Nutanix Storage

Overview

Storage on Nutanix spans four namespaces, each with its own executor:

• storage — storage containers and volume groups on clusters; the primary surface for capacity questions.
• volumes — volume group lifecycle with iSCSI and NVMe-TCP client attachment; the surface for "what is this LUN attached to".
• objects — Nutanix Objects, the S3-compatible object store service.
• files — Nutanix Files: virtual file servers, NFS/SMB shares, share-level security and capacity.

objects and files executors only register when those services are deployed on the connected Prism Central — their absence is expected on clusters without the license.

Key Concepts

Concept	Namespace	Notes
Storage container	storage	Cluster-scoped datastore backing VM disks; capacity and config per container
Volume group	storage / volumes	Block storage exposed over iSCSI/NVMe-TCP; attachment state lives in volumes
File server	files	A virtual file server instance hosting shares
Share	files	NFS export or SMB share with its own security and quota settings
Object store	objects	S3-compatible store instance with buckets and access policies

Common Workflows

Storage capacity review

1. listOperations(namespace="storage", search="containers") → list-storage-containers operation.
2. storage_execute to list containers per cluster; read capacity, usage, and replication/compression settings from each entity.
3. Rank by utilization; anything approaching full is the headline. For growth trending and runway, cross to the aiops namespace (monitoring-aiops skill) rather than extrapolating one snapshot.

Volume group attachment audit

1. Discover volume group list/get operations in volumes.
2. volumes_execute to list volume groups, then read attachment state (iSCSI/NVMe-TCP clients) per group.
3. Flag unattached groups (reclaimable capacity) and groups attached to unexpected initiators (security review).

File services overview

1. files_execute list of file servers, then shares per server, with quota and usage fields.
2. Report per-share protocol (NFS/SMB), capacity, and security settings.

Read-only boundary

Creating, resizing, attaching, or deleting containers, volume groups, shares, or stores is non-GET and blocked by read-only mode. Findings from an audit become recommendations for a human, optionally with getCodeSample output for the specific change operation.

Gotchas

• Container capacity is cluster-scoped, not global. Sum across clusters explicitly when reporting an estate-wide number, and say which clusters were counted.
• Thin provisioning skews raw numbers. Provisioned capacity can legitimately exceed physical; report both logical usage and physical capacity, not one figure.
• storage vs volumes overlap. Both touch volume groups. Use storage for existence/capacity, volumes for attachment and client (initiator) detail.

Related Skills

• api-patterns — discovery workflow, OData, read-only mode
• cluster-operations — the clusters containers live on
• monitoring-aiops — capacity runway forecasting