Virtualization

Nutanix brings its K8s to bare metal because hardware matters again

Expands compatibility since it's tough to buy the boxes you want right now

.NEXT Nutanix exists to abstract hardware into a pool of logical resources, leaving servers and storage forgotten by all but a few datacenter hardheads. But the company's annual .NEXT conference, which kicked off in Chicago on Tuesday, put hardware at the top of the agenda.

The supply chain crunch that has made memory a scarce and expensive commodity is one reason Nutanix is thinking about hardware again because it means customers can't quickly buy the boxes they need to run the company's stack. Nutanix's answer is an expansion to the hardware compatibility list (HCL) of servers it certifies to run its wares.

One reason for the expansion is to attract more of the organizations that are either ditching VMware or reducing their use of the virtualization pioneer's wares. Outfits making that move may want to reuse existing hardware rather than replace it. Nutanix therefore needs to support more server models and specs. The supply chain crunch also means fewer servers are available in the short term. Supporting more of them means Nutanix has a better chance of selling its software. The expanded HCL also reflects Nutanix's recent alliance with AMD.

Nutanix's move to expand its HCL is helped by its decision to allow independent scaling of compute and storage nodes. The latter have rigorous I/O requirements that mean only certain boxes can do the job. Nutanix thinks its stack will perform acceptably on more compute nodes.

The other hardware-centric announcement Nutanix made was that it would allow its Kubernetes Platform (NKP) to run on bare metal, under the name NKP Metal. Doing so means it's easier to run the containerized app platform on edge infrastructure.

Nutanix's cloud platform will manage NKP Metal with the same tools and policies applied to VMs or K8s running in VMs.

For years, virtualization vendors have insisted that their platforms impose negligible overhead on applications and that devoting some resources to virtual housekeeping chores is worth it due to the security and operational benefits that come from running software inside VMs. Nutanix now thinks that bare metal K8s offers worthwhile performance for AI workloads, especially training.

Another piece of hardware that continues to concern Nutanix is the storage array. The company was founded on software-defined storage that turns x86 servers into virtual arrays. Storage is a strong suit for Nutanix, but last year, the company realized that it was missing out on sales at organizations that rely on external arrays and won't ditch them any time soon. It therefore struck deals with Dell and Everpure (formerly Pure Storage) to support their hardware, meaning Nutanix customers could do without virtual storage and rely on external arrays.

Nutanix has now agreed to do similar things for NetApp and Lenovo. Again, this means Nutanix gains access to more prospects, many of them potential VMware evacuees. Indeed, the NetApp tie-up includes migration tools that allow Nutanix users to migrate and manage VMs resident on NetApp storage. It also extends to FlexPods - the combo of Cisco servers and NetApp arrays. ®