Dell vSAN Ready Nodes vs Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) comparison

Dell vSAN Ready Nodes vs. Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI)

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Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:

Categories and Ranking

Dell vSAN Ready Nodes

Ranking in HCI

12th

Average Rating

8.4

Reviews Sentiment

7.1

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Nutanix Cloud Infrastructur...

Ranking in HCI

3rd

Average Rating

8.6

Reviews Sentiment

7.4

Number of Reviews

197

Ranking in other categories

Software Defined Storage (SDS) (3rd), Software Defined Data Center (SDDC) (1st), Hybrid Cloud Computing Platforms (5th)

Mindshare comparison

As of April 2025, in the HCI category, the mindshare of Dell vSAN Ready Nodes is 2.6%, down from 3.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) is 8.4%, down from 8.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

HCI

Featured Reviews

Saleh Khalid

college student at Imam University

Efficient consolidated storage and plug-and-play with room for more flexibility

The initial setup was straightforward. However, there is a need for detailed steps, and missing any step could result in the solution not working. The whole environment, including designing and preparation, took around two weeks, and the deployments, including shipping of the servers and everything, took another two weeks to make it production ready. It was around four weeks in total from starting design to being production ready.

Read full review

MahendraPanchotiya

Infrastructure Manager at ER Tech Pros

Offers a unified platform, reduces downtime, and simple updates

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.

Read full review

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:

Pros

"They are heading in the right direction and moving to integrate everything with a hybrid cloud, and moving workloads back and forth."

"I rate vSAN ReadyNodes as a nine out of ten."

"The solution immediately expands storage area when you add nodes."

"Dell EMC vSAN Ready Nodes is scalable"

"vSAN ReadyNodes offer easy scalability, which has proven beneficial for storage needs."

"The most valuable feature is the set of user tools that are available."

"You don't have to spend much time evaluating the hardware. It can be deployed in a short time. The tool is also easy to upgrade."

"I have found the most important features of Dell EMC vSAN Ready Nodes are the capacity to manage the storage because the storage is built in the servers. The type of profiles you can attribute to the storage is a benefit. You can manage the storage by profiles. Overall the solution is a good speed and performance."

Cons

"The product's price is an area of concern where improvements are required. The price of Dell vSAN Ready Nodes could be lowered."

"The solution should provide daily task alerts for data recovery maintenance, usage, and other instructions to ensure the systems are in a good status."

"Upgrades are carried out manually."

"Dell EMC vSAN Ready Nodes is a great hyper-converged system that is a perfect platform for supporting any kind of workload. The only workload that it's not designed to support is big data."

"Although vSAN ReadyNodes work well, a faster firmware lifecycle with the release of validated firmware catalogs more quickly would be a desired improvement."

"The solution doesn't scale."

"The power switch on the hardware is located in a poor location where it can accidentally be pushed. In an update, they should solve this issue so people do not push it accidentally to have their service go down. A possible solution is the switch should be inside."

"The Dell VxRail solution is based on vSAN Ready Nodes, but the Dell VxRail is fully automated. It would be helpful if this automation feature could be added to the Dell vSAN Ready Nodes. For example, we need to install VMware ESXi, and manually expand the cluster."

Pricing and Cost Advice

"We have a four-year contract to use Dell EMC vSAN Ready Nodes."

"Comparing the price of Dell vSAN Ready Nodes to other solutions it is not expensive."

"The solution is more expensive than a traditional array. The prices are skyrocketing."

"My company makes yearly payments towards the licensing charges attached to the solution. The solution is expensive."

"The tool's pricing is competitive compared to others. The tool's licensing is based on annual subscriptions."

"The price of the solution was reasonable."

"There is a problem, which is the lack of an integrated price structure."

"It is slightly more expensive compared to a standard, on-prem, bare-metal configuration. There is about a 30 percent overhead there."

"When compared to the competitors, the price is reasonable."

"We renew our license on a yearly basis and have no costs in addition to the standard fee."

"AHV is free! This is a great feature that should be taken advantage of."

"When we purchase a new physical server or a couple of physical servers into our cluster, we always purchase it with Nutanix licensing. We are receiving the license from Nutanix directly and not from the vendor. In the way we're dealing, with the licenses it is a bit costly for us but as the company is getting larger, day by day or year by year, those licensing costs become lower each time for us. We are purchasing the licenses for three years for some of our clusters and for some others for five-year licenses and the licenses are still costly. We have good discounts for the licenses, but it is still expensive."

"I know Nutanix and VxRail have similar prices and licenses. Nutanix is a go-ahead if AHV is used as hypervisor because it is already embedded in the price."

"Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure’s pricing is very good and competitive."

"If a customer has been using VMware, the difference in pricing is lower. However, if they are looking to use the VMware, the price can be much higher depending on the license."

More Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) pricing and cost advice

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Comparison Review

it_user244362

Managing Consultant with 51-200 employees

Aug 30, 2015

Nutanix vs. VMware EVO:RAIL vs. FlexPod

Originally posted at www.storagegaga.com/dont-get-too-drunk-on-hyper-converged/ I hate the fact that I am bursting the big bubble brewing about Hyper Convergence (HC). I urge all to look past the hot air and hype frenzy that are going on, because in the end, the HC platforms have to be aligned…

Read full review

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

14%

Government

Manufacturing Company

Financial Services Firm

Educational Organization

37%

Computer Software Company

12%

Financial Services Firm

Manufacturing Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Dell vSAN Ready Nodes?

If I consider the overall product, I would say that it is an excellent solution that offers very good performance and stability.

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Dell vSAN Ready Nodes?

There is no specific licensing model for vSAN ReadyNodes as it is linked with Broadcom VMware's solutions rather than Dell's. As a group under Comcast, we receive very good pricing from Dell due to...

What needs improvement with Dell vSAN Ready Nodes?

Although vSAN ReadyNodes work well, a faster firmware lifecycle with the release of validated firmware catalogs more quickly would be a desired improvement.

What is the biggest difference between Nutanix Acropolis and VMware vSphere?

We found the reduced power consumption with Nutanix Acropolis AOS a very attractive feature. We also like the interface that allows you to talk directly to your VM from the present software. We fou...

How do I choose between Cisco Hyperflex HX Series and Nutanix Acropolis AOS?

Cisco HyperFlex HS series vs Nutanix Acropolis AOS Cisco HyperFlex gives extended hyper-convergence functions from core to edge and multi-cloud environments. It helps IT and OT teams deploy hyper...

Which would you choose - Nutanix Acropolis AOS or VMware vSAN?

VxRail vs Dell vSAN Ready Nodes

Comparisons

Compared 37% of the time

VMware vSAN vs Dell vSAN Ready Nodes

Compared 14% of the time

Dell PowerFlex vs Dell vSAN Ready Nodes

Compared 10% of the time

Lenovo ThinkAgile MX Certified Node vs Dell vSAN Ready Nodes

Compared 8% of the time

Dell XC Appliance vs Dell vSAN Ready Nodes

Compared 2% of the time

Product Reports

Dell vSAN Ready Nodes

Download Dell vSAN Ready Nodes product report

Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI)

Download Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) product report

Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) report

Also Known As

vSAN Ready Nodes

Nutanix Acropolis AOS, Nutanix AOS, Nutanix Acropolis

Overview

Dell EMC vSAN Ready Nodes are pre-configured building blocks that reduce deployment
risks with certified configurations, improve storage efficiency by up to 50%1
, and can help
you build or scale your vSAN cluster faster.14 Whether you're just getting started, and/or
expanding your existing VMware environment, Dell EMC is here for you every step of the
way with consulting, education, deployment and support services for the entire solution.

Dell Technologies

Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) is a top-ranking HCI software, cloud management tool, and Software Defined Storage (SDS) tool that is marketed as the foundation for users' hybrid clouds. It offers a powerful and secure hyperconverged infrastructure to deliver all data and applications at any scale and on any cloud. The solution offers a complete software stack that allows users to unify their hybrid cloud infrastructure.

NCI’s services include computer, storage and network, hypervisors and containers, and deployment in public or in private clouds. The product also comes with built-in resilience, disaster recovery capabilities, self-healing, and high-security capacities. It provides further deployment flexibility through several software and hardware options and platforms. NCI includes a full set of enterprise capabilities. It can also be deployed on a wide range of servers from popular manufacturers.

The capabilities of the product are categorized into three main groups:

AOS storage
Flexible and open compute
Automated and secure networking

Outside of these categories, NCI also offers other capabilities:

Integrated disaster recovery
Full-stack lifecycle management
VMware with Nutanix
Intelligent operations

Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) Features

Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) offers its customers various features and tools in each of the previously mentioned categories. The available features for users currently include:

High-performance: This set of features utilizes hardware advances such as NVMe and RDMA to accelerate users' most demanding applications with consistent performance. The tools in this feature category work alongside data locality to ensure successful results.
Foolproof resiliency: These Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure features protect data and keep it available by facilitating advanced distributed consistency algorithms. Users can utilize these features to protect their data from issues like bit rot, hardware failures, and even entire site failure.
Flexibility: This set of features allows storage to be sized for the needs of each organization and expanded promptly and easily so that the organization and its data can grow. The features offer flexibility to users in terms of applying storage policies logically on a pre-workload basis, instead of being tied to hardware.
Hypervisor choice: Users can choose from the leading hypervisors - Microsoft Hyper-V or VMware ESXi. They can also leverage the built-in hypervisor AHV that Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) provides.
Integrated virtualization: These features offer simplified automation and AHV streamlined operations. The services in this category are optimized for high performance and reliability.
Kubernetes: Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) offers features to build and deploy cloud-native applications on intelligent distributed infrastructure. Apps can be integrated with cloud-compatible storage and both building and deployment can be achieved within the same platform.
Microsegmentation: Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) offers features to prevent malware spread and reduce attack surfaces by leveraging machine learning (ML).
Virtual networking: This set of features allows users to easily implement multi-tenancy in their environment or stretch networks across clouds.
Centralized network management: Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) provides organizations with a way to manage networking configurations centrally. Users can utilize it across their human-computer interaction (HCI) environment with simple virtual switch management.

Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) Benefits

The product offers various benefits to users who utilize its capacities. Some of these include:

NCI reduces technology sprawl and frees up technical resources to allow organizations to focus on other activities, potentially reducing costs for the business.
The product allows customers to deploy, scale, and bridge to the public cloud to be able to react in evolving business environments.
Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure improves data availability while simultaneously protecting it against several kinds of failures and attacks.
The solution offers high-performance, resilient distributed storage for all workloads.
Working alongside Nutanix Cloud Platform, NCI offers simple management of data from one console.
Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure works by the zero trust philosophy, protecting users' apps and data through specially designed security protocols.

Reviews from Real Users

According to Gerhard J., an IT manager at Q4 Fuel, Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) provides serious reliability and stability across the entire system makes for ROI.

A solutions architect at a computer software company describes NCI as a stable, straightforward to set up, and scalable solution.

Nutanix

Sample Customers

Rackspace

St. Lukes Health System, the City of Seattle, Yahoo! Japan, Sligro, Empire Life, Hyundai AUS, and many others.

Dell vSAN Ready Nodes vs. Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI)