Adding Debian to a Nutanix Cluster

Adding Debian to a Nutanix Cluster is straight forward:

Download the ISO (Debian -- Downloading Debian )
Login to Prism Element for individual clusters or Prism Central servicing several clusters at once
Upload the ISO to an Image Service

Download Debian

After following the link to the download page, click on the link and save the ISO to your Downloads folder/directory. Version 12 / bookworm of Debian is 631MB in size. The iso is designed to be used on CD-ROMs and small USB devices.

First, we will show the process for Prism Element. Later, we will show the process for adding an image to Prism Central.

Login to Prism element

Go to the virtual IP address for your cluster and specify port 9440. For example: https://192.168.128.50:9440
Enter your username and password
Click the right arrow to login (remember, every 30 days you will be prompted to change your password. Even in isolated lab environments, follow good practices of using complex passphrases)

To upload to the image service, first click on the gear icon in the top right of the browser

Next, select "Image Configuration". The image service is how Nutanix make ISOs and virtual machine templates available for use in the cluster.

Upload the image using the Upload Image button

Create Image

In the create image box, several things need to be done before the save button is pressed:

Name the image. This is the name that will be used whenever it is used to create a VM either through the GUI or the REST API
Add a meaningful description of the image under annotation so you are not guessing what it is later
Image type - set it to ISO
Storage Container - choose your preferred storage container from your Nutanix cluster
Select Upload a file, click on Choose File, and select the ISO from your Downloads folder/directory
After everything is ready, click the save button to continue

The image service will provide a percentage counter in the top left to share progress of the upload.

After the upload has completed, the image configuration service will show the Debian ISO as present and inactive. The state will change to Active as soon as it is attached to any virtual machines or if it is imported into Prism Central.

To add an image to Prism Central, there are two paths forward. The first is to add an image directly and the second is to import an image from Prism Element of one of the clusters in Prism Central. First, we will add an image directly to Prism Central.

Note: Stop here if Prism Central is not present in your environment!

Login to Prism Central

Go to the virtual IP address for your Prism Central instance and specify port 9440. For example: https://192.168.128.50:9440
Enter your username and password
Click the right arrow to login (remember, every 30 days you will be prompted to change your password. Even in isolated lab environments, follow good practices of using complex passphrases)

Click the hamburger menu at the top left to show the left menu. Afterwards, click on Images under Compute & Storage

Click the Add Image button

Prism Central Add Image

Verify Image File is selected
Click on "+ Add File", navigate to the ISO, select the ISO, and click open
Enter a meaningful description
Next is one of the ways Prism Central is an improvement over Prism Element: it can check the checksum to validate the ISO has not been altered.
Lastly, click the Next box to proceed to the locations dialog menu.

In the Add Image placement dialog menu, there are two choices. The first takes the image and publishes it to all of the clusters that Prism Central is managing. This is simple, direct, and very useful for situations like this one where we are sharing a generic ISO for building new virtual machines.

The second option is for more complicated situations such as a custom machine image that has special characteristics. An example would be if there was a GPU based machine image that would only work in clusters with GPUs, a placement policy could be set that would only allow the image to be deployed to clusters with GPUs.

Lastly, the clusters where the image will be deployed can be specifically selected.

After the upload has completed, it should be listed alphabetically in the images page.

Import image from Prism Element

The second option allows for an image to be imported from Prism Element into Prism Central. Click the Import Images button.

There are two methods of importing:

"All images" - this is usually done after a Prism Central instance is setup to manage multiple clusters. It gathers all the images from the clusters, assumes ownership of the images, and sets the images to read-only in Prism Element. This insures consistency in the future by allowing future updates only in Prism Central.
"Images on a cluster" - this selection is often chosen after a new image has been developed in a cluster and needs to be made available to all the other clusters.

After telling it to save, Prism Central transfers the image from Prism Element.

From this point onward, the image is managed by Prism Central!

Page updated

Report abuse