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.
- multiple vDisk controllers per vDisk as per below figure.
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- 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
- Acropolis 6.5 Upgrade Guide
- Firewall Requirements 6.5
- AOS 6.5 Download
- AOS 6.5 Release Notes
- AHV 20201105.30398 Download
- AHV 20201105.30398 Release Notes
- Upgrade Path
- Hypervisor json files
- Nutanix Compatibility Matrix
- Software Product Interoperability
Enjoy the new version and its capabilities..
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