Nutanix have released a beta edition of their software, called the Community Edition.
So what is the Community Edition?
Let’s get the important bit out of the way, the Community Edition is only community supported and is NOT for production systems and probably best to stay away from Dev systems, unless they are completely disposable.
This is a free to use, fully featured version of their software, but limited to the number of nodes that you can have in a cluster. Also, if you’re just looking to get the hang of their software interface, then you can have a single node rather than having the normal mandatory minimum of 3.
Hardware Specifications
The current minimum hardware required:
| CPU | Intel CPUs, 4 cores minimum, with VT-x support |
| Memory | 16GB minimum |
| Storage Subsystem | RAID 0 (LSI HBAs) or AHCI storage sub-systems |
| Hot Tier (SSD) | One SSD per server minimum, ≥ 200GB per server |
| Cold Tier (HDD) | One HDD per server minimum, ≥ 500GB per server |
| Networking | Intel NICs |
Community Edition Limitations
As I mentioned beforehand, the software is free to use and is supported via the community forums.
You can have one cluster, which have 1, 3 or 4 nodes within.
That should be more than enough to have a really great experience of installing, configuring and using the platform.
What to know more or gain access to the Nutanix Beta?
If you would like to gain access to the Nutanix Community Edition by visiting the Nutanix CE Site and completing the form for more information on Nutanix or for priority access to the CE beta.