Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) Reviews

We use Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure to operate our critical server infrastructure and achieve cost savings by migrating from AWS servers to a Nutanix cluster.

Nutanix offers a unified platform for managing databases, virtual machines, and applications. This simplifies management by consolidating everything into a single interface.

While Nutanix may have a higher upfront cost compared to other hypervisors, it can significantly reduce the resources needed for infrastructure management. With our previous hypervisor, we needed nearly ten IT personnel. Nutanix has allowed us to streamline our team to just three members.

We use a combination of database technologies, including SQL databases and web servers such as IIS, BHP, and NGINX.

Nutanix features helped our organization reduce downtime. I don't recall the last time we had downtime related to Nutanix because it is such a stable product.

Nutanix, a reliable product, helps us streamline our processes, which in turn improves company revenue. We began to see the benefits after two years, with a 40 percent reduction in operational costs.

We migrated 200 servers from AWS to Nutanix.

Nutanix may not consolidate applications, but it helps us run them more efficiently on its platform.

Updating is simple with one click. I would rate the updating processes 10 out of 10.

Adding compute and storage on demand is not difficult. However, we need to factor in the existing and new firmware and software requirements.

We have multiple clusters in different, on-premises as well as cloud-based data centers where we are running multiple applications, including database and SAP. They are managed with the Nutanix Prism centralized platform. 

Our other use case is that we have Office 365 applications hosted and those clusters are being utilized for database and Outlook replication, in which the information from those clusters is replicated for backup to storage devices that are dispersed across different data centers.

Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure has helped to improve our organization by reducing cost and complexity, and giving us more visibility. It has helped with the continuous integration and continuous development approach, and through its compatibility with the major cloud service providers.

Because NCI has hybrid cloud capabilities, we can integrate it with multiple cloud providers and that means we have complete geographical redundancy. There has not been any downtime and, with the help of containers running our platforms, we haven't faced any critical challenges. Since the deployment, we have not faced any type of SLA agreement-related issue or any type of situation where we lost revenues.

When it comes to reducing downtime, the most impactful features are the automated self-healing and recovery of the hosted applications. If a particular host is having some type of critical issue, a physical problem, a high-level process issue, or any type of high CPU utilization, there is an automatic internal alert and the self-healing and recovery automatically place the application on a new host. The user does not face any challenges, latency, or downtime.

The solution also has very robust security features, like integration with third-party authentication platforms and role-based access controls with different access levels. These are key features that help reduce operational challenges. We have complete visibility into which users we go with for administrative abilities and which users have certain types of role-based access privileges. These are very robust capabilities.

It has also helped us with application consolidation and that is very important in terms of reducing the cost, by having those applications on a single platform. Once we deployed NCI, moved key portions to it, and were completely satisfied that everything was working per our requirements, we decommissioned most of our legacy systems.

We eliminated our on-premises host and clusters because they cost a lot in the consumption of space and overall maintenance of the infrastructure. Compared to the cloud, hosting and managing applications requires more team members for operations, implementation, and field engineers. By working with those platforms in Cloud Infrastructure, we have seen a lot of cost optimization.

In addition, with the ability to accomplish most of the important day-to-day operational tasks automatically, we have gotten rid of manual tasks and require less human effort. On a daily basis, without NCI, the team was utilizing three to four hours on those day-to-day operations, handling the applications and platforms that were hosted on-premises. With those things hosted in Cloud Infrastructure, they need just 60 minutes. So we have saved about 75 percent of that time.

Overall, the primary benefits are that it simplifies operations and we have less human error with more automation. And there are robust security features, integrated with third-party security and monitoring tools. With the help of a complete and robust platform, we are going to achieve the best product.

We have a lot of servers. Previously, they used to be physical servers. Managing all those physical servers was difficult. Many times hardware used to fail and there was a disruption of services. After we moved to Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure, life got a lot easier. We have deployed more than 80 VMs in a cluster.

We have many homegrown applications that we run on Nutanix. We have a customized web portal and applications. They are customized for our business.

Nutanix NCI’s features help our organization reduce downtime. We use RA3 stuff in our clusters. If there is any issue with the hardware, node, or something else, my cluster is up and running. Over these three years, we have probably upgraded the Nutanix software twice or thrice. We had to restart nodes multiple times during this upgrade, and none of our users felt that something was going on. They did not have any issues related to slow response or no response from the applications while we had to shut down one of the nodes, put it into maintenance, apply the patches, bring the node up, and then make it join the cluster. It was smooth.

It has helped with consolidation. Previously, we had more than 40 servers, and now we have only 6 nodes. It is a lot easier to manage these 6 nodes. With the hardware, if something goes wrong, such as the hard disk showing amber, I have to create a ticket, share the logs, and then the engineer will come and check. After that, the part will come. It can come at 2 AM or 4 AM. We have to be physically present. They will shut down the server, take out that hard disk, and replace the hard disk, and then we will have to bring up the service. We have to spend a lot of time.

They have a product for database management called Nutanix Era, but we do not use that. We have not deployed it over here. We primarily use this HCI for making VMs and running web applications and their databases. We have migrated database services but not through the Nutanix Era. We have our own system, so we used that. The purpose of migration was to have a single pane of glass for management. The downtime is less, and the service becomes a smooth service. The users who are using the service are happy.

We implemented the solution as a reseller for non-critical DBS. Initially, we used it with an Oracle database. For the big customers, we moved forward into automation netting a transformation from the whole stack. We had full automation also for service management operations.

We managed a critical DB where different agents have to interoperate to make it easy for the technicians who are not skilled in IT. With Nutanix, we are able to arrange a fully automatic state that provides only a simple web interface for the technicians. Then we build the system, that integrates all the information automatically without the need for data entry. It helps us make a low code integration without developing much more software which is easier than what we had to do in the past.

Any single server or one-plus-one server is very difficult to manage if there is hardware failure. But with this solution, the transition is seamless because a 10-plus-one redundancy is built into the system.

With the click of a button, we can migrate the services to other servers. We have never had any downtime and we are a 24/7 operation. Production has continued,

Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure also helps us to optimize power utilization and the rack space used in the data center, resulting in overall energy savings.

These were immediate advantages because, eight to 10 years back, this was a new technology. We tried it with our less critical operations, and we slowly introduced more production-critical workloads.

Also, we were using Active Directory and other SQL databases on individual servers. We were able to consolidate them into a single database. That helps with ease of operations and enables taking backups from a single place. We migrated all our standard database structures and we don't need a cluster mechanism because the cluster or failover mechanism is built into the Nutanix architecture.

It gives us a single dashboard to control multiple sites and multiple zones. It helps to do things on a single platform and data sharing is quite easy. The network and the security are easy to manage.

We are using Nutanix for Infrastructure Cloud (NCI). In the West NCI, we are using Prism Ultimate. At the moment, we have three admins to manage the Internet.

The replication method between Nutanix clusters is a valuable feature. We are aware since we renew every year, for example, almost $100,000 per year. We calculate ROI for five years. We have seen ROI.

We are primarily using it for software development. 

We use the Nutanix Kubernetes cluster.

We like that it is cloud-based. It allows us to have a cloud-based ecosystem.

It's helped us reduce downtime by 50% approximately. It helps us consolidate our applications. It reduces processing time and administration. We can move faster. We don't have to wait for hours to process. We can do it in a few clicks. 

We were able to eliminate some of our legacy structures. We were using VMware. We are working to move away from it. We also are in the process of migrating other applications over. 

The provisioning is very easy. The live upgrades are useful. There is no need for downtime. It's very easy to manage things. We can reduce a lot of time with infrastructure upgrades.

It's easier to use for beginners.

Our client was using ESXi and Microsoft Hyper-V clustering, but patching and upgrading ESXi and Microsoft Hyper-V clusters was very tedious. That was their pain area. We understood their pain area and positioned Nutanix there. Instead of the orthodox three-tier architecture, they chose Nutanix. The benefit of Nutanix is that there is a very simple upgrade path. It is done with a click. The storage part is simple. It has a very easy UI, which is a USP of Nutanix. The client is very happy.

We have multiple such clients, and our clients are happy with it. For more than 10 clients, I myself have done the deployment of the Nutanix cluster. One of them had a cluster with 24 nodes.

In a single pane of glass, you get all the insights about your infrastructure. Earlier, in the orthodox three-tier architecture, you had multiple UIs. You also needed multiple expertise to take care of things. It used to take more time to troubleshoot and identify where exactly the issue was. You had to get your analytics, get your logs, and then troubleshoot. All this is avoided with the Nutanix architecture. It is hardware agnostic. For example, if an organization has a contract for the HPE hardware or they have an HPE footprint or a Dell footprint in their DC, they can go with that particular hardware and have Nutanix on top of it. Nutanix does not force you to buy only Nutanix hardware. Other vendors, such as VMware, make you buy their hardware so that their product works fine, but that is not the case with Nutanix. It is hardware agnostic. 

The applications that are run on Nutanix are client-side applications. There are banking or financial applications. They also have Citrix on Nutanix for the virtual desktop. They also have Oracle Database and SAP running properly on the Nutanix hardware or architecture. You can put any application available in the market, such as Oracle Database, MySQL, or NoSQL, and you will not have any slowness or anything like that with that application. Every application works smoothly on the Nutanix platform. It is all tested. 

It is much easier to deploy Nutanix as compared to other solutions. It saves you deployment time. Usually, in a big organization, the planning itself takes around a month. You also need permissions, and then you deploy a solution, so deployment takes time, but that is not the case with Nutanix, which is an advantage. You can get all necessary permissions from your management and then in one day or half a day, you can have your cluster. If you purchase the whole Nutanix portfolio with Nutanix Karbon, Nutanix Flow, and other solutions, deployment is very easy. You can put it into production.

It reduces the downtime. A cluster has multiple nodes in the backend. If you want to upgrade the firmware or you want to upgrade AHV or the hardware, it will do that one by one. It will put some nodes into maintenance mode. It will move some of the virtual machines to other nodes in a cluster. It will take care of the redundancy part. It will take care of your data. The data also gets migrated to those nodes so that it is available locally. You avoid all the hops that are there in the three-tier architecture. It reduces the hops and the time to access your data and gives you the output. All this is taken care of in the Nutanix architecture.

Snapshot is one of the key features that reduce downtime. It gives clients more power to define their RTO and RPO, which is a valuable aspect of the Nutanix architecture. Even in the case of DC/DR, if your DC goes down, you can use the data protection domain and get your DR site up and running. It helps clients achieve their RTO and RPO.

Our clients could realize its benefits in a week. I have worked on more than 10 major deployments. They already had some pain areas, and they wanted to mitigate those areas. We positioned Nutanix and did the PoC, and they were already happy with this solution at the PoC level. We did not have to do deployment and put it in production for them to see its benefits. Based on my experience with Nutanix, in a week's time, they get to know its features and the fact that it works smoothly.

All applications have dependencies. They have some hardware or networking requirements. You need to have the hardware accordingly in your DC. By buying Nutanix, our clients have managed to avoid all these requirements. In a single box, they get all the things, so they do not have to worry about the backend. Their applications work smoothly. They can have any application. They can even have VDI applications such as Citrix VDI or VMware Workspace on top of Nutanix. It supports all the platforms. Our clients are very happy with Nutanix. They do not have to do any hardware upgrades. 

It eliminates the legacy infrastructure. That is the main purpose of HCI. For HCI, Nutanix has been in the number one position for many years. In the three-tier architecture, there used to be a frontend application, a middleware, and a backend database. On the hardware front also, you had to put your servers, your SAN switches, and your backend storage. You had multiple footprints in your DC. You also had more power consumption. Nutanix reduces power consumption, troubleshooting, and maintenance. You do not need a separate team for maintenance. Irrespective of the hardware, you get a single point of contact for any support. All these solutions are consolidated under one roof, which is very beneficial.

We have done the whole DC migration to Nutanix. The client had five to six racks, and they got reduced to two racks by using Nutanix. It takes very less space. It helps to reduce your DC footprint and power consumption. Troubleshooting is very easy. You can also reduce the number of hops. It eliminates the whole process where the front end puts the request to middleware, which then goes to the backend and fetches the data from the storage. You can have your data locally, and then there is just a single hop. You get the output faster. It makes your applications run smoother and faster as well while responding to a request.