Reduce Nutanix Controller VM Memory

Every node comes with Nutanix Controller VM (CVM) with a default memory of 48GB. This means every node will be left with only 16GB memory.

16GB is too little for us to do more things in our lab. Therefore, I would reduce CVM memory from 48GB to 16GB. This will allow us to do more in the future blog series where I will show how to run ESXi nested on AHV.

Step 1: Login to the first CVM 192.168.10.11 perform a cluster stop

ssh nutanix@192.168.10.11
cluster stop

Step 2: Login to first host 192.168.10.1

ssh root@192.168.10.1

Step 3: Go to virsh mode to find out the CVM name

virsh
list —-all

Step 4: Still in virsh mode, perform a shutdown for the CVM

shutdown NTNX-ad5e7c69-A-CVM

Step 5: Check the CVM is shutdown before proceeding to the next step

list —-all

Step 6: Reduce the memory of the CVM to 16GB

setmem NTNX-ad5e7c69-A-CVM 16G —-config

Step 7: Set the maximum memory for the CVM as 16GB

setmaxmem NTNX-ad5e7c69-A-CVM 16G —-config

Step 8: Start the CVM

start NTNX-ad5e7c69-A-CVM

Step 9: Perform virsh list in Step 3 to validate CVM is powered on

Step 10: Repeat Step 2 to Step 9 for the remaining 2 hosts

Step 11: Login to the first CVM 192.168.10.11 to perform a cluster start

ssh nutanix@192.168.10.11
cluster start

Step 12: You should see the following if the cluster is started successfully

Step 13: Login to the Prism Element Cluster IP to verify its functional