Network Management

Fixing Nutanix “Could Not Poll” status caused by Prism API credential failures in the SolarWinds Platform

A Nutanix cluster was successfully discovered in SolarWinds and associated with the correct polling engine, but the cluster status remained “Could Not Poll” and no CPU, memory, or virtualization statistics were populated on the Cluster Details page.

First published date

8/5/2026 5:03 PM

Last published date

8/5/2026 5:03 PM

Overview

Diagnostics from the polling engine show that connectivity to the Nutanix Prism endpoint (HTTPS 9440) and to the Controller VM (CVM) over SSH (22) is working, but Prism is returning HTTP 401 Unauthorized for Nutanix API calls made by SolarWinds.

 

Product section

Orion Platform

Cause

Prism rejects the Nutanix API credentials configured in SolarWinds with HTTP 401 Unauthorized, even though network connectivity and ports are correctly open from the polling engine to Prism and the CVMs.

The Nutanix CVM credentials (used for hardware health over SSH) are valid and working, but the separate Nutanix API credential (used for statistics and status polling) is not accepted by Prism. Switching SolarWinds to use a dedicated local Prism user with appropriate cluster-level permissions resolves the 401 responses and allows polling to complete successfully.

 

Resolution

  1. Create a dedicated local Prism user for SolarWinds API polling

    • In Nutanix Prism Element (for the affected cluster), create a local user account (for example, solarwinds_vman or solarwinds_api) instead of using an AD/LDAP or SSO-based account.
    • Assign this user at least Cluster Administrator permissions so it can access the cluster statistics and entities required for VMAN / Virtualization polling.
    • Choose a strong but “simple” password that avoids unusual or non-ASCII special characters which might be mis-parsed by some API clients.

  2. Verify the new Prism account directly in the Prism UI

    • Log out of Prism and then log back in using the new local user and password against the same Prism endpoint that SolarWinds is targeting (for example, https://<Prism_IP_or_FQDN>:9440).
    • Confirm you can successfully authenticate and see the cluster and its objects with this account.

  3. Update the Nutanix API credential in SolarWinds

    • In the SolarWinds web console, open the Nutanix cluster settings for the affected cluster (the one showing “Could Not Poll”).
    • Edit the Nutanix API credential associated with this cluster and update it to use the new local Prism user and password created in Step 1.
    • Save the changes.

  4. Trigger a manual poll and confirm status recovery

    • From the SolarWinds UI, manually poll the Nutanix cluster or wait for the next regular Nutanix polling cycle to complete.
    • Return to the Cluster Details view and confirm that:
      • The cluster status is no longer “Could Not Poll”.
      • CPU, memory, and virtualization statistics begin to populate for the cluster and its associated objects.

  5. Validate that HTTP 401 errors have cleared in the polling logs

    • On the polling engine that owns the Nutanix cluster, review the Nutanix / Cortex polling logs to confirm that the previous HTTP 401 Unauthorized responses are no longer present for this cluster’s API calls.
    • You should now see successful Nutanix API polling entries instead of authentication failures.

Note:
If the cluster still shows “Could Not Poll” after updating the Nutanix API credential, re-check:

  • That the updated credential is a local Prism account (not an external directory or SSO user).
  • That the Prism endpoint and port (9440) are reachable from the same SolarWinds polling engine that owns the Nutanix cluster, as described in the Nutanix hardware health and port requirement documentation.