An administrator is working with a network engineer to design the network architecture for a DR failover. Because DNS is well-designed, the DR site will use a different subnet but retain the same last octet in the IP address. What is the best way to achieve this?

Nutanix Disaster Recovery (DR) Recovery Plans provide a built-in, automated method for network configuration during a failover. The Offset-based IP mapping feature is specifically designed for scenarios where the recovery site uses a different subnet, but the host portion of the IP address (the last octet) needs to be preserved. This method automatically changes the network prefix while retaining the original last octet for each recovered VM, ensuring a predictable and efficient IP re-addressing process without manual intervention or custom scripting. This directly fulfills the administrator's requirement and minimizes the Recovery Time Objective (RTO).

A. Custom scripts add management overhead and potential points of failure, making them less reliable than the native, fully supported Nutanix DR feature.
B. Standard IPAM/DHCP assigns the next available IP address from a pool and does not guarantee that the last octet will be preserved as required.
C. Manually updating IP addresses is extremely slow, prone to human error, and drastically increases RTO, making it an unacceptable practice for disaster recovery.

1. Nutanix Disaster Recovery Guide v6.8: In the section "Configuring Network Mappings for a Recovery Plan," the guide details the IP address management options. It states for Offset-based mapping: "Preserves the last octet of the IP address of the source VM on the recovery cluster." This confirms it is the precise feature for the scenario.

2. Prism Central Guide v2023.4: Under the "Recovery Plan Management" section, the guide describes the process of creating a recovery plan. In the step for configuring network mappings, it outlines the "Offset" option as a method to map a source network to a destination network by preserving the last octet of the IP address.

3. Nutanix University - Nutanix Multicloud Infrastructure (NMI) 6.5 Administration Courseware: The module on "Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery" explains the configuration of Recovery Plans. It highlights Offset-based IP mapping as the ideal solution for re-addressing VMs into a new subnet at the DR site while maintaining the same host ID (last octet), simplifying network planning for failover.