Nutanix Monitoring

Last9 monitors Nutanix clusters by pulling metrics from the Nutanix Prism API and forwarding them through the OpenTelemetry Collector. You get cluster CPU and memory utilisation, storage consumption, VM health, and CVM status alongside all your other infrastructure metrics in a single platform.

How it works

Nutanix Prism                 Collector                    Last9
(Prism Element   ──REST API──▶  OTel Collector  ──OTLP──▶  Levitate
 or Central)                   + nutanix-exporter           (metrics)

The OTel Collector runs on any Linux or Windows host that can reach Prism over HTTPS (port 9440). It scrapes the Prometheus-compatible metrics endpoint exposed by the nutanix-exporter and forwards them to Last9.

Prerequisites

• A host (Linux or Windows) with network access to Nutanix Prism on port 9440
• OpenTelemetry Collector Contrib v0.90.0 or later
• nutanix-exporter (open-source, Apache 2.0)
• A read-only Prism user account for monitoring
• Last9 OTLP endpoint and authentication credentials

Step 1 — Create a read-only monitoring user in Prism

Log in to Prism Element or Prism Central → Settings → Local User Management → add a user with the Viewer role. Do not use the admin account for monitoring.

Step 2 — Run the nutanix-exporter

The exporter queries the Prism REST API and exposes metrics on a local HTTP port for the OTel Collector to scrape.

docker run -d \
  --name nutanix-exporter \
  --restart unless-stopped \
  -p 9405:9405 \
  claranet/nutanix-exporter:latest \
  -nutanix.url="https://192.168.1.10:9440" \
  -nutanix.username="monitor_user" \
  -nutanix.password="<your-password>"

To run without Docker, download the binary from the releases page and pass the same flags:

./nutanix-exporter \
  -nutanix.url="https://192.168.1.10:9440" \
  -nutanix.username="monitor_user" \
  -nutanix.password="<your-password>"

Verify the exporter is working:

curl http://localhost:9405/metrics | grep nutanix_cluster

Step 3 — Configure OTel Collector to scrape the exporter

Add a prometheus receiver to your existing collector config, or create a new config:

receivers:
  prometheus:
    config:
      scrape_configs:
        - job_name: nutanix
          scrape_interval: 60s
          static_configs:
            - targets: ["localhost:9405"]

processors:
  resourcedetection:
    detectors: [env, system]

exporters:
  otlphttp:
    endpoint: "https://<your-last9-otlp-endpoint>"
    headers:
      Authorization: "Basic <your-base64-credentials>"
    compression: gzip

service:
  pipelines:
    metrics:
      receivers: [prometheus]
      processors: [resourcedetection]
      exporters: [otlphttp]

Metrics collected

Metric names use the Prometheus convention (underscores) as emitted by the nutanix-exporter:

Monitoring multiple clusters

Run one nutanix-exporter instance per cluster, each on a different port:

# Cluster 1 on port 9405
docker run -d --name nutanix-cluster1 -p 9405:9405 \
  claranet/nutanix-exporter:latest \
  -nutanix.url="https://10.0.0.10:9440" \
  -nutanix.username="monitor_user" \
  -nutanix.password="<cluster1-password>"

# Cluster 2 on port 9406
docker run -d --name nutanix-cluster2 -p 9406:9405 \
  claranet/nutanix-exporter:latest \
  -nutanix.url="https://10.0.0.20:9440" \
  -nutanix.username="monitor_user" \
  -nutanix.password="<cluster2-password>"

Then add both targets to the collector:

static_configs:
  - targets: ["localhost:9405"]
    labels:
      cluster: "prism-cluster-01"
  - targets: ["localhost:9406"]
    labels:
      cluster: "prism-cluster-02"

Recommended alerts

Once metrics are flowing, set up these alerts in Last9:

Comparison with Datadog

The key advantage: because Last9 uses the OpenTelemetry Collector that is already deployed for host metrics, MSSQL, Oracle, and IIS monitoring, adding Nutanix adds no new agent — just a new receiver in the existing config.

Alternative — SNMP

If you cannot install the nutanix-exporter but Nutanix SNMP is enabled on your cluster, you can collect a subset of cluster metrics via the SNMP receiver. See the SNMP Monitoring guide for setup details.

Troubleshooting