Greenbone’s OPENVAS SCAN Now Supports the Nutanix AHV Hypervisor

Users appreciate when software can easily integrate into their existing IT environment. For vendors, this means supporting a cross-platform mix of operating systems and infrastructure. Greenbone is excited to expand our virtualization platform support, bringing Nutanix AHV into our family of supported hypervisors. This addition adds flexibility for deploying OPENVAS SCAN and extends Greenbone’s already diverse support for hypervisors that also includes Microsoft Hyper-V, Oracle VirtualBox, VMware vSphere (ESXi) and and Workstation Pro, Huawei FusionCompute, and Proxmox VE. Our wide range of hypervisor support ensures that defenders can run our solution in virtually any IT environment.

A free trial of Greenbone’s OPENVAS BASIC is available for Nutanix users and others to scan their IT infrastructure for vulnerabilities and stay ahead of cyber attacks. For a full breakdown of our product offerings, check out our solution comparison.

In the rest of this article, we will discuss how to integrate OPENVAS SCAN virtual appliances on the Nutanix AHV Type-1 hypervisor.

The OPENVAS SCAN Virtual Appliance Now Supports the Nutanix AHV Type-1 Hypervisor

Greenbone is excited to add support for Nutanix AHV virtualization. AHV (short for Acropolis Hypervisor) is the native hypervisor of the Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure platform. As a Type-1 hypervisor, AHV runs directly on the host’s hardware. This puts virtualized appliances closer to the underlying hardware and delivers high performance, low latency operation. The overall impact is a faster and more reliable virtualization environment. By contrast, Type-2 hypervisors run on top of a standard desktop operating system, which is not optimized for efficiency and reliability.

Nutanix is built on top of the Linux kernel’s KVM hypervisor and QEMU hardware emulator. The same open-source virtualization stack that underpins much of the modern data center and public cloud. Unlike traditional hypervisors, AHV is included at no additional licensing cost with the Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure platform and is managed through Nutanix Prism.

Whether you are an existing Greenbone enterprise customer looking for new virtualization options, or already running Nutanix AHV and seeking support, Greenbone now has you covered.

How to Set up OPENVAS SCAN on Nutanix AHV

Customers can request a Nutanix-ready instance of the OPENVAS SCAN virtual appliance from a member of the Greenbone sales team. This specialized image is delivered in the QEMU Copy-On-Write (QCOW) format, optimized for Nutanix AHV. Once you receive the .qcow file, complete the following steps in Nutanix Prism to install and configure the OPENVAS SCAN virtual appliance:

1. Log in to the Nutanix AHV web interface and open the settings menu in the upper right corner.
2. Select Image Configuration and click Upload Image. Give the image a name, set Image Type to DISK, choose Upload a file, select the QCOW file of the appliance, and click Save.
3. Switch to the VM view from the drop-down menu in the upper left corner and click Create VM.
4. Enter a name for the virtual machine, then set the number of virtual CPUs and cores, the amount of memory, and select UEFI as the boot configuration. The appliance requires the EFI/UEFI boot mode.
5. Click Add New Disk, select Clone from Image Service as the operation, choose SATA as the bus type, select the image you uploaded in step 1, and click Add.
6. Under Network Adapters (NIC), click Add New NIC and add at least one network interface, then click Save. The import can take up to 10 minutes.
7. Once imported, select the appliance from the Table tab, click Power on, and complete the OPENVAS SCAN setup process.

Full step-by-step instructions, including screenshots, are available in the Greenbone documentation.

Which Hypervisors Does the OPENVAS SCAN Virtual Appliance Support?

Here is an overview of the supported hypervisors and resource requirements for the OPENVAS SCAN virtual appliance.

The OPENVAS SCAN virtual appliance requires the following resources:

• 2 virtual CPUs
• 12 GB RAM
• 500 GB virtual hard disk (can be dynamically allocated)

Summary

Greenbone has added support for deploying our OPENVAS SCAN virtual appliance on the Nutanix AHV Type-1 hypervisor, giving adding to our industry leading flexibility. This new capability extends the virtualization options, ensuring users can confidently integrate OPENVAS SCAN into any IT environment — including the growing number of data centers built on Nutanix. A free trial of Greenbone’s OPENVAS BASIC is available for Nutanix users and others to scan their IT infrastructure for emerging threats and stay ahead of cyber attacks.