery Plan : Click the radio button for the desired permissions for recovery plan operations ( No Access , View Access , Test Execution Access , Full Execution Access , or Set Custom Permissions ). If you specify custom permissions, click the Change link to display the Custom Recovery Plan Permissions window, check all the permissions you want to enable (see Custom Role Permissions), and then click the Save button.
  
  Figure. Custom Recovery Plan Permissions Window Click to enlarge
5. Blueprint : Click the radio button for the desired blueprint permissions ( No Access , View Access , Basic Access , or Set Custom Permissions ). Check the Allow Blueprint Creation box to allow this role to create blueprints. If you specify custom permissions, click the Change link to display the Custom Blueprint Permissions window, check all the permissions you want to enable, and then click the Save button.
  
  Figure. Custom Blueprint Permissions Window Click to enlarge
6. Marketplace Item : Click the radio button for the desired marketplace permissions ( No Access , View marketplace and published blueprints , View marketplace and publish new blueprints , or Set custom permissions ). If you specify custom permissions, click the Change link to display the Custom Marketplace Item Permissions window, check all the permissions you want to enable, and then click the Save button.
  
  Note: The permission you enable for a Marketplace Item implicitly applies to a Catalog Item entity. For example, if you select No Access permission for the Marketplace Item entity while creating the custom role, the custom role will not have access to the Catalog Item entity as well.
  
  Figure. Custom Marketplace Permissions Window Click to enlarge
7. Report : Click the radio button for the desired report permissions ( No Access , View Only , Edit Access , or Set Custom Permissions ). If you specify custom permissions, click the Change link to display the Custom Report Permissions window, check all the permissions you want to enable, and then click the Save button.
  
  Figure. Custom VM Permissions Window Click to enlarge
8. Cluster : Click the radio button for the desired cluster permissions ( No Access or Cluster Access ).
9. Subnet : Click the radio button for the desired subnet permissions ( No Access or Subnet Access ).
10. Image : Click the radio button for the desired image permissions ( No Access , View Only , or Set Custom Permissions ). If you specify custom permissions, click the Change link to display the Custom Image Permissions window, check all the permissions you want to enable, and then click the Save button.
  
  Figure. Custom Image Permissions Window Click to enlarge
11. OVA : Click the radio button for the desired OVA permissions ( No Access , View Only , Full Access or Set Custom Permissions ). If you specify custom permissions, click the Change link to display the Custom OVA Permissions window, check all the permissions you want to enable, and then click the Save button.
  
  Figure. Custom OVA Permissions Window Click to enlarge
12. Object Store : Click the radio button for the desired object store permissions ( No Access , View Access , Full Access or Set Custom Permissions ). If you specify custom permissions, click the Change link to display the Custom Object Store Permissions window, check the Allow Object Store creation to allow creation of an object store, check all the permissions you want to enable, and then click the Save button.
  
  Note: For information about objects store permissions and workflows, see Role-Based Access Control Workflows for Objects in the Objects User Guide .
  
  Figure. Custom Object Store Permissions Click to enlarge
Click Save to create the role. The page closes and the new role appears in the Roles view list.

Modifying a Custom Role

About this task

Perform the following procedure to modify or delete a custom role.

Procedure

Go to the roles dashboard and select (check the box for) the desired role from the list.
Do one of the following:
- To modify the role, select Update Role from the Actions pull-down list. The Roles page for that role appears. Update the field values as desired and then click Save . See Creating a Custom Role for field descriptions.
- To delete the role, select Delete from the Action pull-down list. A confirmation message is displayed. Click OK to delete and remove the role from the list.

Custom Role Permissions

A selection of permission options are available when creating a custom role.

The following table lists the permissions you can grant when creating or modifying a custom role. When you select an option for an entity, the permissions listed for that option are granted. If you select Set custom permissions , a complete list of available permissions for that entity appears. Select the desired permissions from that list.


Entity	Option	Permissions
App (application)	No Access	(none)
	Basic Access	Abort App Runlog, Access Console VM, Action Run App, Clone VM, Create AWS VM, Create Image, Create VM, Delete AWS VM, Delete VM, Download App Runlog, Update AWS VM, Update VM, View App, View AWS VM, View VM
	Set Custom Permissions (select from list)	Abort App Runlog, Access Console VM, Action Run App, Clone VM, Create App, Create AWS VM, Create Image, Create VM, Delete App, Delete AWS VM, Delete VM, Download App Runlog, Update App, Update AWS VM, Update VM, View App, View AWS VM, View VM
VM Recovery Point	No Access	(none)
	View Only	View VM Recovery Point
	Full Access	Delete VM Recovery Point, Restore VM Recovery Point, Snapshot VM, Update VM Recovery Point, View VM Recovery Point, Allow VM Recovery Point creation
	Set Custom Permissions (Change)	Abort App Runlog, Access Console VM, Action Run App, Clone VM, Create App, Create AWS VM, Create Image, Create VM, Delete App, Delete AWS VM, Delete VM, Download App Runlog, Update App, Update AWS VM, Update VM, View App, View AWS VM, View VM
	Note: You can assign permissions for the VM Recovery Point entity to users or user groups in the following two ways. Manually assign permission for each VM where the recovery point is created. Assign permission using Categories in the Role Assignment workflow. Tip: When a recovery point is created, it is associated with the same category as the VM.
VM	No Access	(none)
	View Access	Access Console VM, View VM
	Basic Access	Access Console VM, Update VM Power State, View VM
	Edit Access	Access Console VM, Update VM, View Subnet, View VM
	Full Access	Access Console VM, Clone VM, Create VM, Delete VM, Export VM, Update VM, Update VM Boot Config, Update VM CPU, Update VM Categories, Update VM Description, Update VM Disk List, Update VM GPU List, Update VM Memory, Update VM NIC List, Update VM Owner, Update VM Power State, Update VM Project, View Cluster, View Subnet, View VM.
	Set Custom Permissions (select from list)	Access Console VM, Clone VM, Create VM, Delete VM, Update VM, Update VM Boot Config, Update VM CPU, Update VM Categories, Update VM Disk List, Update VM GPU List, Update VM Memory, Update VM NIC List, Update VM Owner, Update VM Power State, Update VM Project, View Cluster, View Subnet, View VM.
	Set Custom Permissions (select from list)	Granular permissions (applicable if IAM is enabled, see Granular Role-Based Access Control (RBAC)) for details. Allow VM Power Off, Allow VM Power On, Allow VM Reboot, Allow VM Reset, Expand VM Disk Size, Mount VM CDROM, Unmount VM CDROM, Update VM Memory Overcommit, Update VM NGT Config, Update VM Power State Mechanism
	Allow VM creation (additional option)	(n/a)
Blueprint	No Access	(none)
	View Access	View Account, View AWS AZ, View AWS Elastic IP, View AWS Image, View AWS Key Pair, View AWS Machine Type, View AWS Region, View AWS Role, View AWS Security Group, View AWS Subnet, View AWS Volume Type, View AWS VPC, View Blueprint, View Cluster, View Image, View Project, View Subnet
	Basic Access	Access Console VM, Clone VM, Create App,Create Image, Create VM, Delete VM, Launch Blueprint, Update VM, View Account, View App, View AWS AZ, View AWS Elastic IP, View AWS Image, View AWS Key Pair, View AWS Machine Type, View AWS Region, View AWS Role, View AWS Security Group, View AWS Subnet, View AWS Volume Type, View AWS VPC, View Blueprint, View Cluster, View Image, View Project, View Subnet, View VM
	Full Access	Access Console VM, Clone Blueprint, Clone VM, Create App, Create Blueprint, Create Image, Create VM, Delete Blueprint, Delete VM, Download Blueprint, Export Blueprint, Import Blueprint, Launch Blueprint, Render Blueprint, Update Blueprint, Update VM, Upload Blueprint, View Account, View App, View AWS AZ, View AWS Elastic IP, View AWS Image, View AWS Key Pair, View AWS Machine Type, View AWS Region, View AWS Role, View AWS Security Group, View AWS Subnet, View AWS Volume Type, View AWS VPC, View Blueprint, View Cluster, View Image, View Project, View Subnet, View VM
	Set Custom Permissions (select from list)	Access Console VM, Clone VM, Create App, Create Blueprint, Create Image, Create VM, Delete Blueprint, Delete VM, Download Blueprint, Export Blueprint, Import Blueprint, Launch Blueprint, Render Blueprint, Update Blueprint, Update VM, Upload Blueprint, View Account, View App, View AWS AZ, View AWS Elastic IP, View AWS Image, View AWS Key Pair, View AWS Machine Type, View AWS Region, View AWS Role, View AWS Security Group, View AWS Subnet, View AWS Volume Type, View AWS VPC, View Blueprint, View Cluster, View Image, View Project, View Subnet, View VM
Marketplace Item	No Access	(none)
	View marketplace and published blueprints	View Marketplace Item
	View marketplace and publish new blueprints	Update Marketplace Item, View Marketplace Item
	Full Access	Config Marketplace Item, Create Marketplace Item, Delete Marketplace Item, Render Marketplace Item, Update Marketplace Item, View Marketplace Item
	Set Custom Permissions (select from list)	Config Marketplace Item, Create Marketplace Item, Delete Marketplace Item, Render Marketplace Item, Update Marketplace Item, View Marketplace Item
Report	No Access	(none)
	View Only	Notify Report Instance, View Common Report Config, View Report Config, View Report Instance
	Full Access	Create Common Report Config, Create Report Config, Create Report Instance, Delete Common Report Config, Delete Report Config, Delete Report Instance, Notify Report Instance, Run Report Config, Share Report Config, Share Report Instance, Update Common Report Config, Update Report Config, View Common Report Config, View Report Config, View Report Instance, View User, View User Group
Cluster	No Access	(none)
	View Access	View Cluster
	Update Access	Update Cluster
	Full Access	Update Cluster, View Cluster
VLAN Subnet	No Access	(none)
	View Access	View Subnet, View Virtual Switch
	Edit Access	Update Subnet, View Cluster, View Subnet, View Virtual Switch
	Full Access	Create Subnet, Delete Subnet, Update Subnet, View Cluster, View Subnet, View Virtual Switch
Image	No Access	(none)
	View Only	View Image
	Set Custom Permissions (select from list)	Copy Image Remote, Create Image, Delete Image, Migrate Image, Update Image, View Image
OVA	No Access	(none)
	View Access	View OVA
	Full Access	View OVA, Create OVA, Update OVA and Delete OVA
	Set custom permissions Change	View OVA, Create OVA, Update OVA and Delete OVA
Image Placement Policy	No Access	(none)
	View Access	View Image Placement Policy, View Name Category, View Value Category
	Full Access	Create Image Placement Policy, Delete Image Placement Policy, Update Image Placement Policy, View Image Placement Policy, View Name Category, View Value Category
	Set Custom Permissions (select from list)	Create Image Placement Policy, Delete Image Placement Policy, Update Image Placement Policy, View Image Placement Policy, View Name Category, View Value Category
File Server	No Access	(none)
File Server	Allow File Server creation	Note: The role has full access if you select Allow File Server creation .

The following table describe the permissions.

Note: By default, assigning certain permissions to a user role might implicitly assign more permissions to that role. However, the implicitly assigned permissions will not be displayed in the details page for that role. These permissions are displayed only if you manually assign them to that role.


Permission	Description	Assigned Implicilty By
Create App	Allows to create an application.
Delete App	Allows to delete an application.
View App	Allows to view an application.
Action Run App	Allows to run action on an application.
Download App Runlog	Allows to download an application runlog.
Abort App Runlog	Allows to abort an application runlog.
Access Console VM	Allows to access the console of a virtual machine.
Create VM	Allows to create a virtual machine.
View VM	Allows to view a virtual machine.
Clone VM	Allows to clone a virtual machine.
Delete VM	Allows to delete a virtual machine.
Export VM	Allows to export a virtual machine
Snapshot VM	Allows to snapshot a virtual machine.
View VM Recovery Point	Allows to view a vm_recovery_point.
Update VM Recovery Point	Allows to update a vm_recovery_point.
Delete VM Recovery Point	Allows to delete a vm_recovery_point.
Restore VM Recovery Point	Allows to restore a vm_recovery_point.
Update VM	Allows to update a virtual machine.
Update VM Boot Config	Allows to update a virtual machine's boot configuration.	Update VM
Update VM CPU	Allows to update a virtual machine's CPU configuration.	Update VM
Update VM Categories	Allows to update a virtual machine's categories.	Update VM
Update VM Description	Allows to update a virtual machine's description.	Update VM
Update VM GPU List	Allows to update a virtual machine's GPUs.	Update VM
Update VM NIC List	Allows to update a virtual machine's NICs.	Update VM
Update VM Owner	Allows to update a virtual machine's owner.	Update VM
Update VM Project	Allows to update a virtual machine's project.	Update VM
Update VM NGT Config	Allows updates to a virtual machine's Nutanix Guest Tools configuration.	Update VM
Update VM Power State	Allows updates to a virtual machine's power state.	Update VM
Update VM Disk List	Allows to update a virtual machine's disks.	Update VM
Update VM Memory	Allows to update a virtual machine's memory configuration.	Update VM
Update VM Power State Mechanism	Allows updates to a virtual machine's power state mechanism.	Update VM or Update VM Power State
Allow VM Power Off	Allows power off and shutdown operations on a virtual machine.	Update VM or Update VM Power State
Allow VM Power On	Allows power on operation on a virtual machine.	Update VM or Update VM Power State
Allow VM Reboot	Allows reboot operation on a virtual machine.	Update VM or Update VM Power State
Expand VM Disk Size	Allows to expand a virtual machine's disk size.	Update VM or Update VM Disk List
Mount VM CDROM	Allows to mount an ISO to virtual machine's CDROM.	Update VM or Update VM Disk List
Unmount VM CDROM	Allows to unmount ISO from virtual machine's CDROM.	Update VM or Update VM Disk List
Update VM Memory Overcommit	Allows to update a virtual machine's memory overcommit configuration.	Update VM or Update VM Memory
Allow VM Reset	Allows reset (hard reboot) operation on a virtual machine.	Update VM, Update VM Power State, or Allow VM Reboot
View Cluster	Allows to view a cluster.
Update Cluster	Allows to update a cluster.
Create Image	Allows to create an image.
View Image	Allows to view a image.
Copy Image Remote	Allows to copy an image from local PC to remote PC.
Delete Image	Allows to delete an image.
Migrate Image	Allows to migrate an image from PE to PC.
Update Image	Allows to update a image.
Create Image Placement Policy	Allows to create an image placement policy.
View Image Placement Policy	Allows to view an image placement policy.
Delete Image Placement Policy	Allows to delete an image placement policy.
Update Image Placement Policy	Allows to update an image placement policy.
Create AWS VM	Allows to create an AWS virtual machine.
View AWS VM	Allows to view an AWS virtual machine.
Update AWS VM	Allows to update an AWS virtual machine.
Delete AWS VM	Allows to delete an AWS virtual machine.
View AWS AZ	Allows to view AWS Availability Zones.
View AWS Elastic IP	Allows to view an AWS Elastic IP.
View AWS Image	Allows to view an AWS image.
View AWS Key Pair	Allows to view AWS keypairs.
View AWS Machine Type	Allows to view AWS machine types.
View AWS Region	Allows to view AWS regions.
View AWS Role	Allows to view AWS roles.
View AWS Security Group	Allows to view an AWS security group.
View AWS Subnet	Allows to view an AWS subnet.
View AWS Volume Type	Allows to view AWS volume types.
View AWS VPC	Allows to view an AWS VPC.
Create Subnet	Allows to create a subnet.
View Subnet	Allows to view a subnet.
Update Subnet	Allows to update a subnet.
Delete Subnet	Allows to delete a subnet.
Create Blueprint	Allows to create the blueprint of an application.
View Blueprint	Allows to view the blueprint of an application.
Launch Blueprint	Allows to launch the blueprint of an application.
Clone Blueprint	Allows to clone the blueprint of an application.
Delete Blueprint	Allows to delete the blueprint of an application.
Download Blueprint	Allows to download the blueprint of an application.
Export Blueprint	Allows to export the blueprint of an application.
Import Blueprint	Allows to import the blueprint of an application.
Render Blueprint	Allows to render the blueprint of an application.
Update Blueprint	Allows to update the blueprint of an application.
Upload Blueprint	Allows to upload the blueprint of an application.
Create OVA	Allows to create an OVA.
View OVA	Allows to view an OVA.
Update OVA	Allows to update an OVA.
Delete OVA	Allows to delete an OVA.
Create Marketplace Item	Allows to create a marketplace item.
View Marketplace Item	Allows to view a marketplace item.
Update Marketplace Item	Allows to update a marketplace item.
Config Marketplace Item	Allows to configure a marketplace item.
Render Marketplace Item	Allows to render a marketplace item.
Delete Marketplace Item	Allows to delete a marketplace item.
Create Report Config	Allows to create a report_config.
View Report Config	Allows to view a report_config.
Run Report Config	Allows to run a report_config.
Share Report Config	Allows to share a report_config.
Update Report Config	Allows to update a report_config.
Delete Report Config	Allows to delete a report_config.
Create Common Report Config	Allows to create a common report_config.
View Common Report Config	Allows to view a common report_config.
Update Common Report Config	Allows to update a common report_config.
Delete Common Report Config	Allows to delete a common report_config.
Create Report Instance	Allows to create a report_instance.
View Report Instance	Allows to view a report_instance.
Notify Report Instance	Allows to notify a report_instance.
Notify Report Instance	Allows to notify a report_instance.
Share Report Instance	Allows to share a report_instance.
Delete Report Instance	Allows to delete a report_instance.
View Account	Allows to view an account.
View Project	Allows to view a project.
View User	Allows to view a user.
View User Group	Allows to view a user group.
View Name Category	Allows to view a category's name.
View Value Category	Allows to view a category's value.
View Virtual Switch	Allows to view a virtual switch.

Assigning a Role

About this task

In addition to configuring basic role maps (see Configuring Role Mapping), you can configure more precise role assignments (AHV only). To assign a role to selected users or groups that applies just to a specified set of entities, do the following:

Procedure

Log on to Prism Central as "admin" user or any user with "super admin" access.
Configure Active Directory settings.

Note: You can skip this step if an active directory is already configured.
Go to Prism Central Settings > Authentication , click + New Directory and add your preferred active directory.
Click the hamburger menu and go to Administration > Roles .
The page displays system defined and custom roles.
Select the desired role in the roles dashboard, then click Actions > Manage Assignment .
Click Add New to add Active Directory based users or user groups, or IDP users or user groups (or OUs) to this role.

Figure. Role Assignment Click to enlarge

You are adding users or user groups and assigning entities to the new role in the next steps.
In the Select Users or User Groups or OUs field, do the following:
1. Select the configured AD or IDP from the drop-down.
  The drop-down displays a list of available types of user or user group such as Local User, AD based user or user groups, or SAML based user or user groups. Select Organizational Units or OU for AD or directories that use SAML based IDP for authentication.
  Figure. User, User Group or OU selection Click to enlarge
2. Search and add the users or groups in the Search User field.
  
  Typing few letters in the search field displays a list of users from which you can select, and you can add multiple user names in this field.
In the Select Entities field, you can provide access to various entities. The list of available entities depends on the role selected in Step 4.

This table lists the available entities for each role:

Table 1. Available Entities for a Role
Role	Entities
Consumer	AHV VM, Image, Image Placement Policy, OVA, Subnets: VLAN
Developer	AHV VM, Cluster, Image, Image Placement Policy, OVA, Subnets:VLAN
Operator	AHV VM, Subnets:VLAN
Prism Admin	Individual entity (one or more clusters), All Clusters
Prism Viewer	Individual entity (one or more clusters), All Clusters
Custom role (User defined role)	Individual entity, In Category (only AHV VMs)

This table shows the description of each entity:

Table 2. Description of Entities
Entity	Description
AHV VM	Allows you to manage VMs including create and edit permission
Image	Allows you to access and manage image details
Image Placement Policy	Allows you to access and manage image placement policy details
OVA	Allows you to view and manage OVA details
Subnets: VLAN	Allows you to view subnet details
Cluster	Allows you to view and manage details of assigned clusters (AHV and ESXi clusters)
All Clusters	Allows you to view and manage details of all clusters
VM Recovery Points	Allows you to perform recovery operations with recovery points.
Recovery Plan (Single PC only)	Allows you to view, validate, and test recovery plans. Also allows you to clean up VMs created after recovery plan test.
Individual entity	Allows you to view and manage individual entities such as AHV VM, Clusters, and Subnets:VLAN

Repeat Step 5 and Step 6 for any combination of users/entities you want to define.

Note: To allow users to create certain entities like a VM, you may also need to grant them access to related entities like clusters, networks, and images that the VM requires.
Click Save .

Self-Service Restore

The self-service restore (also known as file-level restore) feature allows you to do a self-service data recovery from the Nutanix data protection recovery points with minimal intervention. You can perform self-service data recovery on both on-prem and Xi Cloud Services.

You must deploy NGT 2.0 or newer on guest VMs to enable self-service restore from Prism Central. For more information about enabling and mounting NGT, see Enabling and Mounting Nutanix Guest Tools in the Prism Web Console Guide . When you enable self-service restore and attach a disk by logging into the VM, you can recover files within the guest OS. If you fail to detach the disk from the VM, the disk is detached automatically from the VM after 24 hours.

Note:

You can enable self-service restore for a guest VM through a web interface or nCLI.
NGT performs the in-guest actions For more information about in-guest actions, see Nutanix Guest Tools in the Prism Web Console Guide .
Self-service restore supports only full snapshots generated from Asynchronous and NearSync replication schedules.

Self-Service Restore Requirements

The requirements of self-service restore of Windows and Linux VMs are as follows.

Self-Service Restore General Requirements

The following are the general requirements of self-service restore. Ensure that you meet the requirements before configuring self-service restore for guest VMs.

License Requirements

The AOS license required depends on the features that you want to use. For information about the AOS license required for self-service restore, see Software Options.

Hypervisor Requirements

AHV or ESXi

The AHV clusters must be running on AHV versions that come bundled with the supported version of AOS.
The ESXi clusters must be running on version ESXi 6.5 GA or newer.

Nutanix Software Requirements

Prism Centrals and their registered on-prem clusters (Prism Elements) must be running the following versions of AOS.

AOS 5.18 or newer with AHV.
AOS 5.18 or newer with ESXi.
AOS 5.19 or newer with Xi Cloud Services.

You have installed NGT 2.0 or newer. For more information about enabling and mounting NGT, see Enabling and Mounting Nutanix Guest Tools in the Prism Web Console Guide .
You have set disk.enableUUID=true in the .vmx file for the guest VMs running on ESXi.
You have configured Nutanix recovery points by adding guest VM to an Asynchronous protection policy.
You have attached an IDE/SCSI or SATA disk

Requirements for Guest VMs Running Windows OS

The following are the specific requirements of self-service restore for guest VMs running Windows OS. Ensure that you meet the requirements before proceeding.

You have enough logical drive letters to bring the disk online.
You have one of the following Windows OS as the guest OS.
- Windows Server 2008 R2 or newer
- Windows 7 through Windows 10

Requirements for Guest VMs Running Linux OS

The following are the specific requirements of self-service restore for guest VMs running Linux OS. Ensure that you meet the requirements before proceeding.

You have appropriate file systems to recover. Self-service restore supports only extended file systems (ext2, ext3, and ext4) and XFS file systems.
Logical Volume Manager (LVM) disks for which the volume group corresponds to only a single physical disk are mounted.
You have one of the following Linux OS as the guest OS.
- CentOS 6.5 through 6.9 and 7.0 through 7.3
- Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) 6.5 through 6.9 and 7.0 through 7.3
- Oracle Linux 6.5 and 7.0
- SUSE Linux Enterprise Server (SLES) 11 SP1 through 11 SP4 and 12 SP1 through 12 SP3
- Ubuntu 14.04 for both AHV and ESXi
- Ubuntu 16.10 for AHV only

Self-Service Restore Limitations

The limitations of self-service restore of Windows and Linux VMs are as follows.

Self-Service Restore General Limitations

The following are the general limitations of self-service restore.

Volume groups are not supported.
Snapshots created in AOS 4.5 or later releases are only supported.
PCI and delta disks are not supported.

Limitations of Guest VMs Running Windows OS

The following are the specific limitations of self-service restore for guest VMs running Windows OS.

File systems. Self-service restore does not support dynamic disks consisting of NTFS on simple volumes, spanned volumes, striped volumes, mirrored volumes, and RAID-5 volumes.
Only 64-bit OSes are supported.
Self-service restore does not support disks created as Microsoft Storage Space devices by using Microsoft Windows Server 2016 or newer.

Limitations of Guest VMs Running Linux OS

Whenever the snapshot disk has an inconsistent filesystem (as indicated by the fsck check), the disk is only attached and not mounted.

Enabling Self-Service Restore

After enabling NGT for a guest VM, you can enable the self-service restore for that guest VM. Also, you can enable the self-service restore for a guest VM while you are installing NGT on that guest VM.

Before you begin

For more information, see Enabling and Mounting Nutanix Guest Tools in the Prism Web Console Guide .

Ensure that you have installed and enabled NGT 2.0 or newer on the guest VM.

About this task

To enable self-service restore, perform the following procedure.

Procedure

Log on to Prism Central.
Click the hamburger icon at the top-left corner of the window. Go to Virtual Infrastructure > VMs in the left pane.
Select the guest VM where you want to enable self-service restore.
Click Manage NGT Applications from the Actions drop-down menu.

Figure. Enabling Self-Service Restore Click to enlarge

Note: If the guest VM does not have NGT installed, click Install NGT from the Actions drop-down menu and select to enable Self Service Restore (SSR) .
Click Enable below the Self Service Restore (SSR) panel.
Click Confirm .
Self-service restore feature is enabled on the guest VM. You can now restore the desired files from the guest VM.

Self-Service Restore for Windows VMs

You can restore the desired files from the guest VM through the web interface or by using the ngtcli utility of self-service restore.

Restoring a File through Web Interface (Windows VM)

After you install NGT in the Windows guest VM, you can restore the desired files from the VM through the web interface.

Before you begin

Ensure that you have configured your Windows VM to use NGT. For more information, see Installing NGT on Windows Machines in the Prism Web Console Guide .

About this task

To restore a file in Windows guest VMs by using web interface, perform the following.

Procedure

Log in to the guest Windows VM by using administrator credentials.
Click the Nutanix SSR icon on the desktop.
Type the administrator credentials of the VM.
Note: If you use:
- NETBIOS domain name in username field (for example, domain\username ), then you will be able to log on to SSR only if your account is explicitly added to Administrators group on the server. If username is added to any domain group, which is then added to Administrators group, then logon will fail. Also, you must type NETBIOS domain name in capital letters (domain name has to be written in the same way as you see in the output of command net localgroup administrators ).
- FQDN in username (for example domain.com\username ), then you will only be able to logon if username user is a member of the domain admins group.
Note: The snapshots that are taken for that day are displayed. You also have an option to select the snapshots for the week, month, and the year. In addition, you can also define a custom range of dates and select the snapshot.
Figure. Snapshot Selection Click to enlarge
Select the appropriate tab, This Week , This Month , This Year .
You can also customize the selection by clicking Custom Range tab and selecting the date range in the From and To fields.
Select the check box of the disks that you want to attach from the snapshot.
Select Mount from the Disk Action drop-down menu.

Figure. Mounting of Disks Click to enlarge

The selected disk or disks are mounted and the relevant disk label is displayed.
Go to the attached disk label drive in the VM and restore the desired files.
To view the list of all the mounted snapshots, select Mounted Snapshots .
This page displays the original snapshot drive letters and its corresponding current drive letters. The original drive letters get assigned to the disk at the time of the snapshot. Mounted drive letters are on which the snapshotted disk is mounted right now.
Figure. List of Mounted Snapshots Click to enlarge
1. To detach a disk, click the disk label and click Unmount .
  You can unmount all the disks at once by clicking Select All and then clicking Unmount .
To detach a disk, select the check box of the disk that you want to unmount and then from the Disk Action drop-down menu, select Unmount .

Restoring a File through Ngtcli (Windows VM)

After you install NGT in the Windows guest VM, you can restore the desired files from the VM through the ngtcli utility.

Before you begin

Ensure that you have configured your Windows VM to use NGT. For more information, see Installing NGT on Windows Machines in the Prism Web Console Guide .

About this task

To restore a file in Windows guest VMs by using ngtcli, perform the following.

Procedure

Log in to the guest Windows VM by using administrator credentials.
Open the command prompt as an administrator.
Go to the ngtcli directory in Program Files > Nutanix .
```
> cd c:\Program Files\Nutanix\ngtcli
```
Tip:
```
> python ngtcli.py
```
creates a terminal with auto-complete.
Run the ngtcli.cmd command.
List the snapshots and virtual disks that are present for the guest VM.
```
ngtcli> ssr ls-snaps
```
The snapshot ID, disk labels, logical drives, and create time of the snapshot is displayed. You can use this information and take a decision to restore the files from the relevant snapshot that has the data.
List the snapshots with a specific number.
```
ngtcli> ssr ls-snaps snapshot-count=count_value
```
Replace count_value with the number that you want to list.
Attach the disk from the snapshots.
```
ngtcli> ssr attach-disk disk-label=disk_label snapshot-id=snap_id
```
Replace disk_label with the name of the disk that you want to attach.

Replace snap_id with the snapshot ID of the disk that you want to attach.

For example, to attach a disk with snapshot ID 16353 and disk label scsi0:1, type the folllowing command.
```
ngtcli> ssr attach-disk snapshot-id=16353 disk-label=scsi0:1
```
After successfully running the command, a new disk with label gets attached to the guest VM.
Note: If sufficient logical drive letters are not present, bringing disks online action fails. In this case, you should detach the current disk, create enough free slots by detaching other self-service disks and reattach the disk again.
Go to the attached disk label drive and restore the desired files.
Detach a disk.
```
ngtcli> ssr detach-disk attached-disk-label=attached_disk_label
```
Replace attached_disk_label with the name of the disk that you want to attach.

Note: If the disk is not removed by the guest VM administrator, the disk is automatically removed after 24 hours.
View all the attached disks to the VM.
```
ngtcli> ssr list-attached-disks
```

Self-Service Restore for Linux VMs

The Linux guest VM user with sudo privileges can restore the desired files from the VM through the web interface or by using the ngtcli utility.

Restoring a File through Web Interface (Linux VM)

After you install NGT in the Linux guest VM, you can restore the desired files from the VM through the web interface.

Before you begin

Mount NGT for a VM. For more information about enabling NGT, see Enabling and Mounting Nutanix Guest Tools in the Prism Web Console Guide .
Ensure that you have configured your Linux VM to use NGT.

About this task

To restore a file in Linux guest VMs by using web interface, perform the following.

Procedure

Log in to the guest Linux VM as a user with sudo privileges.
Click the Nutanix SSR icon on the desktop.
Type the root or sudo user credentials of the VM.
The snapshots that are taken for that day is displayed. You also have an option to select the snapshots for the week, month, and the year. In addition, you can also define a custom range of dates and select the snapshot. For example, in the following figure snapshot taken on this month is displayed.

Figure. Snapshot Selection Click to enlarge
Select the appropriate tab, This Week , This Month , This Year .
You can also customize the selection by clicking Custom Range tab and selecting the date range in the From and To fields.
Select the check box of the disks that you want to attach from the snapshot.
Select Mount from the Disk Action drop-down menu.

The selected disk or disks are mounted and the relevant disk label is displayed.

Figure. Mounting of Disks Click to enlarge
Go to the attached disk label partitions in the VM and restore the desired files.

Note: If the disk gets updated between the snapshots, the restore process may not work as expected. If this scenario occurs, you need to contact support to help with the restore process.
To view the list of all the mounted snapshots, select Mounted Snapshots .
This page displays the original snapshot drive letters and its corresponding current drive letters. The original drive letters gets assigned to the disk at the time of the snapshot. Mounted drive letters are on which the snapshotted disk is mounted right now.
Figure. List of Mounted Snapshots Click to enlarge
1. To detach a disk, click the disk label and click Unmount .
  You can unmount all the disks at once by clicking Select All and then clicking Unmount .
To detach a disk, select the check box of the disk that you want to unmount and then from the Disk Action drop-down menu, select Unmount .

Restoring a File through Ngtcli (Linux VM)

After you install NGT in the Linux guest VM, you can restore the desired files from the VM through the ngtcli utility.

Before you begin

Mount NGT for a VM. For more information about enabling NGT, see Enabling and Mounting Nutanix Guest Tools in the Prism Web Console Guide .
Ensure that you have configured your Linux VM to use NGT.

About this task

To restore a file in Linux guest VMs by using ngtcli, perform the following.

Procedure

Log in to the guest Linux VM with sudo or root user credentials.
Go to the ngtcli directory.
```
> cd /usr/local/nutanix/ngt/ngtcli
```
Run the python ngtcli.py command.

Tip: This command creates a terminal with auto-complete.
List the snapshots and virtual disks that are present for the guest VM.
```
ngtcli> ssr ls-snaps
```
The snapshot ID, disk labels, logical drives, and create time of the snapshot is displayed. You can use this information and take a decision to restore the files from the relevant snapshot that has the data.
To list the snapshots with a specific number.
```
ngtcli> ssr ls-snaps snapshot-count=count_value
```
Replace count_value with the number that you want to list.
Attach the disk from the snapshots.
```
ngtcli> ssr attach-disk disk-label=disk_label snapshot-id=snap_id
```
Replace disk_label with the name of the disk that you want to attach.

Replace snap_id with the snapshot ID of the disk that you want to attach.

For example, to attach a disk with snapshot ID 1343 and disk label scsi0:2,
```
ngtcli> ssr attach-disk snapshot-id=1343 disk-label=scsi0:2
```
After successfully running the command, a new disk with new label is attached to the guest VM.
Go to the attached disk label partition and restore the desired files.

Note: If the disk gets updated between the snapshots, the restore process may not work as expected. If this scenario occurs, you need to contact support to help with the restore process.
Detach a disk.
```
ngtcli> ssr detach-disk attached-disk-label=attached_disk_label
```
Replace attached_disk_label with the name of the disk that you want to attach.

For example, to remove the disk with disk label scsi0:3, type the following command.
```
ngtcli> ssr detach-disk attached-disk-label=scsi0:3
```
Note: If the disk is not removed by the guest VM administrator, the disk is automatically removed after 24 hours.
View all the attached disks to the VM.
```
ngtcli> ssr list-attached-disks
```

Protection with NearSync Replication Schedule and DR (Nutanix Disaster Recovery)

NearSync replication enables you to protect your guest VMs with an RPO of as low as 1 minute. A protection policy with a NearSync replication creates a recovery point in a minutely time interval (between 1–15 minutes), and replicates it to the recovery AZs (AZs) for High Availability. For guest VMs protected with NearSync replication schedule, you can perform disaster recovery (DR) to a different Nutanix cluster at same or different AZs. In addition to DR to Nutanix clusters of the same hypervisor type, you can also perform cross-hypervisor disaster recovery (CHDR)—disaster recovery from AHV clusters to ESXi clusters, or from ESXi clusters to AHV clusters.

Note: Nutanix provides multiple DR solutions to secure your environment. See Nutanix Disaster Recovery Solutions for the detailed representation of the DR offerings of Nutanix.

The following are the advantages of protecting your guest VMs with a NearSync replication schedule.

Protection for the mission-critical applications. Securing your data with minimal data loss if there is a disaster, and providing you with more granular control during the recovery process.
No minimum network latency or distance requirements.
Low stun time for guest VMs with heavy I/O applications.
Stun time is the time of application freeze when the recovery point is taken.
Allows resolution to a disaster event in minutes.

To implement the NearSync feature, Nutanix has introduced a technology called lightweight snapshots (LWSs). LWS recovery points are created at the metadata level only, and they continuously replicate incoming data generated by workloads running on the active clusters. LWS recovery points are stored in the LWS store, which is allocated on the SSD tier. When you configure a protection policy with a NearSync replication schedule, the system allocates the LWS store automatically.

Note: The maximum LWS store allocation for each node is 360 GB. For the hybrid systems, it is 7% of the SSD capacity on that node.

Transitioning in and out of NearSync

When you create a NearSync replication schedule, the schedule remains an hourly schedule until its transition into a minutely schedule is complete.

To transition into NearSync (minutely) replication schedule, initial seeding of the recovery AZ with the data is performed, the recovery points are taken on an hourly basis, and replicated to the recovery AZ. After the system determines that the recovery points containing the seeding data have replicated within a specified amount of time (default is an hour), the system automatically transitions the replication schedule into NearSync schedule depending on the bandwidth and the change rate. After you transition into the NearSync replication schedule, you can see the configured minutely recovery points in the web interface.

The following are the characteristics of the process.

Until you are transitioned into NearSync replication schedule, you can see only the hourly recovery points in Prism Central.
If for any reason, a guest VM transitions out of NearSync replication schedule, the system raises alerts in the Alerts dashboard, and the minutely replication schedule transitions out to the hourly replication schedule. The system continuously tries to get into the minutely replication schedule that you have configured. If the transition is successful, the replication schedule automatically transitions back into NearSync, and alerts specific to this condition are raised in the Alerts dashboard.

To transition out of the NearSync replication schedule, you can do one of the following.

Delete the NearSync replication schedule that you have configured.
Update the NearSync replication schedule to use an hourly RPO.
Unprotect the guest VMs.
Note: There is no transitioning out of the NearSync replication schedule on the addition or deletion of a guest VM.

Repeated transitioning in and out of NearSync replication schedule can occur because of the following reasons.

LWS store usage is high.
The change rate of data is high for the available bandwidth between the primary and the recovery AZs.
Internal processing of LWS recovery points is taking more time because the system is overloaded.

Retention Policy

Depending on the RPO (1–15 minutes), the system retains the recovery points for a specific time period. For a NearSync replication schedule, you can configure the retention policy for days, weeks, or months on both the primary and recovery AZs instead of defining the number of recovery points you want to retain. For example, if you desire an RPO of 1 minute and want to retain the recovery points for 5 days, the retention policy works in the following way.

For every 1 minute, a recovery point is created and retained for a maximum of 15 minutes.
Note: The recent 15 recovery points are only visible in Prism Central and are available for the recovery operation.
For every hour, a recovery point is created and retained for 6 hours.
One daily recovery point is created and retained for 5 days.

You can also define recovery point retention in weeks or months. For example, if you configure a 3-month schedule, the retention policy works in the following way.

For every 1 minute, a recovery point is created and retained for 15 minutes.
For every hour, a recovery point is created and retained for 6 hours.
One daily recovery point is created and retained for 7 days.
One weekly recovery point is created and retained for 4 weeks.
One monthly recovery point is created and retained for 3 months.

Note:

You can define different retention policies on the primary and recovery AZs.
The system retains subhourly and hourly recovery points for 15 minutes and 6 hours respectively. Maximum retention time for days, weeks, and months is 7 days, 4 weeks, and 12 months respectively.
If you change the replication schedule from an hourly schedule to a minutely schedule (Asynchronous to NearSync), the first recovery point is not created according to the new schedule. The recovery points are created according to the start time of the old hourly schedule (Asynchronous). If you want to get the maximum retention for the first recovery point after modifying the schedule, update the start time accordingly for NearSync.

NearSync Replication Requirements (Nutanix Disaster Recovery)

The following are the specific requirements for protecting your guest VMs with NearSync replication schedule. Ensure that you meet the following requirements in addition to the general requirements of Nutanix Disaster Recovery .

For more information about the general requirements of Nutanix Disaster Recovery , see Nutanix Disaster Recovery Requirements.

For information about node, disk and Foundation configurations required to support NearSync replication schedules, see On-Prem Hardware Resource Requirements.

Hypervisor Requirements

AHV or ESXi

The AHV clusters must be running on version 20190916.189 or newer.
The ESXi clusters must be running on version ESXi 6.5 GA or newer.

Nutanix Software Requirements

Each on-prem AZ must have a Leap enabled Prism Central instance.

The primary and recovery Prism Centrals and their registered Nutanix clusters must be running the following versions of AOS.

AOS 5.17.1 or newer for DR to different Nutanix clusters at the same AZ.
AOS 5.17 or newer for DR to Nutanix clusters at the different AZs.

Cross Hypervisor Disaster Recovery (CHDR) Requirements

Guest VMs protected with NearSync replication schedule support cross-hypervisor disaster recovery. You can perform failover (DR) to recover guest VMs from AHV clusters to ESXi clusters or guest VMs from ESXi clusters to AHV clusters by considering the following requirements.

Both the primary and the recovery Nutanix clusters must be running AOS 5.18 or newer.
Install and configure Nutanix Guest Tools (NGT) on all the guest VMs. For more information, see Enabling and Mounting Nutanix Guest Tools in Prism Web Console Guide .
NGT configures the guest VMs with all the required drivers for VM portability. For more information about general NGT requirements, see Nutanix Guest Tools Requirements and Limitations in Prism Web Console Guide .
CHDR supports guest VMs with flat files only.
CHDR supports IDE/SCSI disks only.
Tip: From AOS 5.19.1, CHDR supports SATA disks also.
For all the non-boot SCSI disks of Windows guest VMs, set the SAN policy to OnlineAll so that they come online automatically.
In vSphere 6.7, guest VMs are configured with UEFI secure boot by default. Upon CHDR to an AHV cluster, these guest VMs do not start if the host does not support the UEFI secure boot feature. For more information about supportability of UEFI secure boot on Nutanix clusters, see the Compatibility Matrix.
For information about operating systems that support UEFI and Secure Boot, see UEFI and Secure Boot Support for CHDR.
Nutanix does not support vSphere inventory mapping (for example, VM folder and resource pools) when protecting workloads between VMware clusters.
Nutanix does not support vSphere snapshots or delta disk files. If you have delta disks attached to a VM and you proceed with failover, you get a validation warning and the VM does not recover. Contact Nutanix Support for assistance.

Table 1. Operating Systems Supported for CHDR (Asynchronous Replication)
Operating System	Version	Requirements and limitations
Windows	Windows 2008 R2 or newer versions Windows 7 or newer versions	Only 64-bit operating systems are supported.
Linux	CentOS 6.5 and 7.0 RHEL 6.5 or newer and RHEL 7.0 or newer. Oracle Linux 6.5 and 7.0 Ubuntu 14.04	SLES operating system is not supported.

Additional Requirements

Both the primary and the recovery Nutanix clusters must be of minimum three-nodes.
The recovery AZ container must have as much space as the protected VMs working size set of the primary AZ. For example, if you are protecting a VM that is using 30 GB of space on the container of the primary AZ, the same amount of space is required on the recovery AZ container.

NearSync Replication Limitations (Nutanix Disaster Recovery)

Consider the following specific limitations before protecting your guest VMs with NearSync replication schedule. These limitations are in addition to the general limitations of Nutanix Disaster Recovery .

For information about the general limitations of Nutanix Disaster Recovery , see Nutanix Disaster Recovery Limitations.

All files associated with the VMs running on ESXi must be located in the same folder as the VMX configuration file. The files not located in the same folder as the VMX configuration file might not recover on a recovery cluster. On recovery, the guest VM with such files fails to start with the following error message. Operation failed: InternalTaskCreationFailure: Error creating host specific VM change power state task. Error: NoCompatibleHost: No host is compatible with the virtual machine
Deduplication enabled on storage containers having guest VMs protected with NearSync replication schedule lowers the replication speed.
Cross hypervisor disaster recovery (CHDR) does not preserve hypervisor-specific properties (for example, multi-writer flags, independent persistent and non-persistent disks, changed block tracking (CBT), PVSCSI disk configurations).
On CHDR, NearSync replication schedules do not support retrieving recovery points from the recovery AZs.
For example, if you have 1 day retention at the primary AZ and 5 days retention at the recovery AZ, and you want to go back to a recovery point from 5 days ago. NearSync replication schedule does not support replicating 5 days retention back from the recovery AZ to the primary AZ.

Creating a Protection Policy with a NearSync Replication Schedule (Nutanix Disaster Recovery)

To protect the guest VMs in a minutely replication schedule, configure a NearSync replication schedule while creating the protection policy. The policy takes recovery points of the protected guest VMs in the specified time intervals (1–15 minutes) and replicates them to the recovery AZ (AZ) for High Availability. To maintain the efficiency of minutely replication, the protection policy allows you to configure a NearSync replication schedule to only one recovery AZ. When creating a protection policy, you can specify only VM categories. If you want to include VMs individually, you must first create the protection p policy—which can also include VM categories and then include the VMs individually in the protection policy from the VMs page.

Before you begin

Ensure that the primary and the recovery AHV or ESXi clusters at the same or different AZs are NearSync capable. A cluster is NearSync capable if the capacity of each SSD in the cluster is at least 1.2 TB.

See NearSync Replication Requirements (Nutanix Disaster Recovery) and NearSync Replication Limitations (Nutanix Disaster Recovery) before you start.

About this task

To create a protection policy with a NearSync replication schedule, do the following at the primary AZ. You can also create a protection policy at the recovery AZ. Protection policies you create or update at a recovery AZ synchronize back to the primary AZ.

Procedure

Log on to the Prism Central web console.
Click the hamburger icon at the top-left corner of the window. Go to Policies > Protection Policies in the left pane.

Figure. Protection Policy Configuration: Protection Policies
Click to enlarge
Click Create Protection Policy .
Specify the following information in the Create Protection Policy window.

Figure. Protection Policy Configuration: Select Primary Location
Click to enlarge
1. Policy name : Enter a name for the protection policy.
  
  Caution: The name can be of only alphanumeric, dot, dash, and underscore characters.
2. In the Primary Location pane, specify the following information.
  - 1. Location : From the drop-down list, select an AZ (AZ) that hosts the guest VMs to protect.
      The drop-down lists all the AZs paired with the local AZ. Local AZ represents the local AZ (Prism Central). For your primary AZ, you can check either the local AZ or a non-local AZ.
    2. Cluster : From the drop-down list, select the cluster that hosts the guest VMs to protect.
      The drop-down lists all the Nutanix clusters registered to Prism Central representing the selected AZ. If you want to protect the guest VMs from multiple Nutanix clusters in the same protection policy, select the clusters that host those guest VMs. All Clusters protects the guest VMs of all Nutanix clusters registered to Prism Central.
    3. Click Save .
      Clicking Save activates the Recovery Location pane. After saving the primary AZ configuration, you can optionally add a local schedule to retain the recovery points at the primary AZ.
    4. Click + Add Local Schedule if you want to retain recovery points locally in addition to retaining recovery points in a replication schedule (step d.iv). For example, you can create a local schedule to retain 15 minute recovery points locally and also an hourly replication schedule to retain recovery points and replicate them to a recovery AZ every 2 hours. The two schedules apply differently on the guest VMs.
      Specify the following information in the Add Schedule window.
      
      Figure. Protection Policy Configuration: Add Local Schedule
      Click to enlarge
      
      Take Snapshot Every : Specify the frequency in minutes , hours , days , or weeks at which you want the recovery points to be taken locally.
      
      Retention Type : Specify one of the following two types of retention policy.
      
      Linear : Implements a simple retention scheme at the local AZ. If you set the retention number to n, the local AZ retains the n recent recovery points.
      When you enter the frequency in minutes, the system selects the Roll-up retention type by default because minutely recovery points do not support Linear retention types.
      
      Roll-up : Rolls up the recovery points into a single recovery point at the local AZ.
      For more information about the roll-up recovery points, see step d.iii.
      
      Retention on Local AZ:PE_A3_AHV : Specify the retention number for the local AZ.
      
      If you want to take application-consistent recovery points, check Take App-Consistent Recovery Point .
      Irrespective of the local or replication schedules, the recovery points are of the specified type. If you check Take App-Consistent Recovery Point , the recovery points generated are application-consistent and if you do not check Take App-Consistent Recovery Point , the recovery points generated are crash-consistent. If the time in the local schedule and the replication schedule match, the single recovery point generated is application-consistent.
      
      Note: See Application-consistent Recovery Point Conditions and Limitations before you take application-consistent snapshot.
      
      Click Save Schedule .
3. In the Recovery Location pane, specify the following information.
  
  Figure. Protection Policy Configuration: Select Recovery Location
  Click to enlarge
  - 1. Location : From the drop-down list, select the AZ (AZ) where you want to replicate the recovery points.
      The drop-down lists all the AZs paired with the local AZ. Local AZ represents the local AZ (Prism Central). Select Local AZ if you want to configure DR to a different Nutanix cluster at the same AZ.
      
      If you do not select a AZ, local recovery points that are created by the protection policy do not replicate automatically. You can, however, replicate the recovery points manually and use recovery plans to recover the guest VMs. For more information, see Protection and Manual DR (Nutanix Disaster Recovery).
    2. Cluster : From the drop-down list, select the cluster where you want to replicate the recovery points.
      The drop-down lists all the Nutanix clusters registered to Prism Central representing the selected AZ. You can select one cluster at the recovery AZ. To maintain the efficiency of minutely replication, a protection policy allows you to configure only one recovery AZ for a NearSync replication schedule. However, you can add another Asynchronous replication schedule for replicating recovery points to the same or different AZs. For more information to add another recovery AZ with a replication schedule, see step e.
      
      Note: Selecting auto-select from the drop-down list replicates the recovery points to any available cluster at the recovery AZ. Select auto-select from the drop-down list only if all the clusters at the recovery AZ are NearSync capable and are up and running. A cluster is NearSync capable if the capacity of each SSD in the cluster is at least 1.2 TB. All-flash clusters do not have any specific SSD sizing requirements.
      
      Caution: If the primary Nutanix cluster contains an IBM POWER Systems server, you can replicate recovery points to an on-prem AZ only if that on-prem AZ contains an IBM Power Systems server.
    3. Click Save .
      Clicking Save activates the + Add Schedule button between the primary and the recovery AZ. After saving the recovery AZ configuration, you can optionally add a local schedule to retain the recovery points at the recovery AZ.
    4. Click + Add Local Schedule if you want to retain recovery points locally in addition to retaining recovery points in a replication schedule (step d.iv). For example, you can create a local schedule to retain one hourly recovery points locally to supplement the hourly replication schedule. The two schedules apply differently on the guest VMs after failover, when the recovery points replicate back to the primary AZ.
      Specify the following information in the Add Schedule window.
      
      Figure. Protection Policy Configuration: Add Local Schedule
      Click to enlarge
      
      Take Snapshot Every : Specify the frequency in minutes , hours , days , or weeks at which you want the recovery points to be taken locally.
      
      Retention Type : Specify one of the following two types of retention policy.
      
      Linear : Implements a simple retention scheme at the local AZ. If you set the retention number to n, the local AZ retains the n recent recovery points.
      When you enter the frequency in minutes, the system selects the Roll-up retention type by default because minutely recovery points do not support Linear retention types.
      
      Roll-up : Rolls up the recovery points into a single recovery point at the local AZ.
      For more information about the roll-up recovery points, see step d.iii.
      
      Retention on 10.xx.xx.xxx:PE_C1_AHV : Specify the retention number for the local AZ.
      
      If you want to take application-consistent recovery points, check Take App-Consistent Recovery Point .
      Irrespective of the local or replication schedules, the recovery points are of the specified type. If you check Take App-Consistent Recovery Point , the recovery points generated are application-consistent and if you do not check Take App-Consistent Recovery Point , the recovery points generated are crash-consistent. If the time in the local schedule and the replication schedule match, the single recovery point generated is application-consistent.
      
      Click Save Schedule .
4. Click + Add Schedule to add a replication schedule between the primary and the recovery AZ.
  Specify the following information in the Add Schedule window. The window auto-populates the Primary Location and Recovery Location that you have selected in step b and step c.
  
  Figure. Protection Policy Configuration: Add Schedule (NearSync)
  Click to enlarge
  - 1. Protection Type : Click Asynchronous .
    2. Take Snapshot Every : Specify the frequency in minutes (anywhere between 1-15 minutes) at which you want the recovery points to be taken.
      The specified frequency is the RPO. For more information about RPO, see Nutanix Disaster Recovery Terminology.
    3. Retention Type : When you enter the frequency in minutes in step ii, the system selects the Roll-up retention type by default because NearSync replication schedules do not support Linear retention types.
      Roll-up retention type rolls up the recovery points as per the RPO and retention period into a single recovery point at a AZ. For example, if you set the RPO to 1 hour, and the retention time to 5 days, the 24 oldest hourly recovery points roll up into a single daily recovery point (one recovery point = 24 hourly recovery points) after every 24 hours. The system keeps one day (of rolled-up hourly recovery points) and 4 days of daily recovery points.
      Note:
      
      If the retention period is n days, the system keeps 1 day of RPO (rolled-up hourly recovery points) and n-1 days of daily recovery points.
      
      If the retention period is n weeks, the system keeps 1 day of RPO, 1 week of daily and n-1 weeks of weekly recovery points.
      
      If the retention period is n months, the system keeps 1 day of RPO, 1 week of daily, 1 month of weekly, and n-1 months of monthly recovery points.
      
      If the retention period is n years, the system keeps 1 day of RPO, 1 week of daily, 1 month of weekly, and n-1 months of monthly recovery points.
      
      Note: The recovery points that are used to create a rolled-up recovery point are discarded.
      
      Tip: Use roll-up retention policies for anything with a longer retention period. Roll-up policies are more flexible and automatically handle recovery point aging/pruning while still providing granular RPOs for the first day.
    4. To specify the retention number for the primary and recovery AZs, do the following.
      
      Retention on Local AZ: PE_A3_AHV : Specify the retention number for the primary AZ.
      This field is unavailable if you do not specify a recovery location.
      
      Retention on 10.xx.xx.xxx:PE_C1_AHV : Specify the retention number for the recovery AZ.
    5. If you want to enable reverse retention of the recovery points, check Reverse retention for VMs on recovery location .
      Reverse retention maintains the retention numbers of recovery points even after failover to a recovery AZ in the same or different AZs. For example, if you retain two recovery points at the primary AZ and three recovery points at the recovery AZ, and you enable reverse retention, a failover event does not change the initial retention numbers when the recovery points replicate back to the primary AZ. The recovery AZ still retains two recovery points while the primary AZ retains three recovery points. If you do not enable reverse retention, a failover event changes the initial retention numbers when the recovery points replicate back to the primary AZ. The recovery AZ retains three recovery points while the primary AZ retains two recovery points.
      
      Maintaining the same retention numbers at a recovery AZ is required if you want to retain a particular number of recovery points, irrespective of where the guest VM is after its failover.
    6. If you want to take application-consistent recovery points, check Take App-Consistent Recovery Point .
      Application-consistent recovery points ensure that application consistency is maintained in the replicated recovery points. For application-consistent recovery points, install NGT on the guest VMs running on AHV clusters. For guest VMs running on ESXi clusters, you can take application-consistent recovery points without installing NGT, but the recovery points are hypervisor-based, and leads to VM stuns (temporary unresponsive VMs) after failover to the recovery AZs.
      
      Caution: Application-consistent recovery points fail for EFI-boot enabled Windows 2019 VM running on ESXi when NGT is not installed. Nutanix recommends installing NGT on guest VMs running on ESXi also.
    7. Click Save Schedule .
5. Click + Add Recovery Location if you want to add an additional recovery AZ for the guest VMs in the protection policy.
  - To add an on-prem AZ for recovery, see Protection and DR between On-Prem AZs (Nutanix Disaster Recovery)
  - To add Xi Cloud Services for recovery, see Protection and DR between On-Prem AZ and Xi Cloud Service (Xi Leap).
  Figure. Protection Policy Configuration: Additional Recovery Location Click to enlarge
6. Click + Add Schedule to add a replication schedule between the primary AZ and the additional recovery AZ you specified in step e.
  
  The Add Schedule window shows that auto-populates the Primary Location and the additional Recovery Location . Perform step d again to add the replication schedule.
  By default, recovery point creation begins immediately after you create the protection policy. If you want to specify when recovery point creation must begin, click Immediately at the top-right corner, and then, in the Start Time dialog box, do the following.
  - 1. Click Start protection at specific point in time .
    2. Specify the time at which you want to start taking recovery points.
    3. Click Save .
7. Click Next .
  Clicking Next shows a list of VM categories where you can optionally check one or more VM categories to protect in the protection policy. DR configurations using Leap allows you to protect a guest VM by using only one protection policy. Therefore, VM categories specified in another protection policy are not in the list. If you protect a guest VM in another protection policy by specifying the VM category of the guest VM (category-based inclusion), and if you protect the guest VM from the VMs page in this policy (individual inclusion), the individual inclusion supersedes the category-based inclusion. Effectively, only the protection policy that protected the individual guest VM protects the guest VM.
  For example, the guest VM VM_SherlockH is in the category Department:Admin , and you add this category to the protection policy named PP_AdminVMs . Now, if you add VM_SherlockH from the VMs page to another protection policy named PP_VMs_UK , VM_SherlockH is protected in PP_VMs_UK and unprotected from PP_AdminVMs .
8. If you want to protect the guest VMs category wise, check the VM categories that you want to protect from the list and click Add .
  
  Figure. Protection Policy Configuration: Add VM Categories Click to enlarge
  
  Prism Central includes built-in VM categories for frequently encountered applications (for example, MS Exchange and Oracle). If the VM category or value you want is not available, first create the category with the required values, or update an existing category so that it has the values you require. Doing so ensures that the VM categories and values are available for selection. You can add VMs to the category either before or after you configure the protection policy. If the guest VMs have a common characteristic, such as belonging to a specific application or location, create a VM category and add the guest VMs into the category.
  If you do not want to protect the guest VMs category wise, proceed to the next step without checking VM categories. You can add the guest VMs individually to the protection policy later from the VMs page (see Adding Guest VMs Individually to a Protection Policy).
9. Click Create .
  The protection policy with a NearSync replication schedule is created. To verify the protection policy, see the Protection Policies page. If you check VM categories in step h, the protection policy starts generating recovery points of the guest VMs in those VM categories. To see the generated recovery points, click the hamburger icon at the top-left corner of the window and go to VM Recovery Points . Click the recovery points for its information. You can see the time estimated for the very first replication (seeding) to the recovery AZs.
  Figure. Recovery Points Overview Click to enlarge
Tip: DR using Leap with a NearSync replication schedule also allows you to recover the data of the minute just before the unplanned failover. For example, with a 10 minutely protection policy, you can use the internal lightweight snapshots (LWS) to recover the data of the ninth minute when there is an unplanned failover.

Creating a Recovery Plan (Nutanix Disaster Recovery)

To orchestrate the failover of the protected guest VMs to the recovery AZ, create a recovery plan. After a failover, a recovery plan recovers the protected guest VMs to the recovery AZ. If you have configured two recovery AZs in a protection policy, create two recovery plans for DR—one for recovery to each recovery AZ. The recovery plan synchronizes continuously to the recovery AZ in a bidirectional way.

For more information about creating a recovery plan, see Creating a Recovery Plan (Nutanix Disaster Recovery).

Failover and Failback Operations (Nutanix Disaster Recovery)

You can perform test failover, planned failover, and unplanned failover of the guest VMs protected with NearSync replication schedule across different Nutanix clusters at the same or different on-prem AZ (AZ). The steps to perform test, planned, and unplanned failover are largely the same irrespective of the replication schedules that protect the guest VMs.

Refer Failover and Failback Management for test, planned, and unplanned failover procedures.

Protection with Synchronous Replication Schedule (0 RPO) and DR

Synchronous replication enables you to protect your guest VMs with a zero recovery point objective (0 RPO). A protection policy with Synchronous replication schedule replicates all the writes on the protected guest VMs synchronously to the recovery AZ (AZs) for High Availability. The policy also takes recovery points of those protected VMs every 6 hours—the first snapshot is taken immediately—for raw node (HDD+SSD) size up to 120 TB. Since the replication is synchronous, the recovery points are crash-consistent only. For guest VMs (AHV) protected with Synchronous replication schedule, you can perform DR only to an AHV cluster at the same or different AZ. Replicating writes synchronously and also generating recovery points helps to eliminate data losses due to:

Unplanned failure events (for example, natural disasters and network failure).
Planned failover events (for example, scheduled maintenance).

Nutanix recommends that the round-trip latency (RTT) between AHV clusters be less than 5 ms for optimal performance of Synchronous replication schedules. Maintain adequate bandwidth to accommodate peak writes and have a redundant physical network between the clusters.

To perform the replications synchronously yet efficiently, the protection policy limits you to configure only one recovery AZ if you add a Synchronous replication schedule. If you configure Synchronous replication schedule for a guest VM, you cannot add an Asynchronous or NearSync schedule to the same guest VM. Similarly, if you configure an Asynchronous or a NearSync replication schedule, you cannot add a Synchronous schedule to the same guest VM.

If you unpair the AZs while the guest VMs in the Nutanix clusters are still in synchronization, the Nutanix cluster becomes unstable. Therefore, disable Synchronous replication and clear stale stretch parameters if any on both the primary and recovery Prism Element before unpairing the AZs. For more information about disabling Synchronous replication, see Synchronous Replication Management.

Note: Nutanix provides multiple disaster recovery (DR) solutions to secure your environment. See Nutanix Disaster Recovery Solutions for the detailed representation of the DR offerings of Nutanix.

Synchronous Replication Requirements

The following are the specific requirements for protecting your AHV guest VMs with Synchronous replication schedule. Ensure that you meet the following requirements in addition to the general requirements of Leap.

For information about the general requirements of Nutanix Disaster Recovery , see Nutanix Disaster Recovery Requirements.

For information about node, disk and Foundation configurations required to support Synchronous replication schedules, see On-Prem Hardware Resource Requirements.

Hypervisor Requirements

AHV

The AHV clusters must be running on version 20190916.189 or newer.

Note: Synchronous replication schedules support only AHV.

Nutanix Software Requirements

Each on-prem availability zone (AZ) must have a Leap enabled Prism Central instance.
The primary and recovery Nutanix Clusters can be registered with a single Prism Central instance or each can be registered with different Prism Central instances.
The primary and recovery Prism Central and Prism Element on the registered Nutanix clusters must be running on the same AOS version.
- AOS 5.17 or newer.
- AOS 5.17.1 or newer to support Synchronous replications of UEFI secure boot enabled guest VMs.
- AOS 5.19.2 or newer for DR to an AHV cluster in the same AZ (registered to the same Prism Central). For DR to an AHV cluster in the same AZ, Prism Central must be running version 2021.3 or newer.

Additional Requirements

For optimal performance, maintain the round trip latency (RTT) between Nutanix clusters to less than 5 ms. Also, maintain adequate bandwidth to accommodate peak writes and have a redundant physical network between the clusters.
The storage container name of the protected guest VMs must be the same on both the primary and recovery clusters. Therefore, a storage container must exist on the recovery cluster with the same name as the one on the primary cluster. For example, if the protected guest VMs are in the SelfServiceContainer storage container on the primary cluster, there must also be a SelfServiceContainer storage container on the recovery cluster.
For hardware and Foundation configurations required to support Synchronous replication schedules, see On-Prem Hardware Resource Requirements.
The clusters on the primary AZ and the recovery AZ communicate over the ports 2030, 2036, 2073, and 2090. Ensure that these ports have open access between both the primary and the recovery clusters (Prism Element). For the complete list of required ports, see Port Reference.
If the primary and the recovery clusters (Prism Element) are in different subnets, open the ports manually for communication.
Tip: If the primary and the recovery clusters (Prism Element) are in the same subnet, you need not open the ports manually.
- To open the ports for communication to the recovery cluster, run the following command on all CVMs of the primary cluster.
```
nutanix@cvm$ allssh 'modify_firewall -f -r remote_cvm_ip,remote_virtual_ip -p 2030,2036,2073,2090 -i eth0'
```
  Replace remote_cvm_ip with the IP address of the recovery cluster CVM. If there are multiple CVMs, replace remote_cvm_ip with the IP addresses of the CVMs separated by comma.
  
  Replace remote_virtual_ip with the virtual IP address of the recovery cluster.
- To open the ports for communication to the primary cluster, run the following command on all CVMs of the recovery cluster.
```
nutanix@cvm$ allssh 'modify_firewall -f -r source_cvm_ip,source_virtual_ip -p 2030,2036,2073,2090 -i eth0'
```
  Replace source_cvm_ip with the IP address of the primary cluster CVM. If there are multiple CVMs, replace source_cvm_ip with the IP addresses of the CVMs separated by comma.
  
  Replace source_virtual_ip with the virtual IP address of the primary cluster.
Note: Use the eth0 interface only. eth0 is the default CVM interface that shows up when you install AOS.

Synchronous Replication Limitations

Consider the following specific limitations before protecting your guest VMs with Synchronous replication schedule. These limitations are in addition to the general limitations of Nutanix Disaster Recovery .

For information about the general limitations of Leap, see Nutanix Disaster Recovery Limitations.

You cannot restore guest VMs with incompatible GPUs at the recovery cluster.
You cannot protect guest VMs configured as part of a network function chain.
You cannot protect guest VMs with affinity policies.
You cannot resize a guest VM disk while the guest VM is in replication. See KB-9986 for more information.

Creating a Protection Policy with the Synchronous Replication Schedule

To protect the guest VMs in an instant replication schedule, configure a Synchronous replication schedule while creating the protection policy. The policy replicates all the writes on the protected guest VMs synchronously to the recovery AZ (AZ) for High Availability. For a raw node (HDD+SSD) size up to 120 TB, the policy also takes crash-consistent recovery points of those guest VMs every 6 hours and replicates them to the recovery AZ—the first snapshot is taken immediately. To maintain the efficiency of synchronous replication, the protection policy allows you to add only one recovery AZ for the protected VMs. When creating a protection policy, you can specify only VM categories. If you want to protect guest VMs individually, you must first create the protection policy—which can also include VM categories, and then include the guest VMs individually in the protection policy from the VMs page.

Before you begin

See Synchronous Replication Requirements and Synchronous Replication Limitations before you start.

About this task

To create a protection policy with the Synchronous replication schedule, do the following at the primary AZ. You can also create a protection policy at the recovery AZ. Protection policies you create or update at a recovery AZ synchronize back to the primary AZ.

Procedure

Log on to the Prism Central web console.
Click the hamburger icon at the top-left corner of the window. Go to Policies > Protection Policies in the left pane.

Figure. Protection Policy Configuration: Protection Policies
Click to enlarge
Click Create Protection Policy .
Specify the following information in the Create Protection Policy window.

Figure. Protection Policy Configuration: Select Primary Location
Click to enlarge
1. Policy name : Enter a name for the protection policy.
  
  Caution: The name can be of only alphanumeric, dot, dash, and underscore characters.
2. In the Primary Location pane, specify the following information.
  - 1. Location : From the drop-down list, select an AZ (AZ) that hosts the guest VMs to protect.
      The drop-down lists all the AZs paired with the local AZ. Local AZ represents the local AZ (Prism Central). For your primary AZ, you can check either the local AZ or a non-local AZ.
    2. Cluster : From the drop-down list, select the AHV cluster that hosts the VMs to protect.
      The drop-down lists all the Nutanix clusters registered to Prism Central representing the selected AZ. If you want to protect the guest VMs from multiple AHV clusters in the same protection policy, select the AHV clusters that host those guest VMs. All Clusters protects the guest VMs of all Nutanix clusters registered to Prism Central. Select All Clusters only if all the clusters are running AHV.
    3. Click Save .
      Clicking Save activates the Recovery Location pane. Do not add a local schedule to retain the recovery points locally. To maintain the replication efficiency, Synchronous replication allows only the replication schedule. If you add a local schedule, you cannot click Synchronous in step d.
3. In the Recovery Location pane, specify the following information.
  
  Figure. Protection Policy Configuration: Select Recovery Location
  Click to enlarge
  - 1. Location : From the drop-down list, select the AZ (AZ) where you want to replicate the recovery points.
      The drop-down lists all the AZs paired with the local AZ. Local AZ represents the local AZ (Prism Central). Select Local AZ if you want to configure DR to a different AHV cluster at the same AZ.
      
      If you do not select a AZ, local recovery points that are created by the protection policy do not replicate automatically. You can, however, replicate the recovery points manually and use recovery plans to recover the guest VMs. For more information, see Protection and Manual DR (Nutanix Disaster Recovery).
    2. Cluster : From the drop-down list, select the AHV cluster where you want to replicate the guest VM writes synchronously and recovery points.
      The drop-down lists all the Nutanix clusters registered to Prism Central representing the selected AZ. You can select one AHV cluster at the recovery AZ. Do not select an ESXi cluster because DR configurations using Leap support only AHV cluster. If you select an ESXi cluster and configure a Synchronous replication schedule, replications fail.
      
      Note: Selecting auto-select from the drop-down menu replicates the recovery points to any available cluster at the recovery AZ. Select auto-select from the drop-down list only if all the clusters at the recovery AZ are running on AHV and are up and running.
    3. Click Save .
      Clicking Save activates the + Add Schedule button between the primary and the recovery AZ. Do not add a local schedule to retain the recovery points locally. To maintain the replication efficiency, Synchronous replication allows only the replication schedule. If you add a local schedule, you cannot click Synchronous in step d.
4. Click + Add Schedule to add a replication schedule between the primary and the recovery AZ.
  Specify the following information in the Add Schedule window. The window auto-populates the Primary Location and Recovery Location that you have selected in step b and step c.
  
  Figure. Protection Policy Configuration: Add Schedule (Synchronous)
  Click to enlarge
  - 1. Protection Type : Click Synchronous .
    2. Failure Handling : Select one of the following options to handle failure. For example, if the connection between the primary and the recovery AZ breaks and VM writes on the primary cluster stops replicating.
      
      Manual : Select this option if you want to resume the VM writes on the primary AZ only when you manually disable Synchronous replication.
      
      Automatic : Select this option to resume VM writes on the primary AZ automatically after the specified Timeout after seconds.
      Note: The minimum timeout period is 10 seconds. For a guest VM that is configured for AHV Metro recovery, the timeout period specified in the Witness configured recovery plan takes precedence. For example, if the timeout period in the protection policy is 10 seconds and then you specify 40 seconds in the Witness recovery plan (automatic), the timeout period for failure handling shall be 40 seconds only.
    3. Click Save Schedule .
      Clicking Save Schedule disables the + Add Recovery Location button at the top-right because to maintain the efficiency of synchronous replication, the policy allows you to add only one recovery AZ.
  By default, recovery point creation begins immediately after you create the protection policy. If you want to specify when recovery point creation must begin, click Immediately at the top-right corner, and then, in the Start Time dialog box, do the following.
  - 1. Click Start protection at specific point in time .
    2. Specify the time at which you want to start taking recovery points.
    3. Click Save .
5. Click Next .
  Clicking Next shows a list of VM categories where you can optionally check one or more VM categories to protect in the protection policy. DR configurations using Leap allows you to protect a guest VM by using only one protection policy. Therefore, VM categories specified in another protection policy are not in the list. If you protect a guest VM in another protection policy by specifying the VM category of the guest VM (category-based inclusion), and if you protect the guest VM from the VMs page in this policy (individual inclusion), the individual inclusion supersedes the category-based inclusion. Effectively, only the protection policy that protected the individual guest VM protects the guest VM.
  For example, the guest VM VM_SherlockH is in the category Department:Admin , and you add this category to the protection policy named PP_AdminVMs . Now, if you add VM_SherlockH from the VMs page to another protection policy named PP_VMs_UK , VM_SherlockH is protected in PP_VMs_UK and unprotected from PP_AdminVMs .
6. If you want to protect the guest VMs category wise, check the VM categories that you want to protect from the list and click Add .
  Prism Central includes built-in VM categories for frequently encountered applications (for example, MS Exchange and Oracle). If the VM category or value you want is not available, first create the category with the required values, or update an existing category so that it has the values you require. Doing so ensures that the VM categories and values are available for selection. You can add VMs to the category either before or after you configure the protection policy. If the guest VMs have a common characteristic, such as belonging to a specific application or location, create a VM category and add the guest VMs into the category.
  If you do not want to protect the guest VMs category wise, proceed to the next step without checking VM categories. You can add the guest VMs individually to the protection policy later from the VMs page (see Adding Guest VMs Individually to a Protection Policy).
7. Click Create .
  The protection policy with Synchronous replication schedule is created. To verify the protection policy, see the Protection Policies page. If you check VM categories in step f, the protection policy starts generating recovery points of the guest VMs in those VM categories. To see the generated recovery points, click the hamburger icon at the top-left corner of the window and go to VM Recovery Points . Click the recovery points for its information. You can see the time estimated for the very first replication (seeding) to the recovery AZs.
  Figure. Recovery Points Overview Click to enlarge

Creating a Recovery Plan (Nutanix Disaster Recovery)

For more information about creating a recovery plan, see Creating a Recovery Plan (Nutanix Disaster Recovery).

Synchronous Replication Management

Synchronous replication instantly replicates all writes on the protected guest VMs to the recovery cluster. Replication starts when you configure a protection policy and add the guest VMs to protect. You can manage the replication by enabling, disabling, pausing, or resuming the Synchronous replication on the protected guest VMs from the Prism Central.

Enabling Synchronous Replication

When you configure a protection policy with Synchronous replication schedule and add guest VMs to protect, the replication is enabled by default. However, if you have disabled the Synchronous replication on a guest VM, you have to enable it to start replication.

About this task

To enable Synchronous replication on a guest VM, perform the following procedure at the primary AZ (AZ). You can also perform the following procedure at the recovery AZ. The operations you perform at a recovery AZ synchronize back to the primary AZ.

Procedure

Log on to the Prism Central web console.
Click the hamburger icon at the top-left corner of the window. Go to Virtual Infrastructure > VMs > List in the left pane.
Select the guest VMs on which you want to enable Synchronous replication.
Click Protect from the Actions drop-down menu.
Select the protection policy in the table to include the guest VMs in the protection policy.
Click Protect .

Pausing Synchronous Replication

The protected guest VMs on the primary cluster stop responding when the recovery cluster is disconnected abruptly (for example, due to network outage or internal service crash). To come out of the unresponsive state, you can pause Synchronous replication on the guest VMs. Pausing Synchronous replication temporarily suspends the replication state of the guest VMs without completely disabling the replication relationship.

About this task

To pause Synchronous replication on a guest VM, perform the following procedure.

Procedure

Log on to the Prism Central web console.
Click the hamburger icon at the top-left corner of the window. Go to Virtual Infrastructure > VMs > List in the left pane.
Select the guest VMs on which want to pause the Synchronous replication.
Click Pause Synchronous Replication from the Actions drop-down menu.

Resuming Synchronous Replication

You can resume the Synchronous replication that you had paused to come out of the unresponsive state of the primary cluster. Resuming Synchronous replication restores the replication status and reconciles the state of the guest VMs. To resume Synchronous replication on a guest VM, perform the following procedure.

Procedure

Log on to the Prism Central web console.
Click the hamburger icon at the top-left corner of the window. Go to Virtual Infrastructure > VMs > List in the left pane.
Select the guest VMs on which want to resume Synchronous replication.
Click Resume Synchronous Replication from the Actions drop-down menu.

Failover and Failback Operations (Nutanix Disaster Recovery)

You can perform test failover, planned failover, and unplanned failover of the guest VMs protected with Synchronous replication schedule across the AHV clusters at the different on-prem AZ (AZ). The steps to perform test, planned, and unplanned failover are largely the same irrespective of the replication schedules that protects the guest VMs. Additionally, a planned failover of the guest VMs protected with Synchronous replication schedule also allows for live migration of the protected guest VMs.

Refer Failover and Failback Management for test, planned, and unplanned failover procedures.

Cross-Cluster Live Migration

Planned failover of the guest VMs protected with Synchronous replication schedule supports live migration to another AHV cluster. Live migration offers zero downtime for your applications during a planned failover event to the recovery cluster (for example, during scheduled maintenance).

Cross-Cluster Live Migration Requirements

The following are the specific requirements to successfully migrate your guest VMs with Live Migration.

Ensure that you meet the following requirements in addition to the requirements of Synchronous replication schedule (Synchronous Replication Requirements) and general requirements of Leap (Nutanix Disaster Recovery Requirements).

Stretch L2 networks across the primary and recovery AZs.
Network stretch spans your network across different AZs. A stretched L2 network retains the IP addresses of guest VMs after their Live Migration to the recovery AZ.
Both the primary and recovery Nutanix clusters must have identical CPU types.
The primary and recovery Nutanix clusters must have identical CPU feature set. If the CPU feature sets (set of CPU flags) are unidentical, Live Migration fails.
Both the primary and recovery Nutanix clusters must run on the same AHV version.
If the primary and the recovery Nutanix clusters (Prism Element) are in different subnets, open the ports 49250–49260 for communication. For the complete list of required ports, see Port Reference.

Cross-Cluster Live Migration Limitations

Consider the following limitation in addition to the limitations of Synchronous replication schedule (Synchronous Replication Limitations) and general limitations of Leap (Nutanix Disaster Recovery Limitations) before performing live migration of your guest VMs.

Live migration of guest VMs fails if the guest VMs are part of Flow security policies.
Tip: To enable the guest VMs to retain the Flow security policies after the failover (live migration), revoke the policies on the guest VMs and Export them to the recovery AZ. At the recovery AZ, Import the policies. The guest VMs read the policies automatically after recovery.

Performing Cross-Cluster Live Migration

If due to a planned event (for example, scheduled maintenance of guest VMs) at the primary AZ (AZ), you want to migrate your applications to another AHV cluster without downtime, perform a planned failover with Live Migration to the recovery AZ.

About this task

To live migrate the guest VMs, do the following procedure at the recovery AZ.

Procedure

Log on to the Prism Central web console.
Click the hamburger icon at the top-left corner of the window. Go to Policies > Recovery Plans in the left pane.
Select a recovery plan for the failover operation.

Caution: The Recovery Plans page displays many recovery plans. Select the recovery plan that has Stretch Networks . If you select a recovery plan having Non-stretch networks , the migration fails. For more information about selection of stretch and non-stretch networks, see Creating a Recovery Plan (Nutanix Disaster Recovery).
Click Failover from the Actions drop-down menu.
Specify the following information in the Failover from Recovery Plan window. The window auto-populates the Failover From and Failover To locations from the recovery plan you select in step 3.

Note: If you select more than one recovery plan in step 3, the Failover action is available only when the selected recovery plans have the same primary and recovery locations.

Figure. Planned Failover
Click to enlarge
1. Failover Type : Click Planned Failover and check Live Migrate VMs .
2. Click + Add target clusters if you want to failover to specific clusters at the recovery AZ.
  If you do not add target clusters, the recovery plan migrates the guest VMs to any AHV cluster at the recovery AZ.
Click Failover .
The Failover from Recovery Plan dialog box lists the errors and warnings, if any, and allows you to stop or continue the test operation. If there are no errors or you resolve the errors in step 6, the guest VMs migrate and start at the recovery cluster. The migration might show a network latency of 300-600 ms. You cannot see the migrated guest VMs on the primary cluster because those VMs come up at the recovery cluster after the migration.
If you see errors, do the following.
- To review errors or warnings, click View Details in the description.
  Resolve the error conditions and then restart the failover procedure.
- Select one of the following.
  - To stop the failover operation, click Abort .
  - To continue the failover operation despite the warnings, click Execute Anyway .
    Note: You cannot continue the failover operation when the validation fails with errors.

AHV Metro (Witness Option)

The Witness option extends the capability of metro availability to AHV clusters using Nutanix Disaster Recovery . To automate the recovery process, the recovery plan configuration is enhanced to automatically handle the failure execution. The Witness is a service within Prism Central (including scale-out deployments) that monitors communication between the metro pair of clusters (primary and recovery AHV clusters). When the communication between both the clusters is interrupted for a configurable time interval, the service executes an unplanned failover depending on the failure type and the actions you have configured in the associated recovery plan.

Witness continuously reads the health status from the metro pair of AHV clusters. If the communication between the two clusters is unavailable for a set time period, the service pauses the Synchronous replication between the clusters. If the primary cluster is unavailable, the service can also automatically trigger an unplanned failover automatically to start the guest VMs specified in the Witness configured recovery plan at the recovery cluster.

You can configure AHV metro for the clusters registered to the same Prism Central (same AZ). If one of your clusters is running ESXi and you want the witness capability , see the Witness Option in Data Protection and Recovery with Prism Element . Nutanix recommends deploying the single Prism Central on a different AHV or ESXi cluster (that is, a different fault domain) to help avoid a single point of failure (see AHV Metro Requirements and Recommendations). Prism Central VMs residing in a separate fault domain provide an outside view that can distinguish a cluster failure from a network interruption between the Metro Availability clusters.

The following table describes the cluster failure scenarios and the witness response behavior. For more information about recovery workflows in each scenario, see AHV Metro Recovery Workflows.

Table 1. Witness Response Behaviors
Failure scenario	Recovery plan Failure Execution Mode : Automatic (Witness)		Recovery plan Failure Execution Mode : Manual or no recovery plan
Failure scenario	Protection policy failure handling: Manual	Protection policy failure handling: Automatic	Protection policy failure handling: Manual	Protection policy failure handling: Automatic
Primary cluster outage	Guest VMs fail over automatically (unplanned failover) to the recovery cluster after the timeout period set in the recovery plan. See Performing an Unplanned Failover (Leap) for more information. Note: The timeout period set in the recovery plan supersedes the automatic failure-handling value in the protection policy. Administrative intervention is required to delete the guest VMs on the primary cluster when the primary cluster becomes functional.		Guest VM I/O operations freeze (read-only state). Administrative intervention is required to manually perform an unplanned failover of the guest VMs. See Performing an Unplanned Failover (Leap) for more information. The recovery plan must be configured for the efficient recovery of guest VMs. For information about creating recovery plans, see Creating a Recovery Plan (Nutanix Disaster Recovery).
Complete network failure in the primary cluster (connection loss between the primary cluster and Prism Central and recovery cluster)	Guest VMs fail over automatically (unplanned failover) to the recovery cluster after the timeout period set in the recovery plan. See Performing an Unplanned Failover (Leap) for more information. Note: The timeout period set in the recovery plan supersedes the automatic failure-handling value in the protection policy. Administrative intervention is required to delete the guest VMs on the primary cluster when the primary cluster becomes functional.		Guest VM I/O operations freeze (read-only state). Administrative intervention is required to pause the Synchronous replication. Note: Synchronous replication pauses only when there is network connectivity between Prism Central and the metro pair of clusters. Contact Nutanix Support to recover the guest VMs when there is no network connectivity. Guest VM I/O operations continue to run on the primary cluster after synchronous replication is paused	Synchronous replication pauses after the timeout period set in the protection policy. Note: The synchronization status does not update until there is network connectivity between the primary cluster and Prism Central. Guest VMs continue to run on the primary cluster.
Recovery cluster outage or complete network failure in the recovery cluster	Synchronous replication pauses on all the guest VMs after the timeout period set in the recovery plan. Guest VMs continue to run on the primary cluster. The ability to automatically recovering the guest VMs (unplanned failover) ceases because there is no communication with the recovery cluster.		Guest VM I/O operations freeze (read-only state). Administrative intervention is required to pause the Synchronous replication. Guest VMs I/O operations continue to run on the primary cluster after synchronous replication is paused	Synchronous replication pauses after the timeout period set in the protection policy. Guest VMs I/O operations continue to run on the primary cluster.
Connection loss between the primary and recovery clusters	Synchronous replication pauses on all the guest VMs after the timeout period set in the recovery plan. Guest VMs continue to run on the primary cluster. The ability to automatically recovering the guest VMs (unplanned failover) ceases because there is no communication with the recovery cluster.		Guest VM I/O operations freeze until either of the following. Connectivity between the primary and recovery clusters is functional Administrative intervention to manually pause Synchronous replication	Synchronous replication pauses after the timeout period set in the protection policy. Guest VMs I/O operations continue to run on the primary cluster.
Failure at both primary and recovery clusters	Administrative intervention required to recover the clusters. Refer to the relevant failure scenario in this table to manage the guest VMs.
Witness failure	No impact on Synchronous replication. However, the ability to automatically recover the guest VMs (unplanned failover) from cluster, storage, and network failures cease.		Not applicable	Not applicable
Connection loss between Prism Central (Witness) and the primary cluster	No impact on Synchronous replication. Guest VMs continue to run on the primary cluster.		Not applicable	Not applicable
Connection loss between Prism Central (Witness) and the recovery cluster	No impact on Synchronous replication. Guest VMs continue to run on the primary cluster.		Not applicable	Not applicable
Connection loss between Prism Central (Witness) and both the primary and recovery clusters. The primary and recovery clusters are connected.	No impact on Synchronous replication. The ability to automatically recover the guest VMs (unplanned failover) cease because there is no communication between Prism Central (witness) and both the primary and recovery clusters. Guest VMs continue to run on the primary cluster.		Not applicable	Not applicable
Connection loss between Prism Central (witness) and both the primary and recovery clusters, and between primary cluster and recovery cluster	Guest VMs fail over automatically (unplanned failover) to the recovery cluster after the timeout period set in the recovery plan. See Performing an Unplanned Failover (Leap) for more information. Note: The timeout period set in the recovery plan supersedes the automatic failure-handling value in the protection policy. Administrative intervention is required to delete the guest VMs on the primary cluster when the primary cluster becomes functional.		Not applicable	Not applicable
Connection loss between both the metro pair of clusters, and between the primary cluster and Prism Central. Prism Central and the recovery cluster and are connected.	Guest VMs fail over automatically (unplanned failover) to the recovery cluster after the timeout period set in the recovery plan. See Performing an Unplanned Failover (Leap) for more information. Note: The timeout period set in the recovery plan supersedes the automatic failure-handling value in the protection policy. Administrative intervention required to delete the guest VMs on the primary cluster when the primary cluster becomes functional.		Guest VM I/O operations freeze until either of the following. Connectivity between the primary cluster and Prism Central is functional Administrative intervention to manually pause Synchronous replication	Synchronous replication pauses after the timeout period set in the protection policy. Note: The synchronization status does not update until there is network connectivity between the primary cluster and Prism Central. Guest VMs continue to run on the primary cluster.
Connection loss between both the metro pair of clusters, and between the recovery cluster and Prism Central. Prism Central and the primary cluster are connected.	Synchronous replication pauses on all the guest VMs after the timeout period set in the recovery plan. Guest VMs continue to run on the primary cluster. The ability to automatically recovering the guest VMs (unplanned failover) ceases because there is no communication with the recovery cluster.		Guest VM I/O operations freeze until either of the following. Connectivity between the recovery cluster and Prism Central is functional Administrative intervention to manually pause Synchronous replication	Synchronous replication pauses after the timeout period set in the protection policy. Guest VMs I/O operations continue to run on the primary cluster.
Storage-only outage on the primary cluster	Guest VMs fail over automatically (unplanned failover) to the recovery cluster after the timeout period set in the recovery plan. See Performing an Unplanned Failover (Leap) for more information. Note: The timeout period set in the recovery plan supersedes the automatic failure-handling value in the protection policy. Administrative intervention is required to delete the guest VMs on the primary cluster when the primary cluster becomes functional.		Guest VMs remain inaccessible until either of the following. Storage-only outage is fixed on the primary cluster Administrative intervention to manually perform an unplanned failover to the recovery cluster. See Performing an Unplanned Failover (Leap) for more information. Recovery plan must be configured for the efficient recovery of guest VMs. For information about creating recovery plans, see Creating a Recovery Plan (Nutanix Disaster Recovery)
Storage-only outage on the recovery cluster	Synchronous replication pauses on all the guest VMs after the timeout period set in the recovery plan. Guest VMs continue to run on the primary cluster. The ability to automatically recovering the guest VMs (unplanned failover) ceases because there is no communication with the recovery cluster.		Guest VM I/O operations freeze until either of the following. Storage-only outage on the recovery cluster is fixed Administrative intervention to manually pause the Synchronous replication.	Synchronous replication pauses after the timeout period set in the protection policy. Guest VMs continue to run on the primary cluster.

AHV Metro Requirements and Recommendations

These requirements and recommendations help you to successfully configure a witness to automate recovery (failover) when the primary AHV cluster is unavailable.

AHV Metro Requirements

Ensure that you meet these requirements in addition to Synchronous Replication Requirements and the applicable Nutanix Disaster Recovery Requirements before you start.

Nutanix Software Requirements

Prism Central must run version pc.2021.7 or newer.
For Prism Central and AOS version compatibility, see Software Interoperability
The primary and recovery AHV clusters must be registered to the same Prism Central deployment.
The primary and recovery AHV clusters registered to Prism Central must be running a minimum AOS version of 6.0..
The AHV or ESXi cluster hosting Prism Central must be running a minimum AOS version 6.0.

Recovery Plan Requirements

A guest VM can be part of one recovery plan only with witness configuration.
The cluster generates an alert when a guest VM is in multiple recovery plans with witness configuration.
You can add the guest VMs protected with Synchronous replication only to the recovery plans with witness configuration.
You cannot add guest VMs protected with Asynchronous and NearSync replication to the recovery plans with witness configuration. The cluster generates an alert when guest VMs protected with Asynchronous and NearSync replication are in the recovery plans with witness configuration.

Additional Requirements

When the recovery AHV cluster becomes available after the break in the synchronous replication between the AHV clusters, manually resume the synchronous replication of the guest VMs from the primary cluster. For more information about resuming synchronous replication, see Resuming Synchronous Replication.
When the primary AHV cluster becomes available after the unplanned failover of guest VMs, delete the guest VMs on the primary cluster if the unplanned failover was successful.

AHV Metro Recommendations

See Nutanix Disaster Recovery Recommendations.

If the Prism Central instance that you use for protection and disaster recovery to AHV clusters at the same availability zone (AZ) becomes unavailable, the witness service also becomes unavailable. To help avoid a single point of failure, Nutanix recommends deploying the single Prism Central in a different AZ (that is, a different fault domain).
To avoid conflicts after the unplanned failover of the guest VMs, shut down the guest VMs associated with this recovery plan if the primary AZ becomes active. Manually power off the guest VMs on either primary or recovery AZ after the failover is complete.

AHV Metro Limitations

Consider the following limitations before configuring AHV Metro to automate the failover recovery when the primary AHV cluster is unavailable. These limitations are in addition to Synchronous replication limitations and applicable general limitations of Leap.

See Synchronous Replication Limitations and Nutanix Disaster Recovery Limitations.

You cannot use witness in a configuration with two or more Prism Central deployments across availability zones (AZs).
You cannot use witness to automate the unplanned failover recovery of the guest VMs protected with Asynchronous or NearSync replication.
You cannot use witness to automate the unplanned failover recovery to Xi Cloud Services.
You can only create the recovery plan with witness configuration after creating a protection policy, and having the entities in Synced status.

AHV Metro Recovery Workflows

When the Witness is enabled (automatic mode) in Prism Central, the recovery workflow of the guest VMs in Witness configured recovery plans depends on the nature of the failure. This section describes the recovery workflows of such guest VMs running on the primary cluster in various failure scenarios.

Recovering from the primary cluster outage or complete network failure in the primary cluster

When the primary cluster (Prism Element A) becomes unavailable, the recovery cluster (Prism Element B) detects the outage and acquires the lock from the Witness. The system then performs an unplanned failover of the specified guest VMs (in Witness configured recovery plans) to the recovery cluster (Prism Element B) after the specified timeout period.

Note: If the guest VMs also exist on the recovery cluster (Prism Element B), the system does the following:

Pauses the Synchronous replication of those guest VMs to the primary cluster (Prism Element A).
Performs an unplanned failover of the guest VMs to the recovery cluster (Prism Element B) after the specified timeout period.

When primary cluster Prism Element A is operational again, you must manually resume the Synchronous replication back to Prism Element A.

Recovering from the recovery cluster outage or complete network failure in the recovery cluster

When the recovery cluster Prism Element B becomes unavailable, the primary cluster Prism Element Adetects the outage and acquires the lock from the Witness. The system then pauses the Synchronous replication to Prism Element B. The guest VMs on Prism Element A are up and running. However, any modifications to the guest VMs do not synchronize with the recovery cluster. If Prism Element A is unavailable now, an unplanned failover cannot happen automatically. If you try the unplanned failover manually, it fails. When Prism Element B is operational again, you must manually resume the Synchronous replication to Prism Element B.

Recovering from connection loss between the primary and recovery clusters

When there is a connection loss between the metro pair of clusters (Prism Element A and Prism Element B) but the network connections remain good between each cluster and Prism Central (Witness), both Prism Element A and Prism Element B attempt to acquire the Witness lock. However, Prism Element A acquires the lock first and the system pauses the Synchronous replication to Prism Element B. The guest VMs on Prism Element A are up and running. If Prism Element A is unavailable now, an unplanned failover cannot happen automatically. If you try the unplanned failover manually, it fails. When Prism Element B is operational again, you must manually resume the Synchronous replication to Prism Element B.

Recovering from Witness failure

When Prism Central (or the Witness) is unavailable, the cluster triggers an alert in both Prism Element A and Prism Element B but metro availability is otherwise unaffected. When Prism Central (or the Witness) becomes operational again, the Witness workflow resumes automatically without any intervention.

Recovering from complete network failure

When there is a complete network failure (the metro pair of clusters cannot connect to each other or to Prism Central), Prism Element A or Prism Element B cannot acquire the Witness lock. The guest VMs on Prism Element A freeze and I/O operations fail. If Prism Element A is unavailable now, an unplanned failover cannot happen automatically. If you try the unplanned failover manually, it fails. When the connections are restored, you must manually resume the Synchronous replication.

Recovering from a double network failure (primary cluster isolated)

When there is a double network failure—where the connection is lost both between the metro pair of clusters, and between Prism Element A and Prism Central, but Prism Element B and Prism Central are connected—both Prism Element A and Prism Element B attempt to acquire the Witness lock. Because Prism Element A cannot connect to Prism Central, Prism Element B acquires the lock after the built-in delay passes and performs the unplanned failover to bring the guest VMs on Prism Element B. The guest VMs on Prism Element A freeze and I/O operations fail.

Recovering from a double network failure (recovery cluster isolated)

When there is a double network failure—where the connection is lost both between the metro pair of clusters, and between Prism Element B and Prism Central, but Prism Element A and Prism Central are connected—Prism Element A acquires the Witness lock after the built-in delay passes and pauses the Synchronous replication to Prism Element B. The guest VMs on Prism Element A are up and running. When the connections are restored, you must resume the Synchronous replication to Prism Element A.

Recovering from a Storage-only outage on the primary cluster

A storage-only outage is defined as a condition where the hosts are up and running but have lost connectivity to the storage on the primary cluster (the storage on primary cluster goes into an inaccessible state). In the event of a storage-only outage on Prism Element A, the system performs an unplanned failover of the guest VMs to Prism Element B.

Recovering from a Storage-only outage on the recovery cluster

In the event of a storage-only outage on Prism Element B (the storage goes into an inaccessible state), the system pauses the Synchronous replication but the I/O operations continue on Prism Element A.

Configuring AHV Metro

Before you begin

See AHV Metro Requirements and Recommendations and AHV Metro Limitations.

About this task

Procedure

Log on to the Prism Central web console.
Click the settings button (gear icon) at the top-right corner of the window.
Click Witness in the General section on the left pane.
Witness is enabled by default in Prism Central. The cluster information is visible if the cluster hosting Prism Central is also registered to Prism Central. Click View Usage History to see unplanned failover events triggered by the witness in the past.
Create a recovery plan to automatically trigger an unplanned failover to recover the AHV cluster.
For more information about creating a recovery plan, see Creating a Recovery Plan (Nutanix Disaster Recovery). The procedure to create a recovery plan with witness configuration is identical except as follows.
1. In the General tab, select the Primary Location and the Recovery Location as Local AZ .
2. Select Automatic in Failure Execution Mode to enable the witness to break the replication and trigger an unplanned failover to the recovery AHV cluster in the specified timeout seconds.
Note: Set Execute failover after disconnectivity of to value between 30 to 300 seconds. The timeout period you specify here supersedes the timeout period specified in the protection policy for automatic failure handling. For example, if the timeout period in the protection policy is 10 seconds and then you specify 40 seconds here, the timeout period for failure handling shall be 40 seconds only.

Note: Failure Execution Mode appears only when the Primary Location and the Recovery Location are the same.

A recovery plan with witness configuration is created. To confirm the witness configuration, click the settings button (gear icon), then click Witness in the General section on the left pane. The page shows the number of recovery plans using the witness under Monitoring (On this PC) . Click the number to see the list of recovery plans using the witness.

Converting a Multi-AZ Deployment to Single-AZ

To use disaster recovery (DR) features that support only single Prism Central (AZ) managed deployments, you can convert your multi-AZ deployment to single-AZ deployment. For example, in two AZ deployments where each Prism Central (Prism Central A, Prism Central B) instance hosts one Prism Element cluster (Prism Element A, Prism Element B) , you can perform the following procedure to convert to a single-AZ deployment (Prism Central A managing both Prism Element A, Prism Element B) .

Before you begin

This procedure converts deployments protected with Synchronous replication schedules. See Synchronous Replication Requirements for the supported Prism Central and AOS versions. To avoid the single point of failure in such deployments, Nutanix recommends installing the single Prism Central at a different AZ (different fault domain).

Perform this procedure to convert deployments protected in Asynchronous and NearSync replications schedules also. The conversion procedure for deployments protected in Asynchronous and NearSync replications schedules are identical except that the protection status (step 2 in the described procedure) of Asynchronous and NearSync replications schedules is available only in Focus > Data Protection .

Procedure

Log on to the web console of Prism Central A .
Modify all the protection policies and recovery plans that refer to Prism Element B and Prism Central B .
1. Modify the protection policies to either remove all the references to Prism Element B and Prism Central B or remove all the guest VMs from the policy.
  For more information about updating a protection policy, see Updating a Protection Policy.
2. Modify the recovery plans to remove all the references to Prism Element B and Prism Central B .
  
  Note: If you do not modify the recovery plans, the recovery plans become invalid after the unregistration of Prism Element B with Prism Central B in step 2. For more information about updating a recovery plan, see Updating a Recovery Plan.
3. Ensure that there are no issues (in Alerts ) with the modified protection policies and recovery plans.
  
  Note: Before unregistering Prism Element B from Prism Central B in step 2, ensure that no guest VM is protected to and from Prism Element B .
Unprotect all the guest VMs replicating to and from Prism Element B and Prism Central B .

Note: If the guest VMs are protected by VM categories, update or delete the VM categories from the protection policies and recovery plans.

To see the unprotect status of the guest VMs, click Focus > Data Protection
Ensure that the guest VMs unprotect completely.
- To ensure all the stretch states are deleted, log on to Prism Element B through SSH as the nutanix user and run the following command.
```
nutanix@cvm$ stretch_params_printer
```
  Empty response indicates that all stretch states are deleted.
- To ensure all the stretch states between Prism Central B and Prism Element B are deleted, log on to Prism Central B through SSH as nutanix user and run the following commands.
```
pcvm$ mcli
```
```
mcli> mcli dr_coordinator.list
```
  Empty response indicates that all stretch states are deleted.
Unregister Prism Element B from Prism Central B .
After unregistering Prism Element B from Prism Central B , the system deletes all Prism Central B attributes and policies applied to guest VMs on Prism Element B (for example, VM categories).
Register Prism Element B to Prism Central A .
After registering Prism Element B to Prism Central A , reconfigure all Prism Central B attributes and policies applied to entities on the Prism Element B (for example, VM categories).
Modify the protection policies and recovery plans to refer to Prism Central A and Prism Element B .
Unpair Prism Central B .
To ensure all the stretch states between Prism Central A and Prism Central B are deleted, log on to both Prism Central A and Prism Central B through SSH and run the following command. .
```
pcvm$ mcli
```
```
mcli> mcli dr_coordinator.list
```
Empty response indicates that all stretch states are deleted.
Multi-AZ deployment is converted to Single-AZ. Prism Element A and Prism Element B is registered to single Prism Central ( Prism Central A ) managed deployment.

Protection Policy Management

A protection policy automates the creation and replication of recovery points. When creating a protection policy, you specify replication schedules, retention policies for the recovery points, and the guest VMs you want to protect. You also specify a recovery AZ (maximum 2) if you want to automate recovery point replication to the recovery availability zones (AZs).

When you create, update, or delete a protection policy, it synchronizes to the recovery AZs and works bidirectionally. The recovery points generated at the recovery AZs replicate back to the primary AZ when the primary AZ starts functioning. For information about how Leap determines the list of AZs for synchronization, see Entity Synchronization Between Paired AZs.

Adding Guest VMs Individually to a Protection Policy

You can also protect guest VMs individually in a protection policy from the VMs page, without the use of a VM category. To protect guest VMs individually in a protection policy, perform the following procedure.

About this task

Note: If you protect a guest VM individually, you can remove the guest VM from the protection policy only by using the procedure in Removing Guest VMs Individually from a Protection Policy.

Procedure

Log on to the Prism Central web console.
Click the hamburger icon at the top-left corner of the window. Go to Compute & Storage > VMs in the left pane.

Figure. Virtual Infrastructure: VMs
Click to enlarge
Select the guest VMs that you want to add to a protection policy.
Click Protect from the Actions drop-down menu.

Figure. Protect Guest VMs Individually: Actions
Click to enlarge
Select the protection policy in the table to protect the selected guest VMs.

Figure. Protect Guest VMs Individually: Protection Policy Selection
Click to enlarge
Click Protect .

Removing Guest VMs Individually from a Protection Policy

You can remove guest VMs individually from a protection policy from the VMs page. To remove guest VMs individually from a protection policy, perform the following procedure.

About this task

Note: If a guest VM is protected under a VM category, you cannot remove the guest VM from the protection policy by the following procedure. You can remove the guest VM from the protection policy only by dissociating the guest VM from the VM category.

Procedure

Log on to the Prism Central web console.
Click the hamburger icon at the top-left corner of the window. Go to Compute & Storage > VMs in the left pane.

Figure. Virtual Infrastructure: VMs
Click to enlarge
Select the guest VMs that you want to remove from a protection policy.
Click UnProtect from the Actions drop-down menu.

Cloning a Protection Policy

If the requirements of the protection policy that you want to create are similar to an existing protection policy, you can clone the existing protection policy and update the clone. To clone a protection policy, perform the following procedure.

About this task

Procedure

Log on to the Prism Central web console.
Click the hamburger icon at the top-left corner of the window. Go to Data Protection > Protection Policies in the left pane.

Figure. Protection Policy Configuration: Protection Policies
Click to enlarge
Select the protection policy that you want to clone.
Click Clone from the Actions drop-down menu.
Make the required changes on the Clone Protection Policy page.
For information about the fields on the page, see:
- Creating a Protection Policy with an Asynchronous Replication Schedule (Nutanix Disaster Recovery)
- Creating a Protection Policy with a NearSync Replication Schedule (Nutanix Disaster Recovery)
- Creating a Protection Policy with the Synchronous Replication Schedule
Click Save .

Updating a Protection Policy

You can modify an existing protection policy in Prism Central. To update an existing protection policy, perform the following procedure.

Procedure

Log on to the Prism Central web console.
Click the hamburger icon at the top-left corner of the window. Go to Data Protection > Protection Policies in the left pane.

Figure. Protection Policy Configuration: Protection Policies
Click to enlarge
Select the protection policy that you want to update.
Click Update from the Actions drop-down menu.
Make the required changes on the Update Protection Policy page.
For information about the fields on the page, see:
- Creating a Protection Policy with an Asynchronous Replication Schedule (Nutanix Disaster Recovery)
- Creating a Protection Policy with a NearSync Replication Schedule (Nutanix Disaster Recovery)
- Creating a Protection Policy with the Synchronous Replication Schedule
Click Save .

Finding the Protection Policy of a Guest VM

You can use the data protection focus on the VMs page to determine the protection policies to which a guest VM belongs. To determine the protection policy, perform the following procedure.

Procedure

Log on to the Prism Central web console.
Click the hamburger icon at the top-left corner of the window. Go to Virtual Infrastructure > VMs > List in the left pane.
Click Data Protection from the Focus menu at the top-right corner.
The Protection Policy column that is displayed shows the protection policy to which the guest VMs belong.
Figure. Focus
Click to enlarge

Recovery Plan Management

A recovery plan orchestrates the recovery of protected VMs at the recovery AZ. Recovery plans are predefined procedures (runbooks) that use stages to enforce VM power-on sequence. You can also specify the inter-stage delays to recover applications.

When you create, update, or delete a recovery plan, it synchronizes to the recovery AZs and works bidirectionally. For information about how Leap determines the list of AZs for synchronization, see Entity Synchronization Between Paired AZs. After a failover from the primary AZ to a recovery AZ, you can failback to the primary AZ by using the same recovery plan.

Recovery plans are independent of protection policies and do not reference protection policies in their configuration information. Also, they do not create recovery points. While the process of planned failover includes the creation of a recovery point so that the latest data can be used for recovery, unplanned and test failovers rely on the availability of the required recovery points at the recovery AZ. A recovery plan therefore requires the guest VMs in the recovery plan to also be associated with a protection policy.

Adding Guest VMs Individually to a Recovery Plan

You can also add guest VMs individually to a recovery plan from the VMs page, without the use of a VM category. To add VMs individually to a recovery plan, perform the following procedure.

Procedure

Log on to the Prism Central web console.
Click the hamburger icon at the top-left corner of the window. Go to Compute & Storage > VMs in the left pane.

Figure. Virtual Infrastructure: VMs
Click to enlarge
Select the guest VMs that you want to add to a recovery plan.
Click Add to Recovery Plan from the Actions drop-down menu.
Select the recovery plan where you want to add the guest VMs in the Add to Recovery Plan page.

Tip: Click +Create New if you want to create another recovery plan to add the selected guest VM. For more information about creating a recovery plan, see Creating a Recovery Plan (Nutanix Disaster Recovery).
Click Add .
The Update Recovery Plan page appears. Make the required changes to the recovery plan. For information about the various fields and options, see Creating a Recovery Plan (Nutanix Disaster Recovery).

Removing Guest VMs Individually from a Recovery Plan

You can also remove guest VMs individually from a recovery plan. To remove guest VMs individually from a recovery plan, perform the following procedure.

Procedure

Log on to the Prism Central web console.
Click the hamburger icon at the top-left corner of the window. Go to Data Protection > Recovery Plans in the left pane.
Click the hamburger icon at the top-left corner of the window. Go to Data Protection > Recovery Plans in the left pane.
Select the recovery plan from which you want to remove guest VM.
Click Update from the Actions drop-down menu.
The Update Recovery Plan page appears. Make the required changes to the recovery plan. For information about the various fields and options, see Creating a Recovery Plan (Nutanix Disaster Recovery).

Updating a Recovery Plan

You can update an existing recovery plan. To update a recovery plan, perform the following procedure.

Procedure

Log on to the Prism Central web console.
Click the hamburger icon at the top-left corner of the window. Go to Data Protection > Recovery Plans in the left pane.
Select the recovery plan that you want to update.
Click Update from the Actions drop-down menu.
The Update Recovery Plan dialog box appears. Make the required changes to the recovery plan. For information about the various fields and options, see Creating a Recovery Plan (Nutanix Disaster Recovery).

Validating a Recovery Plan

You can validate a recovery plan from the recovery AZ. Recovery plan validation does not perform a failover like the test failover does, but reports warnings and errors. To validate a recovery plan, perform the following procedure.

Procedure

Log on to the Prism Central web console.
Click the hamburger icon at the top-left corner of the window. Go to Data Protection > Recovery Plans in the left pane.
Select the recovery plan that you want to validate.
Click Validate from the Actions drop-down menu.
In the Validate Recovery Plan page, do the following.
1. In Primary Location , select the primary location.
2. In Recovery Location , select the recovery location.
3. Click Proceed .
The validation process lists any warnings and errors.
Click Back .
A summary of the validation is displayed. You can close the dialog box.
To return to the detailed results of the validation, click the link in the Validation Errors column.
The selected recovery plan is validated for its correct configuration. The updated recovery plan starts synchronizing to the recovery Prism Central.

Protection and Manual DR (Nutanix Disaster Recovery)

Manual data protection involves manually creating recovery points, replicating recovery points, and recovering the guest VMs at the recovery AZ. You can also automate some of these tasks. For example, the last step—that of manually recovering guest VMs at the recovery AZ—can be performed by a recovery plan while the underlying recovery point creation and replication can be performed by protection policies. Conversely, you can configure protection policies to automate recovery point creation and replication and then recover guest VMs manually at the recovery AZ.

Creating Recovery Points Manually (Out-of-Band Snapshots)

About this task

To create recovery points manually, do the following.

Procedure

Log on to the Prism Central web console.
Click the hamburger icon at the top-left corner of the window. Go to Compute & Storage > VMs > List in the left pane.
Select the guest VMs for which you want to create a recovery point.
Click Create Recovery Point from the Actions drop-down menu.
To verify that the recovery point is created, click the name of the VM, click the Recovery Points tab, and verify that a recovery point is created.

Replicating Recovery Points Manually

You can manually replicate recovery points only from the AZ (AZ) where the recovery points exist.

About this task

To replicate recovery points manually, do the following.

Procedure

Log on to the Prism Central web console.
Click the hamburger icon at the top-left corner of the window. Go to Compute & Storage > VMs > List in the left pane.
Click the guest VMs whose recovery point you want to replicate, and then click Recovery Points in the left.
The Recovery Points view lists all the recovery points of the VM.
Select the recovery points that you want to replicate.
Click Replicate from the Actions drop-down menu.
In the Replicate dialog box, do these steps.
1. In Recovery Location , select the location where you want to replicate the recovery point.
2. In Target Cluster , select the cluster where you want to replicate the recovery point.
3. Click Replicate Recovery Point .

Manual Recovery of Guest VMs

After manually creating recovery points, and then replicating those recovery points, you can manually recover the guest VMs from those recovery points by either of the following methods.

Note: You can manually recover guest VMs from both manually and automatically created recovery points.

Cloning the guest VM from a recovery point (out-of-place restore): Out-of-place restore enables you to create a guest VM clone (with different UUIDs) from each selected recovery point of the guest VM. The operation creates a copy of the guest VM in the same Nutanix cluster without overwriting the original guest VM. The guest VM clone remain separate from the original guest VM. For example, if you select cloning of a guest VM , a new VM with different UUID is created on the specified AZ.

Reverting the guest VM to an older recovery point (in-place restore): In-place restore enables you to revert the guest VM to its previous recovery point state. The operation recreates the guest VM in the same Nutanix cluster by overwriting the original guest VM. The new guest VM retains the properties like UUIDs, network routing, MAC addresses, hostnames of the original guest VM. For example, if you select reverting a guest VM, a new VM is created on the same AZ with the same properties.

Note: You can manually revert a guest VM protected with synchronous replication using the manually created recovery points (Prism Central) only. Using snapshots (Prism Element), you can only clone a guest VM (out-of-place restore).

Recovering a Guest VM Manually (Clone)

About this task

To recover a guest VM manually by cloning it from a recovery point, do the following.

Note: This method is available as Restore in the previous versions of AOS.

Before you begin

Consider the following limitations before performing cloning operation on guest VMs.

The guest VMs recover without a vNIC if the recovery is performed at the remote AZ.
The guest VMs recover without VM categories.
You must reconfigure Nutanix Guest Tools (NGT) on each recovered guest VM.
For installing and configuring NGT and its requirements and limitations, see Nutanix Guest Tools in the Prism Web Console Guide .

Procedure

Log on to the Prism Central web console.
Click the hamburger icon at the top-left corner of the window. Go to Compute & Storage > VMs > List in the left pane.
Click the guest VM that you want to recover (clone), and then click Recovery Points .
The Recovery Points view lists all the recovery points of the guest VM.

Tip: You can also click the hamburger icon at the top-left corner and go to Data Protection > VM Recovery Points
Select the recovery point from which you want to recover (clone) the guest VM.
If you want to recover (clone) multiple states of the guest VM, select multiple recovery points.
Figure. Select One or More Recovery Points
Click to enlarge
Click Clone (Previously Restore) from the Actions drop-down menu.
In the Clone dialog box, do the following.
1. In the text box provided for specifying a name for the guest VM clone, specify a new name or do nothing to use the automatically generated name.
2. Click Clone .
  The guest VM is cloned from each selected recovery point. The guest VM clones list by the name you specified in step 5.a in VMs > List . The guest VM clones are turned off and you have to start the guest VMs manually.

Recovering a Guest VM Manually (Revert)

About this task

To recover a guest VM manually by reverting it to an older recovery point, do the following.

Before you begin

Before you can perform an in-place restore (revert) of a guest VM, ensure that you meet the following Nutanix Software requirements.

The Nutanix cluster must be running AOS version 6.1 or newer.
Prism Central is running on version pc.2022.1 or newer.

For successful and efficient in-place restore (revert) of the guest VM along with its configuration, refer to the following tables. Each of the following tables describes settings and the possible change scenarios that can fail the revert operation.

Table 1. NGT This table describes the NGT configuration on the original guest VM and the selected recovery point. It describes the scenarios where changes in NGT configuration fail the revert operation or restore the guest VM without NGT configuration.
Entity	Original guest VM	Selected recovery point	Original guest VM after the recovery point (before revert)	Revert operation	Guest VM after revert
Guest VM	NGT configured	NGT configured. The NGT information is the same as that on the original guest VM.	No change to the NGT configuration	Succeeds	Need not reconfigure NGT on the restored guest VM.
	NGT configured	NGT not configured, or the NGT information is different than that on the original guest VM.	NGT configured	Fails because there is a mismatch between NGT information on the original guest VM and the selected recovery point.	Not applicable
	NGT configured	NGT configured	NGT not configured	Succeeds	NGT on the restored guest VM is disabled. You must enable it manually. For enabling NGT, see Nutanix Guest Tools in the Prism Web Console Guide .
	NGT not configured	NGT not configured, or the NGT information is different than that on the original guest VM.	No change to the NGT configuration	Succeeds	Not applicable
	NGT configured	NGT configured but the NGT information available is of an older NGT version.	Newer NGT version configured	Fails because there is a mismatch between NGT information on the original guest VM and the selected recovery point.	Not applicable

Table 2. VM Categories This table describes the VM categories attached with the original guest VM and the selected recovery point. It describes the scenarios where changes in VM categories fail the revert operation or restore the guest VM without VM categories.
Entity	Original guest VM	Selected recovery point	Revert operation	Guest VM after revert
Guest VM	VM category configured (for example, catX:valX)	VM category configured but its information is unidentical (for example, catY:valY)	Succeeds	Retains the VM category of the original guest VM (catX:valX).
Guest VM	VM category not configured.	VM category configured (for example, catY:valY)	Succeeds	Does not retain VM category because the original guest VM did not have VM category configured. You must attach a VM category manually.

Table 3. Virtual Networks This table describes the virtual networks attached with the original guest VM and the selected recovery point. It describes the scenarios where changes in virtual networks fail the revert operation or restore the guest VM without virtual networks.
Entity	Original guest VM	Selected recovery point	Network available during revert operation	Revert operation	Guest VM after revert
Guest VM	Network configured (for example, vLANx)	Network configured (for example, vLANx)	The Nutanix cluster has vLANx configured.	Succeeds	Not applicable
	Network configured (for example, vLANx)	Network configured is different (for example, vLANy)	The Nutanix cluster has both vLANx and vLANy configured.	Succeeds	Retains the network configured on the selected recovery point (vLANy).
	No network configured	Network configured (for example, vLANy)	The Nutanix cluster has vLANy configured.	Succeeds	Not applicable
	No network configured	Network configured (for example, vLANy)	The Nutanix cluster has a diiferent network (for example, vLANx) configured.	Fails	Not applicable

Table 4. vNUMA nodes and vGPU AHV Features This table describes the AHV Features (vNUMA nodes and vGPU) attached with the original guest VM and the selected recovery point. It describes the scenarios where changes in vNUMA nodes and vGPU configuration fail the revert operation or restore the guest VM without vNUMA nodes and vGPU configuration.
Entity	Original guest VM	Selected recovery point	Features available during revert operation	Revert operation	Guest VM after revert
Guest VM	vNUMA nodes and vGPU configured	vNUMA nodes and vGPU configured. The feature information is the same as that on the original guest VM.	The Nutanix cluster vNUMA nodes and vGPU configured	Succeeds	Not applicable
	vNUMA nodes and vGPU configured	vNUMA nodes and vGPU configured. The feature information is different than that on the original guest VM.	The Nutanix cluster vNUMA nodes and vGPU configured	Succeeds	Does not retain vNUMA nodes and vGPU configuration.
	vNUMA nodes and vGPU not configured	vNUMA nodes and vGPU configured	Yes	Succeeds	Retains vNUMA nodes and vGPU configuration. If you encounter missing internal configuration, contact Nutanix Support.
	vNUMA nodes and vGPU not configured	vNUMA nodes and vGPU configured	No	Fails because the Nutanix cluster doesn't support GPU.	Not applicable

Table 5. Role Based Access Control (RBAC) This table describes the user roles supporting in-place restore (revert) of a guest VM.
Entity	Legacy Administrator	Cluster Administrator (Prism Administrator)
Guest VM	Supported	Not Supported

Procedure

Log on to the Prism Central web console.
Click the hamburger icon at the top-left corner of the window. Go to Compute & Storage > VMs > List in the left pane.
Click the guest VM that you want to recover (revert) to a recovery point, and then click Recovery Points .
The Recovery Points view lists all the recovery points of the guest VM.

Tip: You can also click the hamburger icon at the top-left corner and go to Data Protection > VM Recovery Points
Select the recovery point from which you want to recover (revert) the guest VM.

Note: Do not select more than one recovery point. If you select two or more recovery points, you cannot perform Revert operation.
Click Revert from the Actions drop-down menu.

Note: You can see the Revert option only if you have administrator role assigned to your local user or directory user through role mapping. For more information about role mapping, see Controlling User Access (RBAC) in the Nutanix Security Guide .

In the Revert dialog box, verify the recovery point details and then click Revert .

The selected guest VM turns off. It is unregistered from the inventory, updated with files copied from the selected recovery point, and then registered to the inventory. The recovered (reverted) guest VM lists by the name (Revert-Recoverypoint) in Compute & Storage > VMs > List . If there are more than one guest VM by the name (Revert-Recoverypoint) , see the timestamps of the recovered (reverted) guest VMs to identify the correct guest VMs. The recovered (reverted) guest VM is turned off and you have to start the VM manually.
After reverting the guest VM to its previous state, some settings of the original guest VM needs reconfiguration for the recovered guest VMs to work efficiently. The following table describes the settings of the original guest VM and whether or not they need reconfiguration after revert.

Entity Synchronization Between Paired AZs

When paired with each other, AZs (AZs) synchronize disaster recovery (DR) configuration entities. Paired AZs synchronize the following DR configuration entities.

Protection Policies

A protection policy is synchronized whenever you create, update, or delete the protection policy.

Recovery Plans

A recovery plan is synchronized whenever you create, update, or delete the recovery plan. The list of AZs (AZs) to which the on-prem must synchronize a recovery plan is derived from the guest VMs that are included in the recovery plan. The guest VMs used to derive the AZ list are VM categories and individually added guest VMs.

If you specify VM categories in a recovery plan, Leap determines which protection policies use those VM categories, and then synchronizes the recovery plans to the AZs specified in those protection plans.

If you include guest VMs individually (without VM categories) in a recovery plan, Leap uses the recovery points of those guest VMs to determine which protection policies created those recovery points, and then synchronizes the recovery plans to the AZs (AZs) specified in those protection policies. If you create a recovery plan for VM categories or guest VMs that are not associated with a protection policy, Leap cannot determine the AZ list and therefore cannot synchronize the recovery plan. If a recovery plan includes only individually added guest VMs and a protection policy associated with a guest VM has not yet created guest VM recovery points, Leap cannot synchronize the recovery plan to the AZ specified in that protection policy. However, recovery plans are monitored every 15 minutes for the availability of recovery points that can help derive AZ information. When recovery points become available, the paired on-prem AZ derives the AZ by the process described earlier and synchronizes the recovery plan to the AZ.

VM Categories used in Protection Policies and Recovery Plans

A VM category is synchronized when you specify the VM category in a protection policy or recovery plan.

Issues such as a loss of network connectivity between paired AZs or user actions such as unpairing of AZs followed by repairing of those availability zones can affect VM synchronization.

Tip: Nutanix recommends to unprotect all the VMs on the AZ before unpairing it to avoid getting into a state where the entities have stale configurations after repairing of AZs.

If you update guest VMs in either or both AZs before such issues are resolved or before unpaired AZs are paired again, VM synchronization is not possible. Also, during VM synchronization, if a guest VM cannot be synchronized because of an update failure or conflict (for example, you updated the same VM in both AZs during a network connectivity issue), no further VMs are synchronized. Entity synchronization can resume only after you resolve the error or conflict. To resolve a conflict, use the Entity Sync option, which is available in the web console. Force synchronization from the AZ that has the desired configuration. Forced synchronization overwrites conflicting configurations in the paired AZ.

Note: Forced synchronization cannot resolve errors arising from conflicting values in guest VM specifications (for example, the paired AZ already has a VM with the same name).

If you do not update entities before a connectivity issue is resolved or before you pair the AZs again, the synchronization behavior described earlier resumes. Also, pairing previously unpaired AZs trigger an automatic synchronization event. For recommendations to avoid facing such issues, see Entity Synchronization Recommendations (Leap).

Entity Synchronization Recommendations (Leap)

Consider the following recommendations to avoid inconsistencies and the resulting synchronization issues.

During network connectivity issues, do not update entities at both the availability zones (AZs) in a pair. You can safely make updates at any one AZ. After the connectivity issue is resolved, force synchronization from the AZ in which you made updates. Failure to adhere to this recommendation results in synchronization failures.
You can safely create entities at either or both the AZs as long as you do not assign the same name to entities at the two AZs. After the connectivity issue is resolved, force synchronization from the AZ where you created entities.
If one of the AZs becomes unavailable, or if any service in the paired AZ is down perform force synchronization from the paired AZ after the issue is resolved.

Forcing Entity Synchronization (Leap)

Entity synchronization, when forced from an AZ (AZ), overwrites the corresponding entities in paired AZs. Forced synchronization also creates, updates, and removes those entities from paired AZs.

About this task

The AZ (AZ) to which a particular entity is forcefully synchronized depends on which AZ requires the entity (see Entity Synchronization Between Paired AZs). To avoid inadvertently overwriting required entities, ensure to force VM synchronization from the AZ in which the entities have the desired configuration.

If a AZ is paired with two or more AZs (AZs), you cannot select one or more AZs with which to synchronize entities.

To force entity synchronization, do the following.

Procedure

Log on to the Prism Central web console.
Click the settings button (gear icon) at the top-right corner of the window.
Click Entity Sync in the left pane.
In the Entity Sync dialog box, review the message at the top of the dialog box, and then do the following.
1. To review the list of entities that will be synchronized to an AZ , click the number of ENTITIES adjacent to an availability zone.
2. After you review the list of entities, click Back .
Click Sync Entities .

Protection and DR between On-Prem AZ and Xi Cloud Service (Xi Leap)

Xi Leap is essentially an extension of Leap to Xi Cloud Services. Xi Leap protects your guest VMs and orchestrates their disaster recovery (DR) to Xi Cloud Services when events causing service disruption occur at the primary AZ (AZ). For protection of your guest VMs, protection policies with Asynchronous and NearSync replication schedules generate and replicate recovery points to Xi Cloud Services. Recovery plans orchestrate DR from the replicated recovery points to Xi Cloud Services.

Protection policies create a recovery point—and set its expiry time—in every iteration of the specified time period (RPO). For example, the policy creates a recovery point every 1 hour for an RPO schedule of 1 hour. The recovery point expires at its designated expiry time based on the retention policy—see step 3 in Creating a Protection Policy with Asynchronous Replication Schedule (Xi Leap). If there is a prolonged outage at a AZ, the Nutanix cluster retains the last recovery point to ensure you do not lose all the recovery points. For NearSync replication (lightweight snapshot), the Nutanix cluster retains the last full hourly snapshot. During the outage, the Nutanix cluster does not clean up the recovery points due to expiry. When the Nutanix cluster comes online, it cleans up the recovery points that are past expiry immediately.

If a guest VM is removed from a protection policy, Delete all the recovery points associated with the guest VM. If the recovery points are not deleted explicitly, the recovery points adhere to the expiration period set in the protection policy and will continue to incur charges until the expiry. To stop the charges immediately, log on to Xi Cloud Services and delete all of these explicitly.

For High Availability of a guest VM, Leap can enable replication of recovery points to one or more AZs. A protection policy can replicate recovery points to maximum two AZs. One of the two AZs can be in cloud (Xi Cloud Services). For replication to Xi Cloud Services, you must add a replication schedule between the on-prem AZ and Xi Cloud Services. You can set up the on-prem AZ and Xi Cloud Services in the following arrangements.

The replication schedule between an on-prem AZ and Xi Cloud Services enables DR to Xi Cloud Services. To enable performing DR to Xi Cloud Services, you must create a recovery plan. In addition to performing DR from AHV clusters to Xi Cloud Services (only AHV), you can also perform cross-hypervisor disaster recovery (CHDR)—DR from ESXi clusters to Xi Cloud Services.

The protection policies and recovery plans you create or update synchronize continuously between the on-prem AZ and Xi Cloud Services. The reverse synchronization enables you to create or update entities (protection policies, recovery plans, and guest VMs) at either the primary or the recovery AZ.

This section describes protection of your guest VMs and DR from Xi Cloud Services to a Nutanix cluster at the on-prem AZ. In Xi Cloud Services, you can protect your guest VMs and DR to a Nutanix cluster at only one on-prem AZ. For information about protection of your guest VMs and DR to Xi Cloud Services, see Protection and DR between On-Prem AZs (Nutanix Disaster Recovery).

Xi Leap Requirements

The following are the general requirements of Xi Leap. Along with the general requirements, there are specific requirements for protection with the following supported replication schedules.

For information about the on-prem node, disk and Foundation configurations required to support Asynchronous and NearSync replication schedules, see On-Prem Hardware Resource Requirements.
For specific requirements of protection with Asynchronous replication schedule (1 hour or greater RPO), see Asynchronous Replication Requirements (Xi Leap).
For specific requirements of protection with NearSync replication schedule (1–15 minutes RPO), see NearSync Replication Requirements (Xi Leap).

License Requirements

The AOS license required depends on the features that you want to use. For information about the features that are available with an AOS license, see Software Options.

Hypervisor Requirements

The underlying hypervisors required differ in all the supported replication schedules. For more information about underlying hypervisor requirements for the supported replication schedules, see:

Asynchronous Replication Requirements (Xi Leap)
NearSync Replication Requirements (Xi Leap)

Nutanix Software Requirements

Each on-prem AZ (AZ) must have a Leap enabled Prism Central instance. To enable Leap in Prism Central, see Enabling Nutanix Disaster Recovery for On-Prem AZ.
Note: If you are using ESXi, register at least one vCenter Server to Prism Central. You can also register two vCenter Servers, each to a Prism Central at different AZs. If you register both the Prism Central to the single vCenter Server, ensure that each ESXi cluster is part of different datacenter object in vCenter.
The on-prem Prism Central and its registered Nutanix clusters (Prism Element) must be running on the supported AOS versions. For more information about the required versions for the supported replication schedules, see:
- Asynchronous Replication Requirements (Xi Leap)
- NearSync Replication Requirements (Xi Leap)
Tip:
Nutanix supports replications between the all the latest supported LTS and STS released AOS versions. To check the list of the latest supported AOS versions, see KB-5505. To determine if the AOS versions currently running on your clusters are EOL, see the EOL document .

Upgrade the AOS version to the next available supported LTS/STS release. To determine if an upgrade path is supported, check the Upgrade Paths page before you upgrade the AOS.

Note: If both clusters have different AOS versions that are EOL, upgrade the cluster with lower AOS version to match the cluster with higher AOS version and then perform the upgrade to the next supported LTS version.

For example, the clusters are running AOS versions 5.5.x and 5.10.x respectively. Upgrade the cluster on 5.5.x to 5.10.x. After both the clusters are on 5.10.x, proceed to upgrade each cluster to 5.15.x (supported LTS). Once both clusters are on 5.15.x you can upgrade the clusters to 5.20.x or newer.

Nutanix recommends that both the primary and the replication clusters or AZs run the same AOS version.

User Requirements

You must have one of the following roles in Xi Cloud Services.

User admin
Prism Central admin
Prism Self Service admin
Xi admin

Firewall Port Requirements

To allow two-way replication between an on-prem Nutanix cluster and and Xi Cloud Services, you must enable certain ports in your external firewall. To know about the required ports, see Disaster Recovery - Leap in Port Reference.

Networking Requirements

Requirements for static IP address preservation after failover

Both the primary and the recovery Nutanix clusters run AOS 5.11 or newer.
The protected guest VMs have Nutanix Guest Tools (NGT) version 1.5 or newer installed.
For information about installing NGT, see Nutanix Guest Tools in Prism Web Console Guide .
The protected guest VMs have at least one empty CD-ROM slot.
The empty CD-ROM is required for mounting NGT at the recovery AZ.
The protected guest VMs have NetworkManager command-line tool (nmcli) version 0.9.10.0 or newer installed.
Also, the NetworkManager must manage the networks on Linux VMs. To enable NetworkManager on a Linux VM, in the interface configuration file, set the value of the NM_CONTROLLED field to yes . After setting the field, restart the network service on the VM.
Tip: In CentOS, the interface configuration file is /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-eth0 .

Requirements for static IP address mapping of guest VMs between source and target virtual networks

You can explicitly define IP addresses for protected guest VMs that have static IP addresses at the primary AZ. On recovery, such guest VMs retain the explicitly defined IP address. To map static IP addresses of guest VMs between source and target virtual networks, ensure that:

Both the primary and the recovery Nutanix clusters run AOS 5.17 or newer.
The protected guest VMs have static IP addresses at the primary AZ.
The protected guest VMs have Nutanix Guest Tools (NGT) version 1.5 or newer installed.
For information about installing NGT, see Nutanix Guest Tools in Prism Web Console Guide .
The protected guest VMs have at least one empty CD-ROM slot.
The empty CD-ROM is required for mounting NGT at the recovery AZ.
The protected guest VMs can reach the Controller VM from both the AZs.
The recovery plan selected for failover has VM-level IP address mapping configured.

Virtual Network Design Requirements

You can design the virtual subnets that you plan to use for DR to the recovery AZ so that they can accommodate the guest VMs running in the source virtual network.

To use a virtual network as a recovery virtual network, ensure that the virtual network meets the following requirements.
- The network prefix is the same as the network prefix of the source virtual network. For example, if the source network address is 192.0.2.0/24, the network prefix of the recovery virtual network must also be 24.
- The gateway IP address is the same as the gateway IP address in the source network. For example, if the gateway IP address in the source virtual network 192.0.2.0/24 is 192.0.2.10, the last octet of the gateway IP address in the recovery virtual network must also be 10.
To use a single Nutanix cluster as a target for DR from multiple primary Nutanix clusters, ensure that the number of virtual networks on the recovery cluster is equal to the sum of the number of virtual networks on the individual primary Nutanix clusters. For example, if there are two primary Nutanix clusters, with one cluster having m networks and the other cluster having n networks, ensure that the recovery cluster has m + n networks. Such a design ensures that all recovered VMs attach to a network.
After the recovery of guest VMs to Xi Cloud Services, ensure that the router in your primary AZ stops advertising the subnet that hosted the guest VMs.
The protected guest VMs and Prism Central VM must be on different networks.
If protected guest VMs and Prism Central VM are on the same network, the Prism Central VM becomes inaccessible when the route to the network is removed after failover.
Xi Cloud Services supports the following third-party VPN gateway solutions.
- CheckPoint
- Cisco ASA
- PaloAlto
  Note: If you are using the Palo Alto VPN gateway solution, set the MTU value to 1356 in the Tunnel Interface settings. The replication fails for the default MTU value ( 1427 ).
- Juniper SRX
- Fortinet
- SonicWall
- VyOS

Additional Requirements

Both the primary and recovery Nutanix clusters must have an external IP address.
Both the primary and recovery Prism Centrals and Nutanix clusters must have a data services IP address.
The Nutanix cluster that hosts the Prism Centrals must meet the following requirements.
- The Nutanix cluster must be registered to the Prism Central instance.
- The Nutanix cluster must have an iSCSI data services IP address configured on it.
- The Nutanix cluster must also have sufficient memory to support a hot add of memory to all Prism Central nodes when you enable Leap. A small Prism Central instance (4 vCPUs, 16 GB memory) requires a hot add of 4 GB, and a large Prism Central instance (8 vCPUs, 32 GB memory) requires a hot add of 8 GB. If you enable Nutanix Flow, each Prism Central instance requires an extra hot-add of 1 GB.
Each node in a scaled-out Prism Central instance must have a minimum of 4 vCPUs and 16 GB memory.
For more information about the scaled-out deployments of a Prism Central, see Nutanix Disaster Recovery Terminology.
The protected guest VMs must have Nutanix VM mobility drivers installed.
Nutanix VM mobility drivers are required for accessing the guest VMs after failover. Without Nutanix VM mobility drivers, the guest VMs become inaccessible after a failover.

Xi Leap Limitations

Consider the following general limitations before configuring protection and disaster recovery (DR) with Xi Leap. Along with the general limitations, there are specific limitations of protection with the following supported replication schedules.

For specific limitations of protection with Asynchronous replication schedule (1 hour or greater RPO), see Asynchronous Replication Limitations (Xi Leap).
For specific limitations of protection with NearSync replication schedule (1–15 minutes RPO), see NearSync Replication Limitations (Xi Leap).

Virtual Machine Limitations

You cannot start or replicate the following guest VMs at Xi Cloud Services.
- VMs configured with a GPU resource.
- VMs configured with four or more vNUMA sockets.
- VMs configured with more than 24 vCPUs.
- VMs configured with more than 128 GB memory.

You cannot deploy witness VMs.
You cannot protect multiple guest VMs that use disk sharing (for example, multi-writer sharing, Microsoft Failover Clusters, Oracle RAC).
You cannot protect VMware fault tolerance enabled guest VMs.
You cannot recover vGPU console enabled guest VMs efficiently.
When you perform DR of vGPU console-enabled guest VMs, the VMs recover with the default VGA console (without any alert) instead of vGPU console. The guest VMs fail to recover when you perform cross-hypervisor disaster recovery (CHDR).
You cannot recover guest VMs with vGPU.
However, you can manually restore guest VMs with vGPU.
You cannot configure NICs for a guest VM across both the virtual private clouds (VPC).
You can configure NICs for a guest VM associated with either production or test VPC.

Volume Groups Limitation

You cannot protect volume groups.

Network Segmentation Limitation

You cannot apply network segmentation for management traffic (any traffic not on the backplane network) in Xi Leap.

Virtual Network Limitations

Although there is no limit to the number of VLANs that you can create, only the first 500 VLANs list in drop-down of Network Settings while creating a recovery plan. For more information about VLANs in the recovery plan, see Nutanix Virtual Networks.

Xi Leap Configuration Maximums

For the maximum number of entities you can configure with different replication schedules and perform failover (disaster recovery), see Nutanix Configuration Maximums. The limits have been tested for Xi Leap production deployments. Nutanix does not guarantee the system to be able to operate beyond these limits.

Tip: Upgrade your NCC version to 3.10.1 to get configuration alerts.

Xi Leap Recommendations

Nutanix recommends the following best practices for configuring protection and disaster recovery (DR) with Xi Leap.

General Recommendations

Create all entities (protection policies, recovery plans, and VM categories) at the primary AZ (AZ).
Upgrade Prism Central before upgrading the Nutanix clusters (Prism Elements) registered to it.

Recommendation for Migrating Protection Domains to Protection Policies

You can protect a guest VM either with legacy DR solution (protection domain-based) or with Leap. To protect a legacy DR-protected guest VM with Leap, you must migrate the guest VM from protection domain to a protection policy. During the migration, do not delete the guest VM snapshots in the protection domain. Nutanix recommends keeping the guest VM snapshots in the protection domain until the first recovery point for the guest VM is available on Prism Central. For more information, see Migrating Guest VMs from a Protection Domain to a Protection Policy.

Recommendation for Virtual Networks

Map the networks while creating a recovery plan in Prism Central.
Recovery plans do not support overlapping subnets in a network-mapping configuration. Do not create virtual networks that have the same name or overlapping IP address ranges.

Xi Leap Service-Level Agreements (SLAs)

Xi Leap is essentially an extension of Leap to Xi Cloud Services. Xi Leap enables protection of your guest VMs and disaster recovery (DR) to Xi Cloud Services. With reverse synchronization, Xi Leap can protect you guest VMs and enable DR from Xi Cloud Services to a Nutanix cluster at an on-prem AZ (AZ). A Nutanix cluster is essentially an AHV or an ESXi cluster running AOS. In addition to performing DR from AHV clusters to Xi Cloud Services (only AHV), you can also perform cross-hypervisor disaster recovery (CHDR)—DR from ESXi clusters to Xi Cloud Services.

You can protect your guest VMs with the following replication schedules.

Asynchronous (1 hour or greater RPO). For information about protection with Asynchronous replication in Xi Leap, see Protection with Asynchronous Replication and DR (Xi Leap).
NearSync (1–15 minute RPO). For information about protection with NearSync replication in Xi Leap, see Protection with NearSync Replication and DR (Xi Leap).

Xi Leap Views

The disaster recovery views enable you to perform CRUD options on the following types of Leap VMs.

Configured entities (for example, AZs, protection policies, and recovery plans)
Created entities (for example, VMs, and recovery points)

Some views available in the Xi Cloud Services differ from the corresponding view in on-prem Prism Central. For example, the option to connect to an AZ is on the AZs page in an on-prem Prism Central, but not on the AZs page in Xi Cloud Services. However, the views of both user interfaces are largely the same. This chapter describes the views of Xi Cloud Services.

AZs View in Xi Cloud Services

The AZs view lists all of your paired AZs.

The following figure is a sample view, and the tables describe the fields and the actions that you can perform in this view.

Table 1. AZs View Fields
Field	Description
Name	Name of the AZ.
Region	Region to which the AZ belongs.
Type	Type of AZ. AZs in Xi Cloud Services are shown as being of type Xi. AZs that are backed by on-prem Prism Central instances are shown to be of type physical. The AZ that you are logged in to is shown as a local AZ.
Connectivity Status	Status of connectivity between the local AZ and the paired AZ.

Table 2. Workflows Available in the AZs View
Workflow	Description
Connect to AZ (on-prem Prism Central only)	Connect to an on-prem Prism Central or to a Xi Cloud Services for data replication.

Table 3. Actions Available in the Actions Menu
Action	Description
Disconnect	Disconnect the remote AZ. When you disconnect an availability zone, the pairing is removed.

Protection Policies View in Xi Cloud Services

The Protection Policies view lists all of configured protection policies from all AZs.

The following figure is a sample view, and the tables describe the fields and the actions that you can perform in this view.

Table 1. Protection Policies View Fields
Field	Description
Name	Name of the protection policy.
Primary Location	Replication source AZ for the protection policy.
Recovery Location	Replication target AZ for the protection policy.
RPO	Recovery point objective for the protection policy.
Remote Retention	Number of retention points at the remote AZ.
Local Retention	Number of retention points at the local AZ.

Table 2. Workflows Available in the Protection Policies View
Workflow	Description
Create protection policy	Create a protection policy.

Table 3. Actions Available in the Actions Menu
Action	Description
Update	Update the protection policy.
Clone	Clone the protection policy.
Delete	Delete the protection policy.

Recovery Plans View in Xi Cloud Services

The Recovery Plans view lists all of configured recovery plans from all AZs.

The following figure is a sample view, and the tables describe the fields and the actions that you can perform in this view.

Table 1. Recovery Plans View Fields
Field	Description
Name	Name of the recovery plan.
Source	Replication source AZ for the recovery plan.
Destination	Replication target AZ for the recovery plan.
Entities	Sum of the following VMs: Number of local, live VMs that are specified in the recovery plan. Number of remote VMs that the recovery plan can recover at this AZ.
Last Validation Status	Status of the most recent validation of the recovery plan.
Last Test Status	Status of the most recent test performed on the recovery plan.

Table 2. Workflows Available in the Recovery Plans View
Workflow	Description
Create Recovery Plan	Create a recovery plan.

Table 3. Actions Available in the Actions Menu
Action	Description
Validate	Validates the recovery plan to ensure that the VMs in the recovery plan have a valid configuration and can be recovered.
Test	Test the recovery plan.
Update	Update the recovery plan.
Failover	Perform a failover.
Delete	Delete the recovery plan.

Dashboard Widgets in Xi Cloud Services

The Xi Cloud Services dashboard includes widgets that display the statuses of configured protection policies and recovery plans. If you have not configured these VMs, the widgets display a summary of the steps required to get started with Leap.

To view these widgets, click the Dashboard tab.

The following figure is a sample view of the dashboard widgets.

Enabling Leap for On-Prem AZ

To perform disaster recovery (DR) from Xi Cloud Services to a Nutanix cluster at an on-prem AZ (AZ), enable Leap at the on-prem AZ (Prism Central) only. You need not enable Leap in the Xi Cloud Services portal; Xi Cloud Services does that by default for you. Without enabling Leap, you can configure protection policies and recovery plans that synchronize to the on-prem AZ but you cannot perform failover and failback operations.

To enable Leap at the on-prem AZ, see Enabling Nutanix Disaster Recovery for On-Prem AZ.

Xi Leap Environment Setup

You can set up a secure environment to enable replication between an on-prem AZ and Xi Cloud Services with virtual private network (VPN). To configure the required environment, perform the following steps.

Pair your on-prem AZ (AZ) with Xi Cloud Services. For more information about pairing, see Pairing AZs (Xi Leap).
Set up an on-prem VPN solution.
Enable VPN on the production virtual private cloud by using the Xi Cloud Services portal.
Set up a VPN client as a VM in Xi Cloud Services to enable connectivity to the applications that have failed over to the Xi Cloud Services.
Configure policy-based routing (PBR) rules for the VPN to successfully work with the Xi Cloud Services. If you have a firewall in the Xi Cloud Services and a floating IP address is assigned to the firewall, create a PBR policy in the Xi Cloud Services to configure the firewall as the gateway to the Internet. For example, specify 10.0.0.2/32 (private IP address of the firewall) in the Subnet IP . For more information, see Policy Configuration in Xi Infrastructure Service Administration Guide .
Configure the custom DNS in your virtual private cloud in the Xi Cloud Services. For more information, see Virtual Private Cloud Management in Xi Infrastructure Service Administration Guide .

Note: For more information about Xi Cloud Services, see Xi Infrastructure Service Administration Guide.

Pairing AZs (Xi Leap)

To perform disaster recovery (DR) from Xi Cloud Services to a Nutanix cluster at an on-prem AZ (AZ), pair the on-prem AZ (Prism Central) only to Xi Cloud Services. For reverse synchronization, you need not pair again from Xi Cloud Services portal; Xi Cloud Services captures the paring configuration from the on-prem AZ that pairs Xi Cloud Services.

To pair an on-prem AZ with Xi Cloud Services, see Pairing AZs (Nutanix Disaster Recovery).

VPN Configuration (On-prem and Xi Cloud Services)

Xi Cloud Services enables you to set up a secure VPN connection between your on-prem AZs and Xi Cloud Services to enable end-to-end disaster recovery services of Leap. A VPN solution between your on-prem AZ and Xi Cloud Services enables secure communication between your on-prem Prism Central instance and the production virtual private cloud (VPC) in Xi Cloud Services. If your workload fails over to Xi Cloud Services, the communication between the on-prem resources and failed over resources in Xi Cloud Services takes place over an IPSec tunnel established by the VPN solution.

Note: Set up the VPN connection before data replication begins.

You can connect multiple on-prem AZs to Xi Cloud Services. If you have multiple remote AZs, you can set up secure VPN connectivity between each of your remote AZs and Xi Cloud Services. With this configuration, you do not need to force the traffic from your remote AZ through your main AZ to Xi Cloud Services.

A VPN solution to connect to Xi Cloud Services includes a VPN gateway appliance in the Xi Cloud and a VPN gateway appliance (remote peer VPN appliance) in your on-prem AZ. A VPN gateway appliance learns about the local routes, establishes an IPSec tunnel with its remote peer, exchanges routes with its peer, and directs network traffic through the VPN tunnel.

After you complete the VPN configuration in the Xi Cloud Services portal, Nutanix creates a virtual VPN gateway appliance in the Xi Cloud. To set up a remote peer VPN gateway appliance in your on-prem AZ, you can either use the On Prem - Nutanix VPN solution (provided by Nutanix) or use a third-party VPN solution:

On Prem - Nutanix (recommended): If you select this option, Nutanix creates a VPN gateway VM (remote peer appliance) on your on-prem cluster, connects the appliance to your network, and establishes an IPsec tunnel with the VPN gateway that is running in the Xi Cloud.
The Nutanix VPN controller runs as a service in the Xi Cloud and on the on-prem Nutanix cluster and is responsible for the creation, setup, and lifecycle maintenance of the VPN gateway appliance (in the Xi Cloud and on-prem). The VPN controller deploys the virtual VPN gateway appliance in the Xi Cloud after you complete the VPN configuration in the Xi Cloud Services portal. The on-prem VPN controller deploys the virtual VPN gateway appliance on the on-prem cluster in the subnet you specify when you configure a VPN gateway in the Xi Cloud Services portal.

The virtual VPN gateway appliance in the Xi Cloud and VPN gateway VM (peer appliance) in your on-prem cluster each consume 1 physical core, 4 GB RAM, and 10 GB storage.
On Prem - Third Party : If you select this option, you must manually set up a VPN solution as an on-prem VPN gateway (peer appliance) that can establish an IPsec tunnel with the VPN gateway VM in the Xi Cloud. The on-prem VPN gateway (peer appliance) can be a virtual or hardware appliance. See On-Prem - Third-Party VPN Solution for a list of supported third-party VPN solutions.

VPN Configuration Entities

To set up a secure VPN connection between your on-prem AZs and Xi Cloud Services, configure the following entities in the Xi Cloud Services portal:

VPN Gateway : Represents the gateway of your VPN appliances.
VPN gateways are of the following types:
- Xi Gateway : Represents the Xi VPN gateway appliance
- On Prem - Nutanix Gateway : Represents the VPN gateway appliance at your on-prem AZ if you are using the on-prem Nutanix VPN solution.
- On Prem - Third Party Gateway : Represents the VPN gateway appliance at your on-prem AZ if you are using your own VPN solution (provided by a third-party vendor).
VPN Connection : Represents the VPN IPSec tunnel established between a VPN gateway in the Xi Cloud and VPN gateway in your on-prem AZ. When you create a VPN connection, you select a Xi gateway and on-prem gateway between which you want to create the VPN connection.

You configure a VPN gateway in the Xi Cloud and at each of the on-prem AZs you want to connect to the Xi Cloud. You then configure a VPN connection between a VPN gateway in the Xi Cloud and VPN gateway in your on-prem AZ.

Single-AZ Connection

If you want to connect only one on-prem AZ to the Xi Cloud, configure the following entities in the Xi Cloud Services portal:

One Xi gateway to represent the Xi VPN gateway appliance
One on-prem gateway (On-prem - Nutanix Gateway or on-prem - third-party Gateway) to represent the VPN gateway appliance at your on-prem AZ
One VPN connection to connect the two VPN gateways

Multi-AZ Connection

If you want to connect multiple on-prem AZs to the Xi Cloud, configure the following entities in the Xi Cloud Services portal:

One Xi gateway to represent the Xi VPN gateway appliance
On-prem gateways (On-prem - Nutanix Gateway or on-prem - third-party Gateway) for each on-prem AZ
VPN connections to connect the Xi gateway and the on-prem gateway at each on-prem AZ

For example, if you want to connect two on-prem AZs to the Xi Cloud, configure the following:

One Xi gateway
Two on-prem gateways for the two on-prem AZs
Two VPN connections

One Xi VPN gateway provides 1 Gbps of aggregate bandwidth for IPSec traffic. Therefore, connect only as many on-prem VPN gateways to one Xi VPN gateway to accommodate 1 Gbps of aggregate bandwidth.

If you require an aggregate bandwidth of more than 1 Gbps, configure multiple Xi VPN gateways.

On-Prem - Nutanix VPN Solution

You can use the on-prem - Nutanix VPN solution to set up VPN between your on-prem AZ and Xi Cloud Services. If you select this option, you are using an end-to-end VPN solution provided by Nutanix and you do not need to use your own VPN solution to connect to Xi Cloud Services.

After you complete the VPN configuration in the Xi Cloud Services portal, Nutanix creates a virtual VPN gateway appliance in the Xi Cloud. The On Prem - Nutanix VPN solution creates a VPN gateway VM (remote peer appliance) on your on-prem cluster, connects the appliance to your network, and establishes an IPsec tunnel with the VPN gateway VM that is running in the Xi Cloud.

Following is the workflow if you choose the On Prem - Nutanix VPN solution to set up a VPN connection between your on-prem AZ and Xi Cloud Services.

Create one or more Xi VPN gateways.
The VPN controller running in Xi Cloud Services creates a VPN gateway VM in the Xi Cloud. The Xi VPN gateway VM runs in your (tenant) overlay network.
Create one or more on-prem VPN gateways.
Create a VPN gateway for each on-prem AZ that you want to connect to the Xi Cloud.
Create one or more VPN connections.
Create a VPN connection between each on-prem AZ (on-prem VPN gateway) and Xi Cloud (Xi gateway).
The VPN controller creates a VPN gateway VM on the on-prem cluster in the subnet you specify when you create an on-prem VPN gateway. The VPN gateway VM becomes the peer appliance to the VPN gateway VM in the Xi Cloud.
Both the VPN appliances are now configured, and the appliances now proceed to perform the following:
1. An on-prem router communicates the on-prem routes to the on-prem VPN gateway by using iBGP or OSPF.
2. The Xi VPN controller communicates the Xi subnets to the Xi VPN gateway VM.
3. The on-prem VPN gateway VM then establishes a VPN IPsec tunnel with the Xi VPN gateway VM. Both appliances establish an eBGP peering session over the IPsec tunnel and exchange routes.
4. The on-prem VPN gateway VM publishes the Xi subnet routes to the on-prem router by using iBGP or OSPF.

Nutanix VPN Solution Requirements

In your on-prem AZ, ensure the following before you configure VPN on Xi Cloud Services:

The Prism Central instance and cluster are running AOS 5.11 or newer for AHV and AOS 5.19 or newer for ESXi.
A router with iBGP, OSPF, or Static support to communicate the on-prem routes to the on-prem VPN gateway VM.
Depending on whether you are using iBGP or OSPF, ensure that you have one of the following:
- Peer IP (for iBGP): The IP address of the on-prem router to exchange routes with the VPN gateway VM.
- Area ID (for OSPF): The OSPF area ID for the VPN gateway in the IP address format.
Determine the following details for the deployment of the on-prem VPN gateway VM.
- Subnet UUID : The UUID of the subnet of the on-prem cluster in which you want to install the on-prem VPN gateway VM. Log on to your on-prem Prism Central web console to determine the UUID of the subnet.
- Public IP address of the VPN Gateway Device : A public WAN IP address that you want the on-prem gateway to use to communicate with the Xi VPN gateway appliance.
- VPN VM IP Address : A static IP address that you want to allocate to the on-prem VPN gateway VM.
- IP Prefix Length : The subnet mask in CIDR format of the subnet on which you want to install the on-prem VPN gateway VM.
- Default Gateway IP : The gateway IP address for the on-prem VPN gateway appliance.
- On Prem Gateway ASN : ASN must not be the same as any of your on-prem BGP ASNs. If you already have a BGP environment in your on-prem AZ, the customer gateway is the ASN for your organization. If you do not have a BGP environment in your on-prem AZ, you can choose any number. For example, you can choose a number in the 65000 range.

Firewall Port Requirements for On-Prem AZ

Configure rules for ports in your on-prem firewall depending on your deployment scenario.

On-Prem Behind a Network Address Translation or Firewall Device

In this scenario, the IPSec tunnel terminates behind a network address translation (NAT) or firewall device. For NAT to work, open UDP ports 500 and 4500 in both directions. Ports 1024–1034 are ephemeral ports used by the CVMs.

Enable the on-prem VPN gateway to allow the traffic according to the rules described in the Port Rules table.

IPSec Terminates on the Firewall Device

In this scenario, you do not need to open the ports for NAT (500 and 4500), but enable the on-prem VPN gateway to allow the traffic according to the rules described in the Port Rules table.

In the following table, PC subnet refers to the subnet where your on-prem Prism Central is running. The Xi infrastructure load balancer route is where the traffic for Xi CVMs and PC is located. You receive this information when you begin using Xi Cloud Services.

Table 1. Port Rules
Source address	Destination address	Source port	Destination port
PC subnet	Load balancer route advertised	Any	1024–1034
Xi infrastructure load balancer route	PC and CVM subnet	Any	2020 2009 9440
The following port requirements are applicable only if you are using the Nutanix VPN solution.
Nutanix VPN VM	8.8.8.8 and 8.8.4.4 IP addresses of the DNS server	VPN VM	DNS UDP port 53
Nutanix VPN VM	time.google.com, 0.pool.ntp.org, 1.pool.ntp.org, 2.pool.ntp.org of the NTP server	VPN VM	NTP UDP port 123
Nutanix VPN VM	ICMP ping to NTP servers	NA	NA
CVM IP address in AHV clusters	HTTPS request to the Internet	AHV hosts	HTTPS port 443
CVM IP address in ESXi clusters	HTTPS and FTP requests to the Internet	ESXi hosts	HTTPS port 443 and FTP 21

Creating a Xi VPN Gateway

Create a VPN gateway to represent the Xi VPN gateway appliance.

About this task

Perform the following to create a Xi VPN gateway.

Procedure

In the Xi Cloud Services portal, go to Explore -> Networking -> VPN Gateways .
Click Create VPN Gateway .

Figure. Create a Xi Gateway Click to enlarge

The Create VPN Gateway window appears.
Do the following in the indicated fields.
1. Name: Enter a name for the VPN gateway.
2. VPC: Select the production VPC.
3. Type: Select Xi Gateway.
4. Routing Protocol : Select eBGP or Static to set up a routing protocol between the Xi and on-prem gateways.
5. ( eBGP only): Select this option if you want to set up the eBGP routing protocol between the Xi and on-prem gateways. Do the following in the indicated fields.
  - In the ASN field, set an ASN for the Xi gateway. Ensure that the Xi gateway ASN is different from that on-prem gateway ASN.
  - In the eBGP Password field, set up a password for the eBGP session that is established between the on-prem VPN gateway and Xi VPN gateway. The eBGP password can be any string, preferably alphanumeric.
6. ( Static only) If you select this option, manually set up static routes between the Xi and on-prem gateways.
  
  For more information, see Adding a Static Route in Xi Infrastructure Service Administration Guide .
Click Save .
The Xi gateway you create is displayed in the VPN Gateways page.

Creating an On-Prem VPN Gateway (Nutanix)

Create a VPN gateway to represent the on-prem VPN gateway appliance.

About this task

Perform the following to create an on-prem VPN gateway.

Procedure

In the Xi Cloud Services portal, go to Explore -> Networking -> VPN Gateways .
Click Create VPN Gateway .

Figure. Create a on-prem Gateway Click to enlarge

The Create VPN Gateway window appears.
Do the following in the indicated fields.
1. Name : Enter a name for the VPN gateway.
2. Type : Select On Prem - Nutanix .
3. Automatically add route in PC and PE CVMs to enable replication : Select this option to automatically enable traffic between the on-prem CVMs and CVMs in Xi Cloud Services. If you select this option, a route to the CVMs in Xi Cloud Services is added with the on-prem VPN gateway as the next-hop. Therefore, even if you choose to have static routes between your on-prem router and the on-prem gateway, you do not need to manually add those static routes (see step g).
  
  A route to Xi CVMs is added with the on-prem VPN gateway as the next-hop.
  
  Note: This option is only for the CVM-to-CVM (on-prem CVM and Xi Cloud CVMs) traffic.
4. Under Routing Protocol (between Xi Gateway and On Prem Nutanix Gateway) , do the following to set up the eBGP routing protocol between the Xi and on-prem gateways:
  - In the ASN field, enter the ASN for your on-prem gateway. If you do not have a BGP environment in your on-prem AZ, you can choose any number. For example, you can choose a number in the 65000 range. Ensure that the Xi gateway ASN and on-prem gateway ASN are not the same.
  - In the eBGP Password field, enter the same eBGP password as the Xi gateway.
5. Subnet UUID : Enter the UUID of the subnet of the on-prem cluster in which you want to install the on-prem VPN gateway VM. Log on to your on-prem Prism Central web console to determine the UUID of the subnet.
6. Under IP Address Information , do the following in the indicated fields:
  - Public IP Address of the On Premises VPN Gateway Device : Enter a public WAN IP address for the on-prem VPN gateway VM.
  - VPN VM IP Address : Enter a static IP address that you want to allocate to the on-prem VPN gateway VM.
  - IP Prefix Length : Enter the subnet mask of mask length 24 of the subnet on which you want to install the on-prem VPN gateway VM.
  - Default Gateway IP : Enter the gateway IP address of the subnet on which you want to install the on-prem VPN gateway VM.
7. Under Routing Protocol Configuration , do the following in the indicated fields:
  - In the Routing Protocol drop-down list, select the dynamic routing protocol ( OSPF , iBGP , or Static ) to set up the routing protocol between the on-prem router and on-prem gateway.
  - ( Static only) If you select Static , manually add these routes in Xi Cloud Services.
    For more information, see Adding a Static Route in Xi Infrastructure Service Administration Guide .
    
    Note: You do not need to add static routes for CVM-to-CVM traffic (see step c).
  - ( OSPF only) If you select OSPF , in the Area ID field, type the OSPF area ID for the VPN gateway in the IP address format. In the Password Type field, select MD5 and type a password for the OSPF session.
  - ( iBGP only) If you select iBGP , in the Peer IP field, type the IP address of the on-prem router to exchange routes with the VPN gateway VM. In the Password field, type the password for the iBGP session.
Click Save .
The on-prem gateway you create is displayed in the VPN Gateways page.

Creating a VPN Connection

Create a VPN connection to establish a VPN IPSec tunnel between a VPN gateway in the Xi Cloud and VPN gateway in your on-prem AZ. Select the Xi gateway and on-prem gateway between whom you want to create the VPN connection.

About this task

Perform the following to create a VPN connection.

Procedure

In the Xi Cloud Services portal, go to Explore -> Networking -> VPN Connections .
Click Create VPN Connection .

Figure. Create a VPN Connection Click to enlarge

The Create VPN Connection window appears.
Do the following in the indicated fields:
1. Name : Enter a name for the VPN connection.
2. Description : Enter a description for the VPN connection.
3. IPSec Secret . Enter an alphanumeric string as the IPSec string for the VPN connection.
4. Xi Gateway : Select the Xi gateway for which you want to create this VPN connection.
5. On Premises Gateway : Select the on-prem gateway for which you want to create this VPN connection.
6. Dynamic Route Priority : This is not a mandatory field. Set this field if you have multiple routes to the same destination. For example, consider you have VPN connection 1 and VPN connection 2 and you want VPN connection 1 to take precedence over VPN connection 2, set the priority for VPN connection 1 higher than VPN connection 2. Higher the priority number, higher is the precedence of that connection. You can set a priority number from 10 through 1000.
  See the Routes Precedence section in Routes Management in Xi Infrastructure Service Administration Guide for more information.
Click Save .
The VPN connection you create is displayed in the VPN Connections page.

On-Prem - Third-Party VPN Solution

You can use your own VPN solution to connect your on-prem AZ to Xi Cloud Services. If you select this option, you must manually set up a VPN solution by using a supported third-party VPN solution as an on-prem VPN gateway (peer appliance) that can establish an IPsec tunnel with the VPN gateway VM in the Xi Cloud.

Following is the workflow if you want to use a third-party VPN solution to set up a VPN connection between your on-prem AZ and Xi Cloud Services.

Create one or more Xi VPN gateways.
The VPN controller running in Xi Cloud Services creates a VPN gateway VM in the Xi Cloud. The Xi VPN gateway VM runs in your (tenant) overlay network.
Create one or more on-prem VPN gateways.
Create a VPN gateway for each on-prem AZ that you want to connect to the Xi Cloud.
Create one or more VPN connections.
Create a VPN connection to create an IPSec tunnel between each on-prem AZ (on-prem VPN gateway) and Xi Cloud (Xi gateway).
Configure a peer VPN gateway appliance (hardware or virtual) in your on-prem AZ. Depending upon your VPN solution, you can download detailed instructions about how to configure your on-prem VPN gateway appliance. For more information, see Downloading the On-Prem VPN Appliance Configuration.
Xi Cloud Services supports the following third-party VPN gateway solutions.
- CheckPoint
- Cisco ASA
- PaloAlto
  Note: If you are using the Palo Alto VPN gateway solution, set the MTU value to 1356 in the Tunnel Interface settings. The replication fails for the default MTU value (1427).
- Juniper SRX
- Fortinet
- SonicWall
- VyOS

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Storage and Backups-Nutanix

Nutanix Disaster Recovery Guide

Disaster Recovery (Formerly Leap) pc.2022.6

Nutanix Disaster Recovery Overview

Nutanix Disaster Recovery Terminology

Availability Zone (AZ)

On-Prem Availability Zone

Xi Cloud Services

Primary Availability Zone

Recovery Availability Zone

Nutanix Cluster

Prism Element

Prism Central

Virtual Private Cloud (VPC)

Source Virtual Network

Recovery Virtual Network

Network Mapping

Category

Recovery Point

Recoverable Entity

Protection Policy

Recovery Plan

Recovery Point Objective (RPO)

Recovery Time Objective (RTO)

Nutanix Disaster Recovery Solutions

Nutanix Disaster Recovery Deployment Workflow

Procedure

On-Prem Hardware Resource Requirements

Native Encryption of Replication Traffic

Enabling Encryption of Replication Traffic

Before you begin

About this task

Procedure

What to do next

Verifying the Status of Encryption of Replication Traffic

About this task

Procedure

Disabling Encryption of Replication Traffic

About this task

Procedure

What to do next

Protection and DR between On-Prem AZs (Nutanix Disaster Recovery)

Nutanix Disaster Recovery Requirements

License Requirements

Hypervisor Requirements

Nutanix Software Requirements

User Requirements

Firewall Port Requirements

Networking Requirements

Additional Requirements

Nutanix Disaster Recovery Limitations

Virtual Machine Limitations

Volume Groups Limitation

Network Segmentation Limitation

Virtual Network Limitation

Nutanix to vSphere Cluster Mapping Limitation

Failover Limitation

vGPU Enabled Guest VMs

Nutanix Disaster Recovery Configuration Maximums

Nutanix Disaster Recovery Recommendations

General Recommendations

Recommendation for Migrating Protection Domains to Protection Policies

Recommendation for DR to Nutanix Clusters at the Same On-Prem AZ

Recommendation for Virtual Networks

Recommendation for Container Mapping

Nutanix Disaster Recovery Service-Level Agreements (SLAs)

Nutanix Disaster Recovery Views

AZs View

Protection Summary View

Recovery Events

Protection Policies View

Recovery Plans View

VM Recovery Points

Dashboard Widgets

Enabling Nutanix Disaster Recovery for On-Prem AZ

About this task

Procedure

Pairing AZs (Nutanix Disaster Recovery)