Production AI Meets Dual Native Choice with NKP 2.19

Chris Brown is a Product Marketing Manager at Nutanix focusing on the Nutanix Kubernetes Platform (NKP). He is passionate about bridging the gap between enterprise infrastructure and modern cloud-native development, helping platform engineering teams simplify Kubernetes operations, scale AI workloads, and accelerate their digital transformation.

Every platform team today is caught between two huge operational pressures: getting production-ready AI infrastructure into the hands of developers fast, and keeping virtual machines and containers from turning into separate, bloated operational silos.

Nutanix Kubernetes Platform (NKP) 2.19 is now generally available and is designed to address both challenges. NKP 2.19 expands deployment and management options for virtual machines, bare-metal Kubernetes® clusters, and containerized workloads through a unified operating model. With a curated AI catalog, CNCF-conformant AI stack, and new resilience capabilities, NKP 2.19 is designed to help simplify Day-2 Kubernetes operations

Here is a look at what’s inside.

Deploy Virtualized and Bare-Metal Kubernetes Together with Dual Native Infrastructure

Managing separate infrastructure for virtual machines and bare-metal Kubernetes clusters can lead to wasted resources and segmented operations. NKP 2.19 unifies these worlds under a consistent, declarative control plane so that you no longer have to choose between virtualized or bare metal Kubernetes workers.  Dual native infrastructure delivers choice.

At the core of this dual native architecture is NKP Metal, built to strip away the operational friction of bare-metal Kubernetes. Using Foundation Central for automated node discovery, Ubuntu OS imaging, and cluster provisioning, NKP Metal lets platform teams rapidly deploy containerized workloads directly on physical hardware using consistent operational workflows as virtualized clusters. It gives you the raw performance needed for demanding, low-latency applications while establishing a genuine dual native architecture that unifies bare metal and enterprise virtualization under a single control plane.

“Ubuntu is loved by cloud-native platform teams for bringing the same consistent experience on every control plane. Our partnership with Nutanix now extends this commitment to bare metal Kubernetes to unlock the raw performance of physical hardware, without compromising on enterprise-grade security and compliance. Through Foundation Central, NKP Metal customers on Ubuntu now have an accelerated, automated path to production Kubernetes.” — Ivan Ramos Garza, VP of Alliances and Verticals, Canonical

NKP 2.19 also introduces:

• AOS multi-writer support for Kubernetes, enabling apps to utilize ReadWriteMany file storage delivered directly from a Nutanix AOS cluster through the Nutanix CSI driver. This simplifies sharing data concurrently across pods and is ideal for CI/CD caches, logs, and more.
• UI-driven upgrade workflows: Minimize upgrade risk with UI-driven cluster upgrades, including pre-flight checks and post-upgrade validation intended to help identify configuration issues and support maintenance planning.

To round out our dual native capability, we are introducing a VM Operator for the Nutanix AHV hypervisor, which will be delivered through the NKP App catalog. This Kubernetes operator enables platform teams to manage supported virtual-machine lifecycle operations through Kubernetes APIs, allowing users to manage VMs and containers with the same operational workflows.

Production AI Platform That Turns Clusters into AI Factories

Getting from AI experimentation to production usually means spending months stitching together drivers, operators, and MLOps frameworks. NKP 2.19 helps reduce the DIY effort involved in assembling supported AI tooling:

• NKP AI Catalog: Deploy a curated catalog of AI and machine-learning tools through the NKP user interface, with lifecycle-management capabilities for supported components helping teams configure AI and machine-learning workspaces through guided UI workflows
• AMD GPU Support: Broaden your hardware choice beyond a single GPU ecosystem with validated support for AMD Instinct MI350 GPUs and the AMD GPU Operator, available through the NKP Catalog (subject to documented prerequisites).
• CNCF AI Conformance: Starting with 2.18, NKP is officially certified under the CNCF Certified Kubernetes AI Conformance Program. This community-driven initiative validates support for essential AI requirements, including dynamic GPU resource allocation, gang scheduling, and tenant workload isolation.

Get Started with NKP 2.19

Whether you are developing an AI strategy, managing VM and container environments, or evaluating disaster-recovery options, NKP 2.19 is designed to help provide a consistent operating model for supported modern-application deployments

• Try NKP for yourself with Nutanix Test Drive.
• Refer to the documentation for information on supported APIs, configurations, and environments
• Read the full release notes on the Nutanix Portal.
• Reach out to your Nutanix team to talk through your upgrade options.

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