HCI will never be the same. Introducing AOS 6.5

Get excited! The latest upgrade to the core Nutanix® hyperconverged infrastructure (HCI) software is live. The AOS™ 6.5 release is one of our most comprehensive updates ever, with improved performance, security, and integrated data services required for demanding database workloads and business critical applications. 

We encourage you to take a fresh look at AOS 6.5 while keeping three key things in mind: 

1. Performance-hungry business-critical applications and databases are coming to HCI 
2. Cyber-resilience is ideally built-in to storage architecture - not bolted on   
3. Granular snapshots and replication data services are a key buying criteria  

Let’s dig into the details and see how Nutanix HCI can replace your SAN for database workloads and business critical applications.

Sub-millisecond Performance for Your Critical Database Workloads

HCI is well-known for simplifying IT environments with a server-based software-defined model typical of all modern architectures. But how does performance of a scale-out system compare with proprietary SANs and Fibre Channel?  

The performance advancements in AOS 6.5 show that HCI might just be faster than many SAN deployments. AOS 6.5 includes NVMe tiering for Intel Optane® SSD multi-threaded vDisks, and metadata cache rewarming to deliver a scale-out cloud platform that can satisfy performance-hungry workloads.

• How many IOPS do you need? 25k? 50k? 100k or more? Nutanix AOS 6.5 can deliver.  
• What kind of response times do you need? Consistent sub 1ms? Nutanix AOS 6.5 is ready. 
• How big of a database do you have? 1 TB? 2TB? 10TB or more? Nutanix AOS 6.5 performs.   

An independent analysis of database performance by the Enterprise Strategy Group found that a Nutanix cluster delivered more than 1.1 million random read IOPS and almost 600K random write IOPS.

Below is a screenshot of a performance test for a new customer that rolled out 11 Nutanix nodes.

Cyber-resilience Network and security upgrades

Security is a top buying criteria for IT organizations, particularly for business-critical workloads and databases. AOS 6.5 brings networking and security enhancements for encrypted DR and inter-cluster traffic, virtual networking for logical network isolation, viewable AWS® subnets from the Nutanix Cloud Manager™ console, and IPv6 certification to comply with the DODIN APL for the US DOD.  

AOS 6.5 does even more to help unify security and infrastructure operations for your workloads and advance the “zero trust” methodology.

Integrated Storage-layer Snapshots and Replication

Nutanix AOS 6.5 includes integrated storage-layer snapshots with policy-based low-overhead VM or datastore specific snapshots. When combined with storage-layer integrated replication, Nutanix AOS 6.5 sets the bar for how HCI systems should provide SAN-level data services.  

Some HCI offerings rely on compute-layer snapshots and replication. Nutanix AOS 6.5, now with optimized cross-cluster replication, has the architectural advantage when customers are looking to accelerate the migration of workloads to HCI.  

Breadth of Features and Ease of Management

Nutanix AOS 6.5 builds on our long tradition of improving your day-to-day operations and freeing up your nights and weekends. Here’s a rundown of the new features that will make your experience even better: 

• AHV® Memory Overcommit and VM Templates
• Expanded resiliency monitoring
• Capacity planning for non-Nutanix VMware ESXi™ clusters
• Storage management and visibility enhancements 
• Enhanced maintenance mode support 

Simplified packaging and licensing

Nutanix AOS 6.5 incorporates our simplified packaging to simplify ordering of our hybrid cloud infrastructure, multicloud management, unified storage, database, and desktop services solutions. Customers now have integrated solutions with common per core licensing typical of modern cloud offerings. Importantly, licenses are fully portable for deployment at the edge, in the datacenter, or in AWS. A full list of Nutanix software options can be found here.

Nutanix Database Service

Nutanix value for business-critical databases doesn’t stop with infrastructure. The Nutanix Database Service™ database-as-a-service offering automates administration tasks and enables developers to self-service their database needs. Customers who value the simplicity and elegance of our HCI offering get additional value by adding Nutanix Database Service to simplify the provisioning, patching, and monitoring of databases at scale. 

Test Drive Nutanix

It’s easy to try out new AOS 6.5 features with Nutanix Test Drive. Test Drive allows you to run your own test cluster remotely in minutes through the convenience of your browser. You can experience how easy infrastructure management can be with 1-click simplicity. And you can see for yourself how Nutanix simplifies routine tasks, ensures availability and resiliency, and keeps up with IT requests while managing your entire cloud infrastructure and workloads with ease.

Here’s How to Upgrade:

• For Current customers --> 
  • If you are running AOS versions 5.15.x or 5.20.x., AOS 6.5 is your next long term support (LTS) release and you will gain the features mentioned here (6.0) and here (6.1).
  • If you are running 6.0 or 6.1 (both are short term support -STS- releases), 6.5 is also your next step. There will be additional bug fixes in it for you, plus you will be on an LTS release. See this link for the differences in LTS and STS releases.
  • Take advantage of the latest and greatest features and upgrade today with your Nutanix Life Cycle Manager™ (LCM) tool. You can find the release notes here. (Log in required)
• If New to HCI --> 
  • If you are investigating HCI to converge and simplify your traditional datacenter silos, including compute, storage, networking and virtualization, now is the time. The Nutanix Cloud Platform and AOS 6.5 deliver all the performance you will need to start today, with a path for your workload transformation.

We think you’ll agree that with Nutanix AOS 6.5, the HCI market will never be the same. It’s an exciting time to bring your business-critical apps and databases to The Nutanix Cloud Platform™ solution powered by Nutanix AOS 6.5. Get started today! 

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