Installing Nutanix Community Edition 2.0 on Bare Metal — Single Node Cluster

Home lab projects are my preferred method of learning new technology. Nutanix has some neat technology, and I want to learn with a hands-on approach. On March 1st, 2023, Nutanix released CE 2.0. This article details the process I used when installing Nutanix CE 2.0 on a bare metal server.

The official Nutanix documentation for Getting Started with Community Edition is here:

Nutanix Support & Insights

Server Requirements

The official server requirements for the community edition are listed here.

The RAM requirements are steep, requiring 20GB for the CVM, and an additional 24GB if you plan to run Prism Central, not including the memory needed for your VM workloads.

Here are the server specifications I used in this article:

Prepare the Server

When starting a new bare metal project, I reset the server to the factory state, run initial setup steps, set up remote console access, and update the firmware. I created a detailed article on the process I use that is available here: Initial Setup — Bare Metal Servers.

Network Settings

Plan and document the network layout.

Local DNS servers are not required, see “Create DNS Records” below.

Create reference documents

Plan and document the IP Address, FQDN, and default credentials.

Create DNS Records

Creating Public DNS records on a domain name removes the need for a local DNS server in your home lab…