Geek Out with Frame: A Step-by-Step Guide to Setting Up Frame and Nutanix Community Edition

These solutions help you gain hands-on experience with cutting edge Desktop-as-a-Service (DaaS) and Hyper-Converged Infrastructure (HCI) technology. It's great to have FREE access to Frame and Nutanix Community Edition - learn new skills and gain hands-on experience with revolutionary technology, let's get started!

Nutanix CE 2.0​

Nutanix Community Edition 2.0 is a free, full-featured version of the Nutanix Enterprise Cloud Platform. It enables you to explore and evaluate Nutanix technology in your own home lab environment. It's a great way to get hands-on experience with Nutanix's robust infrastructure and management capabilities and (as you will see) it's quite easy to set up.

Nutanix CE includes the Acropolis Hypervisor(AHV) with virtualization management. It provides a single pane of glass control with the Prism Central (PC) web console to manage the cluster. You can install Nutanix CE from the USB flash drive and boot-up from the local drive. You can use Nutanix AHV and build a Hyper-Converged Infrastructure (HCI) from scratch using your existing hardware, including a single-node Nutanix AHV cluster - which is what we'll do in this blog post. Nutanix Community Edition is intended for internal business operations and non-production use only.

Frame Community Program​

Frame is a major hybrid and multi-cloud Desktop as a Service (DaaS) solution that delivers Windows and Linux desktops and applications to users anywhere, on any device, with just a web browser. Frame is cloud-native, multi-tenant native, and secure by design. While the control plane is hosted and maintained by Frame as-a-service, customers have the flexibility to deploy their workload VMs within their private, hybrid, and/or public clouds with a single subscription. In private/hybrid clouds, we support deployment on the Nutanix Cloud Platform, Nutanix AHV. In the public cloud, we support deployments into native AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud Platform infrastructure.

We offer Frame Community Program, which includes a FREE one year subscription, 5 users, not for resale, community support, and Bring Your Own Infrastructure - including Nutanix CE 2.0. Are you passionate about End User Computing, VDI, and DaaS? Want to get your hands dirty with Frame? Register here for the Frame Community Program and take your DaaS skills to the next level.

Nutanix CE + Frame​

In this post, we'll describe the steps for setup and configuration of Nutanix AHV, Community Edition configured as a single-node cluster running on home-lab hardware equipment. The Frame workload VMs will run on AHV with end-users accessing Frame-powered Windows Desktops (both persistent and non-persistent) within the same network. The 'Secure Gateway' solution - Frame Streaming Gateway Appliance (SGA) - isn't used in this step-by-step-guide. However, both SGA and NVIDIA GPUs work fine with Nutanix CE 2.0 and Frame but we'll save that for another blog post.

Prepare Nutanix CE Installation​

Before you start, ensure your hardware is compatible with Nutanix Community Edition. It is important to understand the hardware requirements and recommendations. My 'SproudX' home lab contains various machines including two machines running Nutanix CE 2.0.

• Server SproudX-ServerHP:
  • HP Z840
  • CPU: dual Intel Xeon E5-2687W v4 CPU - 3.0 GHz - 12 cores, 24 threads
  • Memory: 384GB RAM
  • Storage: 3 x 1 TB Samsung EVO SSD SATA 6Gb/s
  • GPU: NVIDIA TESLA T4 GPU and NVIDIA TESLA A6000
• Server SproudX-ServerNV:
  • Whitelabel
  • CPU: Intel Core i7 3.4GHz, 6 cores, 12 threads
  • Memory: 64GB RAM
  • Storage: 3 x 1 TB Samsung EVO SSD SATA 6Gb/s
  • GPU: N/A
• Networking:
  • LAN: Ubiquiti UniFi and EdgeMax - 1GbE
  • WAN: 1GbE up/down, fiber optics

• Various:
  • Nutanix Frame Guest Agent Installer, is needed for the Windows 10 Frame Master Image.
  • Kingston DT Ultimate 32Gb USB3 - used as Nutanix CE bootable storage device.
  • Rufus software (Windows), create a bootable USB drive.
  • Windows 10 Enterprise 22H2 ISO, used for Frame Template VMs.
  • Nutanix VirtIO, used while installing Windows 10. Download the latest version via Nutanix CE download page.

An important read is 'Preparing to Install Community Edition' which describes how to create a Nutanix Next Community account, download the CE software and VirtIO, and prepare the USB driver with Rufus imaging software. Additionally, best practice is to document the Network setup for AHV host(s), controller VM IP, Subnet mask, gateway, DNS, and various User IDs and Passwords during the setup process.

Setting Up Nutanix CE - A Step-by-Step Video​

The video below will guide you step-by-step through the installation process of Nutanix Community Edition.

Setting Up Frame - A Step-by-Step Video​

This video will guide you step-by-step through the installation process of Frame on Nutanix AHV.

Great Content to Read​

• Installing Nutanix Community Edition 2.0 on Bare Metal and Nutanix CE 2.0 Three-Node Cluster on Bare Metal by Craig Robinson
• Installing Community Edition by Nutanix
• Nested Nutanix CE 2.0 Deployment by Chris Hall
• Official Frame Platform Documentation including Frame Admin training classes

Conclusion​

Nutanix Community Edition and Frame are powerful solutions that enable IT professionals to build and manage modern infrastructure and deliver virtual applications and desktops to any device with a browser. By following the steps outlined in this guide, you can get started with Nutanix Community Edition and Frame and explore their full potential.

About Nutanix Frame​

App and Desktops. Simplified. That's what Desktop-as-a-Service should be and that's what Frame is.

Whether you are a large enterprise, SMB, K-12/higher education institution, or a service provider, we look forward to helping you and your organization be better prepared for tomorrow's challenges.

Are you ready to boost your DaaS energy and get a better understanding of what Frame is all about? Check out this 4-minute demo!

Want to take Frame a Free Admin training class? Click here and register today!

Thanks for reading if you have any questions feel free to contact me!

Contact Us​

Need help with your Frame deployment, have an idea for a new use case, or just want to learn more about Frame?

Email us at frame-sales@dizzion.com and one of our experts will reach out!