FAQ

Nutanix Cloud Services provide a native cloud extension to the Nutanix Enterprise Cloud Platform. Leveraging a common infrastructure stack and single point of control, Xi Cloud Services uniquely enable IT teams to extend their environment beyond traditional datacenter boundaries to an integrated cloud environment that can be instantly provisioned and automatically configured.

Nutanix DRaaS is a disaster recovery as a service (DRaaS) solution that utilizes the Nutanix Cloud.

Built-In: Nutanix DRaaS set-up and management is completely built into Nutanix Prism so there is no learning curve.

Instant onboarding: Nutanix DRaaS simplifies the onboarding process by porting workload profiles to the Nutanix DRaaS. Nutanix DRaaS applies VM, networking and security configuration to the recovery site, reducing upfront setup time and streamlining failover processes.

One-Click failover: Nutanix DRaaS provides disaster recovery orchestration to achieve reliable execution of failover processes and low Recovery Time Objectives (RTOs)

Non-disruptive testing: Nutanix DRaaS offers non-disruptive testing, enabling organizations to routinely examine their disaster recovery (DR) readiness and achieve regulatory compliance

End-to-end security: Nutanix DRaaS provides end-to-end security using strong encryption for data at-rest and built-in encrypted connections between sites for data in-flight.

Pay-as-you-go: Nutanix DRaaS provides flexible subscription pricing, so customers no longer need to acquire secondary data center space or purchase dedicated infrastructure for DR, turning CapEx to OpEx.

Prism Central is used to configure and manage the Nutanix DRaaS disaster recovery solution.

Nutanix DRaaS is currently available in US West (Nevada), US East (Virginia), the U.K (London), and Germany.

No, you can replicate a virtual machine to only one Xi region.

Nutanix DRaaS's geo-footprint is most appropriate for customers in North America, UK, and Europe. Customers have to closely evaluate potential latency issues and SLA implications.

Both Nutanix AHV and ESXi (requires AOS 5.11) are supported. For NearSync support, AHV on-prem to Nutanix DRaaS will be available as of AOS 5.17 and ESX on-prem to Nutanix DRaaS will be available as of AOS 5.18.

All Nutanix Hardware, Nutanix  Xpress software edition, Nutanix certified hardware from OEMs (Dell, Lenovo), and certified Dell PowerEdge, HP and Cisco solutions on Nutanix’s HFCL can be used as source for Nutanix DRaaS. IBM Power is not supported at this time.

To get started, create a new Xi account using your MyNutanix ID. Then, follow the instructions to set up networking connectivity from your on-premises environment to Xi Cloud, and then set up DR replication to a specific region.

Nutanix DRaaS offers single-level support, Nutanix DRaaS Support, as a part of the service. The benefits are similar to the on-premises production level support where applicable.

There is no additional price for Nutanix DRaaS support; it is included in the Xi service price.

Each VM protected by Nutanix DRaaS will fall into one of the following three pricing levels:

Customers need to call Nutanix support or open a service request online using their Xi Cloud account number, on-premises cluster information (if required), and information about the issue they are experiencing.

With AOS 5.17, Nutanix DRaaS will support NearSync with 5 minute RPO. For NearSync Sizing Requirements, see https://portal.nutanix.com/page/documents/details/?targetId=Prism-Element-Data-Protection-Guide-v5_17%3Awc-dr-near-sync-requirements-limitations-r.html . Prior to AOS 5.17, Nutanix DRaaS supports 1 hour RPO. All RPOs are backed by guaranteed SLAs. Keep in mind that for planned failover, there is zero RPO.

RTO depends on number of VMs and delays/scripts included as part of the recovery plan. Our tests have shown restore time of 8 seconds per VM. RTO is also backed by an SLA.

Yes, the recovery plan contains all the information to successfully failover an application in Xi Cloud, such as boot ordering and IP address management.

Your VM will get the same CPU and memory capacity. You can provision additional CPUs and memory as needed.

Yes, Nutanix DRaaS leverages a set of scripts, executed within the VM before and after  taking the snapshot. For applications running on Microsoft Windows, Nutanix DRaaS integrates with Microsoft Volume Shadow Copy Service (VSS) to provide application consistent snapshots. 

We offer 3 options: (1) VPN brought by customer (2) Nutanix-provided VPN and (3) Direct connect. Currently, we support Checkpoint, Cisco ASA, Palo Alto, Juniper, and Fortinet VPN devices on-premises connecting to Xi Cloud.

Yes, all the data and the associated metadata are stored in the same region you replicate to.

Yes, you can preserve the IP addresses of your applications upon failover.

Currently, Nutanix DRaaS is certified for ISO 27001, ISO 27017 and ISO 27018. Nutanix DRaaS recently achieved a SOC 2 Type 1 accreditation as well. For more details, refer to the Nutanix Trust website.

Nutanix DRaaS uses Protection Policies and Recovery Plans to protect VMs and orchestrate failover respectively. Protection Policies are used to specify the RPO and recovery point retention of the VMs on source and destination AZs. Recovery Plans are used to orchestrate the actual failover.
    a. There are no limits today on the number of VMs that can be put in a Protection Policy.
    b. There are no limits on the number of Recovery Plans but each recovery Plan is capped at 200 VMs. Nutanix DRaaS can run 5 Recovery Plans in parallel for a total of 1000 VMs. If you have more than 5 recovery plans, run them in batches of 5
 

We offer SLA on both RPO & RTO. SLA Details