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Nutanix AOS Long Term Support Version 6.5

Yesterday, 2022-07-26, a new LTS (long term support) version of AOS was released and we are now moving away from the 5.20.x releases and says hello & welcome to the 6.5 release train.

Read more about difference between LTS & STS here. There are a lot of improvements and new features in 6.5 and for you who have kept yourself updated with what’s included in the 6.0, 6.1 & 6.1.1 have seen a few of them already. Here is a summary of all the goodness:

  • Improved performance via:
    • multiple vDisk controllers per vDisk as per below figure.
    • Rewarming the metadata cache
    • Optane Tier for NVMe
    • AES support for hybrid nodes as well as brownfield setups
    • Ranged based replication which speeds up disaster recovery replication
  • AHV Templates – Yes!!
  • Prism option for AHV node maintenance mode – RF1 VMs will be powered off
  • Ability to remove multiple Nutanix nodes same time from a Nutanix cluster
  • Nutanix cluster rebuild widget (Rebuild completion % plus Estimated time to complete)
  • AHV Metro Availability and Synchronous Replication
  • Prism AWS subnet integration
  • Seamless hybrid cloud connectivity
  • Self-service and automated network provisioning
  • Multi-tenant network isolation
  • Network Gateway – Layer 2 Subnet Extension
  • Storage Container management via Prism Central
  • Storage Policy per VM
  • Instant Restore with Storage Migration
  • Storage space reporting improvements
  • New Disaster Recovery widgets
  • Enhanced NearSync Replication Schedules for VStore Protection
  • Enhanced Asynchronous Replication Schedules
  • Non-Nutanix VMware capacity planning

AOS 6.5 comes with AHV version 7.4 build 20201105.30398 and can be managed with Prism Central version pc.2022.4.0.2 & pc.2022.6 (updated 2022-08-04). Additional software bundled with AOS 6.5 are:

  • NCC (Nutanix Cluster Check) 4.6.0
  • NGT (Nutanix Guest Tools) 2.3.1
  • Foundation 5.2.1

As you can see via the Upgrade Path you can upgrade to AOS from AOS 5.20.3 (not 5.20.4 but that will hopefully be fixed with a 6.5 patch in the near future), 6.0.x & AOS 6.1.

See Nutanix Official blog post about the 6.5 release via Introducing AOS 6.5 – HCI Will Never Be the Same

As usual check Nutanix Software End Of Life document on a regular basis to keep you up to date.

Useful links

Enjoy the new version and its capabilities..
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