Nutanix has built-in capacity to convert Nutanix Cluster running on ESXi to AHV.

Some of the key requirement to proceed before in-place conversion are as below

• Resolve all NCC health Check alerts
• HA & DRS must be enabled
• All hosts should be managed by the Same VCenter
• VCenter should not be running on same cluster which is being converted
• NGT Tools should be installed on all the VMs

Some of the Cluster Limitations are as below:

• Metro Availability protection domain cannot be enabled in you environment
• If Free ESXi License for your cluster, you can convert the cluster to AHV but you cannot revert the cluster back to ESXi.
• Nutanix Files deployed on cluster
• In-Place Hypervisor conversion is not supported for single and two node cluster

Virtual Machines Requirements & Limitations:

• VMs with flat disk are supported, delta disks are not supported.
• Only IDE And SCSI storage controllers are supported
• Virtual machines with attached volume groups or shared virtual disks are not supported.
• After reverting back to ESXi from AHV, the VMs are converted to the maximum hardware version that is supported by that specific ESXi version.

Let’s proceed with conversion:

1. Log-in to Prism
2. Click on gear icon, Main Menu à Settings à Convert Cluster
3. Click Validate
4. Specify VCenter IP Address, VCenter Username and Password and click Validate

Once Validation is completed. Click Covert Cluster to start the conversion.

The entire conversion process may take 3 to 4 hours depending on the nodes that are present in your cluster. However, the VM downtime will be less than 5 minutes because all the nodes in the cluster are converted in a rolling manner.