Nutanix Prism Central

Morpheus offers Nutanix Prism Central Cloud integration support through and official plugin. Adding the plugin to a Morpheus appliance adds a new Cloud integration type for Nutanix Prism Central. Download the plugin from the Morpheus Plugin Exchange and upload it to the appliance. Plugins are uploaded at Administration > Integrations > Plugins. See Morpheus plugin documentation for more details on adding plugins.

Features

  • Virtual Machine Provisioning

  • Backups / Snapshots

  • Automatic Cloud sync

  • Project scoping

  • Brownfield VM management

  • Clone VMs to images

  • Host monitoring

  • Datastore management

  • Hypervisor Remote Console

  • Lifecycle Management and Resize

Creating a Minimal Service Account

Integrating Nutanix Prism Central with Morpheus requires the use of a service account which has sufficient privileges to work with all Nutanix contructs that Morpheus touches. If possible, it’s recommended to use a service account with full administrator rights. This is because there is currently a bug on the Nutanix side that prevents limited roles from working with backups and snapshots. If you choose to use the minimal role permissions outlined in this section, those features will not work until the bug is resolved.

Recommended Minimal Service Account

  • The user belongs to the built-in “Prism Viewer” role

  • The user must be added to any Projects that need to be surfaced to the integration

  • The user must belong to a custom role with the permissions listed in the expandable section below

Required Custom Role Permissions

  • Access Console VM

  • Allow Cross Cluster VM Migration

  • Allow VM Power Off

  • Allow VM Power On

  • Allow VM Reboot

  • Allow VM Reset

  • Allow VM Volume Group Connection

  • Clone VM

  • Copy Image Remote

  • Create External Subnet

  • Create Image

  • Create Layer2 Stretch

  • Create Overlay Subnet

  • Create Subnet

  • Create VM

  • Delete External Subnet

  • Delete Image

  • Delete Layer2 Stretch

  • Delete Subnet

  • Delete VM

  • Delete VM Recovery Point

  • Deploy VM Templates

  • Expand VM Disk Size

  • Export VM

  • Mount VM CDROM

  • Restore VM Recovery Point

  • Revert VM

  • Snapshot VM

  • Unmount VM CDROM

  • Update Cluster

  • Update Container Disks

  • Update External Subnet

  • Update Image

  • Update Layer2 Stretch

  • Update Overlay Subnet

  • Update Subnet

  • Update VM

  • Update VM Boot Config

  • Update VM Categories

  • Update VM CPU

  • Update VM Description

  • Update VM Disk List

  • Update VM GPU List

  • Update VM Memory

  • Update VM Memory Overcommit

  • Update VM Name

  • Update VM NGT Config

  • Update VM NIC List

  • Update VM Owner

  • Update VM Power State

  • Update VM Power State Mechanism

  • Update VM Project

  • Update VM Recovery Point

  • View Availability Zone

  • View Category

  • View Cluster

  • View Cluster Networking Capabilities

  • View Container

  • View Container Datastore

  • View Container Stats

  • View Dashboard

  • View External Subnet

  • View Host

  • View Image

  • View Layer2 Stretch

  • View Layer2 Stretch Related Entities

  • View Marketplace Item

  • View Name Category

  • View Network Gateway

  • View Overlay Subnet

  • View Project

  • View Storage Pool

  • View Subnet

  • View Value Category

  • View vCenter Cluster

  • View vCenter Container

  • View vCenter Node

  • View vCenter VM

  • View Virtual Switch

  • View VM

  • View VM Host Affinity Policy

  • View VM Recovery Point

  • View VM Templates

  • View VPC

  • View Vpn Connection


Important

Due to a current Nutanix bug, non-administrator service accounts will not be able to utilize backup or snapshot features via Morpheus. Users who need these features should integrate using an administrator service account rather than the minimal user described here.

Adding a Nutanix Prism Central Cloud

Adding Nutanix Prism Clouds to Morpheus requires little more than the API URL and valid username and password credentials for a user with sufficient access to the resources that should be utilized by Morpheus. You’ll also need to ensure Morpheus can reach the NPC appliance at its API URL.

Navigate to Infrastructure > Clouds and click + ADD. As long as the Nutanix Prism Central plugin have been added to the appliance and this Cloud type isn’t disabled in global settings (Administration > Settings), NUTANIX PRISM CENTRAL should be selectable as a Cloud type to add. Select it and click NEXT.

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At minimum, it’s required to configure the following to add the new cloud:

  • NAME: A friendly name for the new NPC Cloud in Morpheus

  • API URL: API access URL (ex. https://xx.xx.xx.xx:9440)

  • USERNAME: Username for a Nutanix Prism Central service account (see the previous section for recommendations on service account user role configuration)

  • PASSWORD: The password for the service account

  • VMM API VERSION: Allows the user to select which VMM API versions their environment will support as Morpheus cannot auto-detect this and endpoint support differs between versions

You’ll know the API URL and credentials have been entered correctly when the PROJECTS dropdown becomes populated. You may choose to scope Nutanix Prism Central Clouds to a specific project or scope the Cloud to all Projects. Click NEXT and select a Group for the Cloud or create a new Group. Click NEXT to reach the review screen and then click COMPLETE.

../../../_images/configureCloud1.png

After completing the wizard, Morpheus will immediately begin to add the new Cloud and perform the first Cloud sync. Within a short time, existing workloads will be discovered and onboarded into Morpheus UI (if you’ve chosen to discover existing workloads). The Cloud is now ready to be used as a provisioning target or for day-two operations.