Applications Systems

Nutanix cluster appears Critical/Warning in Virtualization in VMAN / SolarWinds Platform while Nutanix reports healthy status

This article provides information about an issue where a Nutanix cluster or host shows a Warning/Critical error state in SolarWinds Virtualization views (VMAN / SolarWinds Platform) even though all child entities (hosts, CVMs, VMs) appear healthy in both SolarWinds and Nutanix Prism. The behavior is caused by how Nutanix cluster health is polled and displayed, combined with a product limitation where SolarWinds does not surface the underlying Nutanix “checks” or detailed reason for the degraded cluster status.

First published date

2/3/2026 9:48 PM

Last published date

2/3/2026 9:48 PM

Overview

  • When monitoring Nutanix clusters with SolarWinds Virtualization (VMAN/SolarWinds Platform), users may see the following symptoms:
    • In the Virtualization Summary or cluster details view, the Nutanix cluster icon is red (Critical) or yellow (Warning), even though:
      • All hosts and VMs under the cluster show “Good/Healthy” status in the object tree.
      • Nutanix Prism Central/Element also reports the individual entities as healthy.
      • No obvious SolarWinds information explain why the cluster is degraded.
    • In some environments, a Nutanix VM that is in Warning/Critical for CPU or Memory does not reflect this on the VM icon in the VMware/Nutanix node tree, even though thresholds are exceeded or Nutanix reports an issue on that VM.
  • “Status of Nutanix cluster/Host issues” and clusters showing as red in SolarWinds while the underlying Nutanix environment is functioning normally

    How SolarWinds currently handles Nutanix health
    • SolarWinds does not compute Nutanix entity health itself. For Nutanix, SolarWinds polls the health status of entities (VMs, hosts, cluster) from Nutanix Prism and projects this status into the SolarWinds Platform UI.
    • Entity health is polled separately (for example, each host/VM) and is shown via color in the list of entities below the cluster on the Virtualization Summary page. The cluster health status is also polled as a separate, overall cluster health value.
    • Nutanix-specific “checks” (additional health checks within Prism) can influence the overall cluster health independently of the child entity health. These checks may mark the cluster as Warning/Critical while all polled child entities remain “good.”
  • SolarWinds does not currently poll or display the detail of these additional Nutanix checks. As a result, the cluster appears unhealthy in SolarWinds without any clear explanation in the SolarWinds UI, even if all child entities look healthy.

    Typical generic examples include:
    • In the Virtualization Summary:
      • Cluster: NUTANIX-CLUSTER-01 -> Status: Critical
      • All listed Hosts, CVMs, and VMs under the cluster show green/“Up” status.
    • In Nutanix Prism:
      • Cluster dashboard shows an overall Warning/Critical status due to one or more cluster health checks (for example, a non-critical event or a background check), but no obvious hardware failures.
        This mismatch can confuse users, because the SolarWinds view implies a critical problem at the cluster level, while no clear issue is visible in SolarWinds and the Nutanix environment appears healthy.

Product section

Virtualization Manager

Cause

This behavior occurs due to how Nutanix reports cluster health and how that information is currently presented in SolarWinds Virtualization (VMAN / SolarWinds Platform).

  • Overall cluster health in Nutanix includes additional internal checks
    Nutanix determines the cluster’s overall health using not only the status of hosts and virtual machines, but also additional cluster-level checks (such as internal health rules, configuration checks, or background alerts).
    These checks can cause the cluster to be reported as Warning or Critical even when all hosts, CVMs, and VMs appear healthy.
  • SolarWinds displays the overall health value provided by Nutanix
    SolarWinds does not calculate Nutanix health independently. It displays the overall cluster health status as reported by Nutanix Prism.
    However, SolarWinds currently does not display the detailed Nutanix check or condition that caused the cluster to be marked as Warning or Critical.
  • Resulting visibility gap in the SolarWinds UI
    Because the underlying Nutanix checks are not surfaced in SolarWinds:
    • The cluster may appear as Warning or Critical.
    • All child entities (hosts, CVMs, VMs) may still show as healthy.
    • No clear explanation for the degraded cluster status is visible within the SolarWinds interface.
  • Known limitation for Nutanix VM status icons
    In some cases, Nutanix virtual machines that exceed CPU or memory thresholds may not visually reflect a Warning or Critical state in the virtualization tree, even though alerts or performance data indicate an issue.
    This is a known product limitation.

Resolution

There is currently no product-side fix or workaround available in SolarWinds Virtualization (VMAN / SolarWinds Platform) for this behavior.

As of February 3, 2026, this behavior is a known product limitation. SolarWinds displays the overall Nutanix cluster health value as reported by Nutanix Prism, but does not currently surface the underlying Nutanix checks or detailed reasons that cause the cluster to appear in a Warning or Critical state.

No committed fix version or implementation date is available at this time. This behavior may be improved in a future SolarWinds release.

Recommendation:

Validate cluster-level health checks directly in Nutanix Prism to understand the reason for the Warning or Critical state.
Use SolarWinds primarily for visibility into entity-level health, performance metrics, and alerting.
Monitor official SolarWinds release notes for future enhancements related to Nutanix health visibility.