We performed a comparison between Nutanix Acropolis AOS series and VxRail based on our users’ reviews in four categories. After reading all of the collected data, you can find our conclusion below.
Comparison Results: Nutanix Acropolis AOS is the solution our users prefer when looking for an HCI solution. It is user-friendly and offers simple operating system features, easy installation, and excellent centralized administration. VxRail users are happier with that solution’s pricing, however.
"Integration with virtualization platforms helped us to resolve many issues we were facing while using the physical storage."
"Virtual SAN runs on iSCSI, which is free and easy to configure. It's easy to manage from StarWind's GUI console, and it only required a few extra switch ports."
"We can lose a site or even two of our three, and we would lose no data and have no outage."
"It's very easy to resize disks and they show up in VMware almost instantly."
"The most valuable feature is the reliable storage replication, which enables me to create a robust infrastructure to run our business."
"The product's core feature of virtualizing our storage is by far the most valuable."
"Active-active work mode leads to true redundancy of storage and allows us to distribute the load between multiple nodes."
"The performance of the solution is accurate and concise."
"The product is easy to manage."
"Hyper-convergence is the most valuable feature for me as it allows me to scale the hardware according to project requirements."
"It allows us to have a cloud-based ecosystem."
"Scaling is very easy and no limitations are set."
"One-click setup is a valuable feature because it allows us to set up a server automatically with a single click."
"Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure's most valuable feature is the flexibility to move the VMs easily, keeping everything together."
"The dashboard of Nutanix Acropolis AOS allows for simple management. The dashboard has all the information online about what's going on at any given time."
"Nutanix Acropolis AOS is easy to use, it is a great platform."
"I like the managed updates. They are really nice in VxRail. Everything comes packaged and the updates are much easier than with other solutions that I've had to work with."
"Cost-effective and easy to install."
"The stability of VxRail is good, we have not had any issues."
"The most valuable feature in the VxRail solution is the software that binds the management portal and its ease of use of managing the environment. The guys don't have to worry about getting multiple solutions specialist. You can have one person looking at and managing the whole environment."
"For me, VxRail's most valuable feature is its life-cycle management."
"I like that there is a dependency on the storage controller."
"The most valuable feature for me in this latest release has been the ability to add a compute or storage node. In the previous release, if I wanted to add only the compute mode, I need to buy a full node, including both compute and storage. That is no longer the case; I can upgrade whatever I want one based on my demand."
"It's somewhat hard to speak about specific features, but I like VxRail's simplicity and ease of use. It's a decent solution for customers with a small footprint. If you're operating a big data center, it's not easy to position VxRail or HCI solutions, but when you have a small customer managing many different components, it's easier to work only with one solution."
"While StarWind.com excels in numerous areas, there are a couple of notable functionalities that it currently lacks. One of these is duplication, which could be an invaluable feature for data redundancy and backup purposes. The ability to duplicate data across different storage locations can be crucial for safeguarding against data loss, and its absence is a minor limitation in an otherwise stellar offering."
"StarWind relies on the underlying OS to manage the "SAN files" whether that would be a RAID volume, software RAID (such as LVM), etc. It would be useful if StarWind could incorporate the actual physical drive management inside of the solution, similar to Storage Spaces Direct."
"I am expecting to see it more user-friendly in the future."
"While we had no problems setting the system up, and service technicians from StarWind could assist us very well, they could provide some form of in-depth documentation."
"I would love to see more vendor selection to be available for the HCA/vSAN appliances."
"StarWind offers the Enterprise-level high availability (HA), deployed and easily configured .maintain and update and with little to no fuss, even the free version is incredibly capable whilst it brings a the cost of a Highly Available HCI solution down to a very cost effective point" Having used Starwind Virtual SAN for many years both for clients and for internal systems it has always done exactly what it set out to do, provide a cost effect way to run a HCI storage platform for almost any hypervisor, but it is most effective with Hyper-V, simple, easy to use, -.software monitoring should be web based to be reachable from any workstation in VLAN."
"It would be good to have a little more access to control certain aspects within the UI."
"It would be helpful to have a little more insight into what kind of performance the VSAN cluster is utilizing; something that would be more proactive on our side, versus their ProActive Support."
"I would enjoy an advanced mode where experienced users can leverage their knowledge to do advanced things currently only allowed using the command line tools on the CVM."
"Deployment could be more user-friendly - currently, it requires certain skills with the network and nodes."
"I think some of the tasks that must be done using CLI could be added to the web interface."
"In terms of what I would like to see improved, I would say the life cycle management. I don't know if it is because they changed to an LCM from the previous way of upgrading the hardware or software but sometimes it feels that it needs a wizard that says, "Check this, check this," telling you your options. The only thing that's a bit frustrating for me is the life cycle management interface. That's the only thing on the entire system that frustrates me."
"If they can simplify the software slightly for the installation, that would make all the difference."
"They have offered some new features that I have not deployed so I assume that these issues might have been addressed already, but, at my time there was a networking problem."
"There is a need is to be able to consume Nutanix storage from outside the cluster for other, non-Nutanix workloads."
"I feel like the flow chart and the automated processes have some room for improvement. They're nearly there, and the rest is fine. They've improved a lot over the past few years."
"Supply chain capabilities are certainly hurting us. We're in the process of placing a large order for more VxRail nodes right now."
"Integration could be improved."
"It would be an improvement if VxRail could be integrated with some other hypervisors and not just with VMware."
"Lifecycle management (LCM) should be enhanced"
"Sometimes during the upgrade process of VxRail, we experience errors that have nothing to do with reality and I cannot troubleshoot them without calling Dell and bringing in an engineer to figure it out."
"When using hybrid nodes, such as VxRail, there should not be compression and deduplication, only in All-Flash nodes."
"My main issue so far is that the installation created a default datacenter name of "Marvin" and it cannot be changed."
"VxRail should try to improve the pricing."
More Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) Pricing and Cost Advice →
Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) is ranked 3rd in HCI with 194 reviews while VxRail is ranked 1st in HCI with 121 reviews. Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) is rated 8.6, while VxRail is rated 8.6. The top reviewer of Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) writes "A powerful solution with easy deployment, upgrades, and management". On the other hand, the top reviewer of VxRail writes "Offers a hassle-free, complete package, and is energy-efficient". Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) is most compared with VMware vSAN, HPE SimpliVity, VMware vSphere, Dell PowerFlex and Hyper-V, whereas VxRail is most compared with Dell PowerFlex, VMware vSAN, HPE SimpliVity, HPE Hyper Converged and Dell vSAN Ready Nodes. See our Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) vs. VxRail report.
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"Nutanix node you will be running vSphere on top on the underlining Nutanix software" This description is incorrect.
There is no "layer" between the hardware and the OS which is ESXI hypervisor on both cases.
While both systems do a very good job within the nodal limits for scaling a compute environment - it is the networking layer that has the most impact on GPU sharing across a cluster. From a practical perspective, VxRail nodes will typically offer a discount over native Nutanix nodes. With Nutanix you also need servers, disk, networking and GPU's. VxRail will be more integrated with sized nodes, Dell, Cisco or other networking and often the VSphere 7 licenses can be integrated - achieving a lower net cost.
Testing for optimizations on either VSAN or Nutanix to see which favors a vGPU system would be something I would like to see quantified. My guess is they are network constrained and differences between VxRail and a build your own Nutanix environment will be negligible for the same network. Would be good to confirm if there is an optimal point - say 40Gbps vs 10Gbps or 100Gbps for the inter-GPU message passing.
Best option for vSphere 7 is the VxRail as it designed on VMware technology and built in integrates with vSphere, on a Nutanix node you will be running vSphere on top on the underlining Nutanix software.
Ok, I have no hands-on with vxRail.
But we have vGPU running on Nutanix with ESXi (vsphere). I am not aware of something like vGPU sharing across nodes/hosts. You did not mention which solution you have in mind as you would be about to choose in the process.
We have Citrix XenDesktop running. It works really smoothly most of the time. We only encountered a lagging problem once every few weeks which we are yet to solve. Perhaps something running in the back of our net.
With Nutanix you would have a solid base to work with.
You did not mention what automation is to be used. You could use something like Nutanix Calm as an automation solution.
further reading: Citrix XenApp and XenDesktop on Nutanix
Dev-Test: Cloud Development Environment & Testing Solutions | Nutanix
Let me know which platform you have in mind to narrow down suggestions.