Nutanix Kubernetes Platform Overview
NUTANIX KUBERNETES® PLATFORM OVERVIEW
As the leading independent Kubernetes® Management Platform in production, the Nutanix Kubernetes® Platform (NKP) provides a holistic approach and a complete set of enterprise-grade technologies, services, training, and support to build and run applications in production at scale. Built around the open- source Cluster API, the new version of NKP becomes the single, centralized point of control for an organization’s application infrastructure, empowering organizations to more easily deploy, manage, and scale Kubernetes workloads in the production environments.
Table 1: Features and Benefits
Container Orchestration Leverage an industry standard distribution of open- source Kubernetes for cluster and container management.
Application Management and Deployment Deploy applications and services within Kubernetes clusters with Helm.
Observability Gain deep insight into your Kubernetes clusters and applications with open source metrics leveraging Prometheus, and Grafana.
Cluster API Automate cluster lifecycle management using CAPI Concepts and Terms on page 21 to simplify the provisioning, upgrading, and operating many Kubernetes clusters across a wide range of distributions and virtual and physical environments.
Cluster Autoscaling Save operational costs by automatically scaling down (Scaling Node Pools Using the Cluster Autoscaler on page 821) capacity when it’s not needed and adding capability when there is greater demand, with CAPI enabled autoscaling groups.
Logging Collect and analyze logs and metrics (Logging on page 590) to ensure optimal performance and troubleshooting with Grafana Dashboards on page 666, Loki, and Fluent Bit on page 613.
Cloud-Native Scale Testing Extensive integration and workload testing at massive scale with a wide range of workloads to ensure real-world preparedness.
| Features | Benefits |
|---|
Networking and Routing Easily automate and expose application endpoints (Networking on page 632) with Cilium, Calico, Traefik-Forward-Authentication in NKP (TFA) on page 626, and CoreDNS.
Fine-Grained Cluster Upgrades reduce operational overhead with non-disruptive patching or parallel worker node upgrades. See (Upgrade Nutanix Kubernetes Platform on page 1042).
Backup and Recovery Ensure business continuity and disaster recovery (Backup and Restore on page 555) with Velero.
Declarative Automated Installer With Day 2 Platform Services
Accelerate time-to-production on any infrastructure (Basic Installations by Infrastructure on page 72) with consistency and reliability with the required Platform Applications on page 350 needed for Cluster Operations Management on page 284.
Operate in AWS Air-gapped Installation Leverage declarative APIs to optimize cluster resources for cost, resilience, and performance.
End-to-End Support Enterprise-grade support and services for both Kubernetes and its supported platform applications.
Architecture
Kubernetes® is a registered trademark of The Linux Foundation in the United States and other countries and is used according to a license from The Linux Foundation.
Components of the Kubernetes Control Plane
The native Kubernetes cluster consists of components in the cluster’s control plane and worker nodes that run containers and maintain the runtime environment.
NKP supplements the native Kubernetes cluster by including a pre-defined and pre-configured set of applications. The pre-defined set of applications critical for managing a Kubernetes cluster in a production environment are identified as the NKP platform applications.
To view the full set of NKP platform services, see Platform Applications on page 350.
| Features | Benefits |
|---|
Figure 1: NKP Architecture
Related Information
For information on related topics or procedures, see the Kubernetes documentation.
Supported Infrastructure Operating Systems
This topic contains all the operating systems (OS) that are currently tested and supported for use with Nutanix Kubernetes Platform(NKP).
Note:
- Arm-based systems are not supported. Only x86/amd64 architectures are supported.
- Ubuntu 22.04 GPU deployments in air#gapped environments are not supported when using NVIDIA Installer Bundles (NIB). However, GPU deployments are supported in air#gapped environments when using precompiled NVIDIA drivers.
Table 2: Nutanix
Rocky Linux 9.7
5.14.0-611.55.1.el9_7.x86_64 Yes - Yes - - - - Yes
Ubuntu 22.04
5.15.0-185- generic
Yes - Yes - Yes Yes - Yes
- Operating System; Kernel; Default Config; FIPS; Air- gapped; FIPS Air- gapped; GPU; GPU Air- gapped; vGPU; Nutanix Image Builder
| — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — |
Ubuntu 24.04
6.8.0-107- generic
Yes - Yes - Yes Yes - Yes
RHEL 8.10 8.10 4.18.0-553.el8_10.x86_64
Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes
RHEL 9.6 9.6 5.14.0-570.39.1.el9_6.x86_64
Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes
Table 3: Amazon Web Services (AWS)
RHEL 8.10 4.18.0-553.120.1.el8_10.x86_64 Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes
RHEL 9.6 5.14.0-570.106.1.el9_6.x86_64 Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes
Ubuntu 22.04
6.8.0-1055-aws Yes - Yes - Yes - Yes
Ubuntu 24.04
6.17.0-1017-aws Yes - Yes - Yes - Yes
Oracle Linux 8.9
5.15.0-200.131.27.el8uek.x86_64 Yes Yes Yes Yes - - Yes
Rocky Linux 9.7
5.14.0-611.5.1.el9_7.x86_64 Yes - Yes - - - Yes
Flatcar 4081.3.8 (LTS 2022)
6.6.141-flatcar Yes - - - - - Yes
Table 4: Microsoft Azure
RHEL 9.6 5.14.0-570.58.1.el9_6.x86_64 Yes Yes - - - - Yes
Ubuntu 22.04
6.8.0-1052- azure
Yes - - - - - Yes
Ubuntu 24.04
6.17.0-1015- azure
Yes - - - - - Yes
Rocky Linux 9.7 (Rocky 9)
5.14.0-570.17.1.el9_6.x86_64 Yes - - - - - Yes
- Operating System; Kernel; Default Config; FIPS; Air- gapped; FIPS Air- gapped; GPU; GPU Air- gapped; vGPU; Nutanix Image Builder
| — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — |
- Operating System; Kernel; Default Config; FIPS; Air- gapped; FIPS Air- gapped; GPU Support; GPU Air- gapped; Nutanix Image Builder
| — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — |
- Operating System; Kernel; Default Config; FIPS; Air- gapped; FIPS Air- gapped; GPU Support; GPU Air- gapped; Nutanix Image Builder
| — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — |
Table 5: Google Cloud Platform (GCP)
Ubuntu 22.04
6.8.0-1020-gcp Yes - - - - - Yes
Ubuntu 24.04
6.14.0-1016-gcp Yes - - - - - Yes
Table 6: Pre-provisioned
RHEL 8.10 4.18.0-553.81.1.el8_10.x86_64 Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes
RHEL 9.6 5.14.0-570.58.1.el9_6.x86_64 Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes
Flatcar 4081.3.8
6.6.141-flatcar Yes - - - - - Yes
Ubuntu 22.04
6.8.0-1055 Yes - Yes - Yes - Yes
Ubuntu 24.04
6.17.0-1015 Yes - Yes - Yes - Yes
Oracle Linux 8.9
5.15.0-200.131.27.el8uek.x86_64 Yes Yes Yes Yes - - Yes
Rocky Linux 9.7
5.14.0-611.5.1.el9_7.x86_64 Yes - Yes - - - Yes
Table 7: Pre-provisioned on Azure
RHEL 8.10 4.18.0-553.81.1.el8_10.x86_64 Yes Yes Yes Yes - - -
RHEL 9.6 Yes Yes Yes Yes - - -
Table 8: vSphere
RHEL 8.10 4.18.0-553.el8_10.x86_64 Yes Yes Yes Yes - - Yes
- Operating System; Kernel; Default Config; FIPS; Air- gapped; FIPS Air- gapped; GPU Support; GPU Air- gapped; Nutanix Image Builder
| — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — |
- Operating System; Kernel; Default Config; FIPS; Air- gapped; FIPS Air- gapped; GPU Support; GPU Air- gapped; Nutanix Image Builder
| — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — |
- Operating System; Kernel; Default Config; FIPS; Air- gapped; FIPS Air- gapped; GPU Support; GPU Air- gapped; Nutanix Image Builder
| — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — |
- Operating System; Kernel; Default Config; FIPS; Air- gapped; FIPS Air- gapped; GPU Support; GPU Air- gapped; Nutanix Image Builder
| — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — |
RHEL 9.6 5.14.0-570.12.1.el9_6.x86_64 Yes Yes Yes Yes - - Yes
Ubuntu 22.04
5.15.0-170- generic
Yes - Yes - - - Yes
Ubuntu 24.04
6.8.0-100- generic
Yes - Yes - - - Yes
Rocky Linux 9.7
5.14.0-611.5.1.el9_7.x86_64 Yes - Yes - - - Yes
Flatcar 4081.3.8 (LTS 2022)
6.6.106-flatcar Yes - - - - - Yes
Oracle Linux 9.4
5.15.0-205.149.5.1.el9uek.x86_64 Yes - Yes - - - Yes
Table 9: Amazon Elastic Kubernetes (EKS)
Amazon Linux 2
Amazon Linux 2023.11.20260526
Yes - - - - - -
Table 10: Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS)
Ubuntu 24.04 LTS
6.8.0-1054- azure
Yes - - - - - -
- Operating System; Kernel; Default Config; FIPS; Air- gapped; FIPS Air- gapped; GPU Support; GPU Air- gapped; Nutanix Image Builder
| — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — |
- Operating System; Kernel; Default Config; FIPS; Air- gapped; FIPS Air- gapped; GPU Support; GPU Air- gapped; Konvoy Image Builder
| — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — |
- Operating System; Kernel; Default Config; FIPS; Air- gapped; FIPS Air- gapped; GPU Support; GPU Air- gapped; Konvoy Image Builder
| — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — |
Last updated Oct 08, 2026